A choreographic journey through the Italian State Archives

A creation, research, and heritage-enhancement project by Zerogrammi and Arearea

Premise

State Archives are places where time does not pass—it settles.

Documents, registers, maps, and administrative acts preserve what once needed to be said, signed, classified.

“Filed in the records.”

“Nothing further to add.”

Estremo Remoto is conceived as a choreographic and performative project that questions the relationship between institutional memory and embodied memory, between what has been archived and what continues to act in the present.

In this form, the project unfolds as a distributed traversal of Italian State Archives, understood as living spaces, temporal thresholds, and sites of creation.

Artistic Concept

Estremo Remoto works with what is distant in time yet still operative: forgotten documents, anonymous signatures, exact dates, inventories.

“General register, year…”

“File no. …”

Dance enters the archive not to illustrate, but to reactivate.

The body becomes an instrument of listening, a living index, a marginal note.

The work investigates the relationship between body and document, archive and presence, preservation and disappearance.

Dramaturgical Notes – Choreographic Research in the Archives

The project originates from an attraction to the subtle texture of human memory embedded in archival documents. Not major historical events, but minor stories, marginal details, and overlooked fragments are at the core of the research.

Choreography becomes a way to give body to narratives buried within bureaucratic formulas, administrative acts, and carefully recorded gestures long forgotten.

The archive is not only a place of conservation, but a field of creation.

The performer becomes a sensitive archivist, leafing through absences, gaps, and silences as much as through documents.

Through dance, what has been forgotten can speak again.

State Archives as Spaces of Creation

Each participating State Archive becomes:

a site of artistic residency

a source of dramaturgical material

a space for site-specific public performance

Staircases, corridors, consultation rooms, and storage areas are temporarily inhabited by living presences.

“Faithfully transcribed from the original.”

“Conforming.”

Each traversal generates a unique variation of the project.

Project Structure

Phase 1 — Archival Research

• Meetings with archivists and scientific staff

• Selection of fonds and documents

• Collection of recurring formulas and archival language

Phase 2 — Artistic Residency

• Choreographic residency within the archive

• Translation of materials into physical scores

• Ongoing dialogue between artists and institution

Phase 3 — Public Presentation

• Site-specific performances

• Performative and installation-based actions

• Talks, guided encounters, performative visits

Phase 4 — Project Archive

• Creation of a parallel archive

• Video, sound, and textual traces

• Shared digital restitution with participating archives

Language and Dramaturgy

The language of Estremo Remoto is essential, layered, non-narrative.

Dance takes the form of a physical consultation: leafing through, waiting, repeating, classifying.

“Read, confirmed, and signed.”

The body does not interpret the document; it absorbs its rhythm and weight.

Relationship with the Audience

Audiences enter spaces usually reserved for consultation.

They are invited to slow down, to share silence and proximity.

The experience is conceived for small groups, fostering concentration and listening.

Objectives

• To enhance State Archives as contemporary cultural spaces

• To activate new modes of engaging with archival heritage

• To create a replicable model of collaboration between archives and performing arts

• To build a national map of artistic traversals

Partners and Network

• Italian State Archives

• Italian Ministry of Culture – Directorate General for Archives

• Regions and local authorities

• Residency spaces, festivals, universities

• Local communities

Estremo Remoto as an Open Project

Estremo Remoto does not conclude in a fixed form.

It adapts to contexts, documents, and bodies encountered along the way.

Extreme as what is distant.

Remote as what continues to act.

A project that entrusts the body with what documents cannot do:

tremble, linger, remain.

Previous Stages – The Beginning in Trieste

The project first took shape in Trieste, focusing on the archival registers of abandoned children.

Particularly striking were the “exposure tokens”: halves of objects left with newborns—split medals, torn playing cards, divided holy images. One half remained with the child, the other with the mother, bearing witness to a fracture and a desire for future reunion.

In these broken halves, Estremo Remoto found a powerful image of humanity marked by invisible tears across time—an image the choreography began to symbolically recompose.