Visual place of silence is a performing work which intertwines the static language of photography with the dynamic one of performance art.
Visual place of silence is a reflection on the overproduction of images generated by the media and visual arts as well as the speed in the use of them.
Visual place of silence focuses the dynamics of the process of concentration.
Visual place of silence is a careful look on today's society and, in particular, on contemporary human being in his psychological dialectic and interior conflicts.
Three sheets of semi-transparent paper are placed in front of the viewer. Two of these are hung on a wire stretched aluminum, with a central space void that is visually bridged by a third sheet arranged in a second row. The first impact before that the performance begins is a wall of paper. After a short wait, the two performers walk between the people and, starting from the center, draw on the ground a semi-circle with a white powder and disappear behind the sheets of paper. From this moment, the performers appear in various parts of the semi-transparent wall and slowly with their bodies generate images combined with sounds/noises discontinuous. After the images take shape, you can see each of them for about half minute and then they disappear again waiting to appear the next image. Finally, the two performers show themselves once again, break the semi-circle and disappear again in the audience.
By performing extremely slow, the viewer try to reach a time/place of visual silence. At this attempt is opposed the caricatural strength of the images produced which focus on the modern man from a point of view introspective and behavioral. The images made during the performance can be seen in a fragmented way and this has as a consequence an effort of decoding by the audience as well as his absolute freedom of interpretation. This means - as stated by Roland Barthes in his essay "The death of the author" - that the artist takes a step back from his work and gives up giving his personal point of view.
Valentina Murabito/Vinzenz Fengler, 2012