© Giacomo Bianco ; Pietro Bertora
Pas Moi
Pas Moi is a lecture performance that analyses the origins of the firts technical devices for creating, transmitting, and recording sounds from the perspective of Deaf people. Many of these achievements were developed with audist and eugenic intentions : being Deaf was considered a sickness to be healed – instead of being recognized as a cultural identity. For example, in the 19th century devices for language recording were invented to be used in the context of so-called language therapy as an instrument of an involuntary re-education. Hearing could now be measured and depicted technically, as an object made of data and numbers, from which an ostensible « norm » could be derived. Diana Anselmo illuminates the origin stories of these technologies that are in use even today. What if we would conceive of it from a different starting point? Beyond deficits – further ahead, in another future.
Credits
Concept, performance, visuals: Diana Anselmo
Performers: Diana Anselmo, Daniel Bongioanni, Antonio Dominelli
Sound, composition: Antonio Dominelli
Singsong lyrics: Paddy Ladd
Dramaturg: Piersandra di Matteo
Coaching in research and performative material: Saša Asantić
Produced in collaboration with: Santarcangelo Festival
Executive producer: Chiasma
Co-produced by: Scuola Piccola Zattere, TheaterFormen Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, Fuorimargine – Centro di Produzione di Danza e Arti Performative della Sardegna. Sustained by the network R.O.M (Residencies On the Move) at Reykjavik Dance Festival at the invitation of Santarcangelo Festival. R.O.M is supported by the European Union in the framework of the program Creative Europe, Conseil des arts de Montréal and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Supported by Istituto Italiano di Culture di Oslo, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Berlino, MIC – Ministero della cultura, DANAE Festival. As part of LANDING, a project backed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and carried out by Santarcangelo Festival
Diana Anselmo
Diana Anselmo is a Deaf native signer and queer performer and visual artist, activist and improvised human being.
Bilingual in LIS and Italian, during his master's degree in Theater and Performing Arts, he debuted with his first performance, Autoritratto in tre atti (2021), performed over 30 times in various Italian and non-Italian festivals (Culturgest and Casa da Música, Portugal; Theaterformen, Germany; Synergeio Performing Arts, Cyprus; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneve, Switzerland).
As a performer, he made his debut in Berlin in Xavier Le Roy's Le Sacre du Printemps (2022). In the same year, he created You Have to Be Deaf to Understand, a performance in Visual Sign with two Deaf performers; presented in Italy and abroad in signing venues (Lisbon; Edinburgh; Riksteatren CREA, Stockholm; International Visual Theatre IVT, Paris). In 2023, he concluded his penultimate production Je Vous Aime – a performance for the hearing, presented in venues including TSA Teatro Stabile d'Abruzzo and TPP Teatro Pubblico Pugliese. The same performance in 2024 – somewhat like the artist who embodies it – changes gender and becomes a museum exhibition with the eponymous title Je Vous Aime at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin.
In the same year, he signed with dance-maker Cristina Kristal Rizzo the co-authorship of the dance performance Monumentum DA, presented at various festivals including Torino Danza, Triennale Milano, MilanOltre. Straddling 2024 and 2025, he exhibited deafnotdead, his first gallery show at the Eugenia Delfini Gallery, Rome.
He is among the founders of Al.Di.Qua. Artists, Europe's first association of and for artists with disabilities, for which he has participated as a speaker at various European festivals (IntegrART, Switzerland; DansFunk, Sweden; Holland Dance Festival, Holland; Tracing the Trails, Lithuania). Among other posts, he is the accessibility manager of Oriente Occidente Festival and the youngest member of the Cultural Advisory Board of the British Council.