Critiques

Francesca Magro, "Pulsione", 2011 (detail).

Body 2.0
A Choreographer’s Notes

by Federicapaola Capecchi, 2013

text in the catalogue “The sign incarnate”

Francesca Magro’s bodies have always been a source of fascination for me. Bodies which are not bodies, mechanical or electronic components attached to limbs or extensions of limbs, heads or brains, dissections, fragments of bodies, distorted, cut up, a place in ruins. Observing her figures I see the space, the emptiness, the fullness of a being as he struggles…for what? for who? For which body today? In what stage of the body are we? What is it capable of? These questions have been an integral part of my research and now find a stimulating enigma in the work of Francesca Magro. For this reason a selection of her drawings is at the core of a theatrical dance show of mine part of the Art Choreography Festival.

In her work I see space and the body as resonant places from which beauty and cruelty emerge not as separate or distant entities with all the difficulties typical of unusual encounters, encounters which take us down less travelled paths and show us a new perspective. Meeting the body today... Francesca seems to be asking me to implore in the words of Gilles Deleuze’s keen analysis of Spinoza, “what can the body do?”