UNLEASHING GHOSTS FROM URBAN DARKNESS
Project, choreography tools and visual concept |
Production | Formati Sensibili 2017
With the support of | Sa.L.E. Docks (Venice), workspacebrussels, ERT – Emilia Romagna Teatro, Festival Atlas of Transitions – Right to the City (Bologna), Aerowaves – Twenty20 Frameworks, Creative Europe Programme, The Place, Fondazione Romaeuropa, National Dance Centre Bucharest, EN-KNAP / Španski Borci, BMotion / OperaEstate Veneto Festival, Dansens Hus Stockholm, Bora Bora, Mercat de les Flors, O Espaço do Tempo, Tanec Praha, Instável – Centro Coreográfico, Serralves Museum (Porto), FAÍCC – Formação Avançada em Interpretação e Composição.
The project has been presented, in collaboration with several performers and artists, in Venice, Bologna, Porto, Rome, Modena, and in remote form across numerous international cities.
Unleashing Ghosts from Urban Darkness is an interdisciplinary art project conceived by Alessandro Carboni that weaves together performative and installation practices, using the body as a cartographic tool to explore the complexities of urban space. Based on the choreographic method EM Tools – Embodied Map Tools, the project engages performers in the physical mapping of the city, collecting forms, events, and urban situations along predefined routes. In this process, the body becomes a sensor capable of detecting interferences, dissonances, continuities, and ruptures, exposing latent conflicts and tensions.
Since 2017, the project has taken shape in various cities, adapting to their specific urban and social contexts. In Venice, it was realized within the framework of Dark Matter Games, a platform dedicated to socially engaged art practices, and presented during the opening of the Biennale. In Bologna, as part of the Atlas of Transitions – Right to the City festival, it involved young performers of diverse origins in a choreographic mapping that began at the Memoriale della Shoah. In Porto, it was presented during Serralves em Festa, in collaboration with the Serralves Museum and Instável – Centro Coreográfico, with the participation of students and international artists.
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the project took on a remote form, involving performers in eight cities around the world. Through choreographic instructions sent via email, each carried out a bodily exploration of their own urban space, documented on video and edited into a single work disseminated online. This edition was produced by Aerowaves and supported by the Creative Europe program.
Unleashing Ghosts from Urban Darkness reveals the city as a living archive of gestures, memories, and invisible conflicts—an archive to be inhabited, rewritten, and transformed through the body.
