FLORA
CABILI
Fertile Ruins is the first edition of Cosmati Labs, hosted in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria, Italy. The aim of Cosmati Labs is to encourage and support radical experimentation across the fields of research, art, and design.
In July 2022, Lara Baclig, Flora Cabili, and Giuliana Mazzetta came together in Monteleone di Spoleto in Italy — a medieval town that translates to “mountain lion” and is the archaeological site of an Etruscan biga (chariot) dating to the sixth century BC. Compelled by the town’s power and possibility to draw on as an incubator for creative experimentation and reflection explored through time, Giuliana invited the other creative practitioners to her grandmother’s native town. They collaborated together as both curators and participants to respond to the local context through a series of interventions, workshops and activities -- experimental movement, collaborative art creation, material exploration and installation, and myth creation. In addition, the curators and participants collaborated with Monika Błaszczak, a choreographer whose goal is to create networks of solidarity across ecosystems through movement, led them through a movement prompt and response.
Collaborative Myth Workshop
Soliloquy, response to prompt by Monica Blaszczak
Notice which surfaces of your body are encountering the Earth.
Become aware of how your weight is distributed along those surfaces.
Become a witness to your body’s shifts of weight as a continuum of the landscape’s vibrating movement.
How does the Earth want you to move on them, from them, with them?
Listen and receive information.
Gather Earth’s guidance.
Your dancing is an extension of the Earth’s breath.
Now make a dance which will encapsulate your and the Earth’s will to live.
Begin by searching the movement, then slowly start selecting, so that eventually you find a set choreography.
Make a dance which is so powerful that if you dance it on a piece of land, that land will give exceptionally abundant harvest in the following season.
