Performance 1, 2025

In the Contemporary Interferences series, performance does not release the body into space: it exposes it to a surface that measures its gestures and makes their continuity uncertain. Zampogna thus shifts interference from the encounter between images of different origins, crucial to other phases of his work, to the internal relationship between figure, gesture and visual field. The three presences do not form a definite sequence or a shared choreography. Their proximity suggests an action, but does not establish whether these are successive moments, distinct bodies or repeated appearances of one figure. The work keeps these possibilities open and makes the difficulty of reading movement its subject.

The grid running across the fabric, together with the red and dark discs, imposes a regular rhythm that does not coincide with the gestures: the upright body and those bending or reaching appear measured by an order that cannot explain them. The pattern does not stop behind the figures. It continues across the field and reappears beneath their feet, denying them the security of a separate place. Drips descending from arms and hair likewise unsettle their outlines. Rather than simply illustrating collapse or exertion, they introduce a dispersal into physical presence that counters the solidity of the dark clothes. The fabric support participates in this uncertainty because its decorated surface remains active as it receives the bodies.

What emerges is a conception of performance far removed from gesture as immediate self-expression. Where a media image could once be superimposed on a figure, here the entire visual environment interferes with our ability to recognise an action. Repetition does not clarify what is taking place: it asks the viewer to reconstruct a movement that the surface, at the same time, interrupts.