ESTREMO REMOTO is a choreographic journey through Italy’s State Archives: a project of creation, research and archival-heritage enhancement curated by Zerogrammi and Arearea.

PREMISE

State Archives are places where time does not pass: it settles. Papers, registers, maps and administrative records preserve what once needed to be said, signed and classified.

Estremo Remoto is conceived as a choreographic and performative project exploring the relationship between institutional memory and embodied memory, between what has been archived and what continues to act in the present.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 journey through Italy’s State Archives, understood as living spaces, temporal thresholds and places of creation.

ARTISTIC CONCEPT

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

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

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

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

DRAMATURGICAL NOTES: CHOREOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN THE ARCHIVES

Estremo Remoto emerges from an attraction to the delicate weave of human memory held within archival documents. We are not interested in major events, but in small stories, marginal details and minor traces left behind by time. After all, our humanity is made of narratives—of what we tell and what we forget.

The choreographic act thus becomes a way of rediscovering these forgotten fragments, of giving body to narratives buried in bureaucratic formulas, administrative records, and gestures once carefully noted down and then forgotten.

The choreographer and performers seek in the archives a kind of second skin of history, made not of celebrated names but of ordinary people, of moments recorded and then filed away. Every signature, every date and every marginal note becomes an invitation to imagine, reconstruct and dance what has been lost.

In this sense, the archive is not only a place of preservation but also a ground for creation. It is a space in which choreography becomes an act of listening, poetic recovery and embodied narration. The body becomes a sensitive archivist, leafing through not only documents but also absences, gaps and silences.

The dramaturgical notes of Estremo Remoto are therefore an invitation to see the archive as a place where the human re-emerges through gesture. They are a call to remember that our collective history is made of small narratives, marginal details and that which has been forgotten, yet can speak again through dance.

STATE ARCHIVES AS SPACES OF CREATION

Each participating State Archive becomes a site for artistic residency, a source of dramaturgical material and a space for site-specific performance.

Stairways, corridors, reading rooms and storage facilities are temporarily inhabited by living presences.

Each encounter generates a unique variation of the project.

PROJECT STRUCTURE

PHASE 1 — ARCHIVAL RESEARCH

• Meetings with archivists and research staff

• Selection of collections and documents

• Gathering formulas, languages and recurring structures

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 performance

• Performative and installation-based actions

• Public encounters, talks and performative tours

PHASE 4 — PROJECT ARCHIVE

• Creation of a parallel archive

• Video, sound and textual traces

• A shared digital presentation with the participating Archives

DRAMATURGY AND LANGUAGE

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

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

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

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AUDIENCE

The audience enters spaces normally devoted to consultation. They are invited to slow down and to share silence and proximity.

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

OBJECTIVES

• To enhance State Archives as contemporary cultural spaces

• To activate new ways of experiencing archival heritage

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

• To build a national map of artistic journeys through archives

PARTNERS AND NETWORK

• Italian State Archives

• Ministry of Culture – Directorate-General for Archives

• Regions and local authorities

• Residency spaces, festivals and universities

• Local communities

OUTPUTS

• Estremo Remoto site-specific performances

• Artistic residencies

• Public and educational events

• A digital project archive

• Final publication