In helpless longing to get close 
(you must destroy a loving tongue)

In helpless longing to get close (you must destroy a loving tongue) is the title of Sveva Crisafulli’s performance, part of the exhibition season Co-Presence is a Passing Gesture, which reflects on public art as a relational experience in which the intermittent presence of passersby becomes an active element of the work.

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Sveva Crisafulli explores femininity and appetites – food-related, erotic, and bodily – as embodied forms of desire; difficult to tame, yet long disciplined and constrained. At spazioSERRA, she stages cake-sitting, a fetish practice belonging to the WAM (Wet and Messy Fetishism) category. Documented by the British underground magazine SPLOSH! between the 1980s and 1990s, the practice later merged into the cam-girl pornographic internet culture. In cake-sitting, a performer sits on a cake, gradually crushing it under the weight of their body, and offering the leftovers to the audience from their own skin.

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Choreographed with dancer and performer Bianca Zueneli, the performance begins with an act of inversion: the performer accessing the space through the window. At the center of the space stands a layered cake, symbol of a femininity at once domestic and artificial. The performer does not eat it,  she demolishes it and incorporates it differently. The actions follow a climax in reverse, in which the theatre of the mouth is turned upside down. The body becomes grotesque, blurring the outside with the inside, pleasure with disgust, attraction with repulsion. The excess of leftovers extends to the windows, reaching the glass and gradually transforming its transparent surface into an opaque one, creating a sense of intimacy. 

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What happens inside extends beyond the stage: gestures leave traces and gradually alter the transparency of the space. The gaze from outside exposes the body, transforming the dynamics of seeing and being seen.The passerby encounters a gesture in the making, becoming part of it through their own presence.

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The performance contains nudity and explicit content. Audience members may come into contact with food used during the action.

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Concept and writing: Sveva Crisafulli
Performer and choreographic collaboration: Bianca Zueneli
Original music: Requiem for a Cream. Composed by Muiredach O'Riain & Ester D'Avossa

Supported by: Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia
Media Partner: Zero