Michele Drascek article for Drustvo Vita Activa

The gesture of the artist.
The pediluvium of Pippa Bacca
in
Drustvo Vita Activa

The main purpose of the Association for Promotion of Equality and Plurality Vita Activa is to promote the equality of human rights and basic freedoms regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, political or other belief, ethnicity, social background, education or other personal characteristics.

Drustvo Vita Activa published Michele Drascek The gesture of the artist. The pediluvium of Pippa Bacca, an article about the performance of the Italian artist in Ljubljana, during the Brides on Tour project stop Slovenia.

link:
http://www.drustvo-vitaactiva.si/9722/496101.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*
http://www.drustvo-vitaactiva.si/59601/index.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*
http://www.drustvo-vitaactiva.si/401.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*

photo Maja Slavec

Michele Drascek

The gesture of the artist. The pediluvium of Pippa Bacca

The 31 December 2007 I received a call from Milano, so I maked Pippa's acquaitance and I started my participation in Pippa Bacca and Silvia Moro Brides on Tour project. She called me as an artist, because she was looking for the support of the artists, also to create a network amongst them. Like this I began to work like curator for the last stop of the tour in Italy, Gorizia, and for the first stop abroad, in Ljubljana. We wrote a lot of e-mails to each other, and this was another way to feel her belief: the trust in the others. This was her fundamental topic in the project. She was a trustful person and she believed that - like she said - "If I put one's trust in the people, I think I could receive good things and trust from the people". She used to travel hitchhiking in all her life and she choose to do the same for Brides on Tour: another attestation of faithfulness in the other people, in human beings and, more, in countries that lived or live conflicts. And she travelled dressed like a bride: white, light, womanly, "generator of new life equal to peace, love and purity". But Brides on Tour wasn't only travelling around dressed like brides. The foundations of the project were the performances: if Silvia Moro met people that sewed on her dress to bring with her a sign of every single city and country, Pippa Bacca met the midwifes for her washing-feet performance, a meaningfull gesture, "a tribute to the women that bring life, the ancient gesture to wash them the feet with the water and wipe them the feet with my dress voile" as she pointed out. I organized and then I saw two times this performance, in the Natural Birth Room inside the Hospital of Gorizia and in Alkatraz Galerija in Ljubljana. It was a gentle and poetic gesture; a rite - the pediluvium -indeed. The midwifes experienced at the same time the secular practice for guests in ancient civilizations and Middle Ages, and the ritual of the religious liturgy (a trasversal ritual present in different religions). Pippa poured warm water into her basin and began to wash the feet of the midwife in silence, then she started to ask to the midwife experiences, memories, feelings in her particular profession. At the end she wiped the feet with her voile and put on the feet lavender essence oil. A calm, still and deep atmosphere involved totaly the midwife. Naturally, it's come back to me at once the Gospel of John (13, 1-15): After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girdled. And yes, she really taked off the wipe that during the washing feet she girdled. This is the more strong image that I remember of Pippa Bacca. The gesture of the artist: the relation between the women bodies, the hands (to do) and the feet (to walk), the narrations. An aesthetic and human experience in a perfromance that didn't forget the ethics significance.

When she was in my home, doing needlework, I asked if she wanted to listen to some particular music: "Sì, vorrei ascoltare La Pastorale di Beethoven!" (Yes, I would like to listen to The Pastoral by Beethoven!). So I took the Symphony No. 6 in F major (Op. 68) and we listened to it. Pippa Bacca chose the music that was in principle the empirical description of her way to interpret and experience Art, in fact the composer wrote that this Symphony is "a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds".

The shock caught all of us, we were frozen in front of the news. The end of the tour was a product of the tragic meeting of the trust and the inhuman in Human Being. They say that the world needs pity. I say that immediacy is a fraud (Dietrich Bonhoffer) and therefore the end of the travel is not the end of the project: if before the project was speaking and put forward a concept of life to the people, now the project is shouting and screaming.