City of Women: Laura Stellacci: Boccalero

»If you pray more than 15 minutes a day,« Sister Karen would say, »there’s probably something wrong with you. If you have your deity in your heart, there’s no reason to beg.« This statement aptly summarises the life of Karen Boccalero (1933–1997), an American nun, visual artist, social worker, and the founder of Self Help Graphics & Art. This organisation, based in East Los Angeles, combined artistic creation with social activism. She wore trousers, smoked, swore and expressed her opinions without reservation. In 1980, the organisation’s basement became the home of the legendary punk club The Vex, which was one of the few venues to give a voice to migrant, feminist and subcultural communities.

Laura Stellacci approaches Karen Boccalero’s work through the lens of choreography as a form of evocation. Rather than providing a biographical reconstruction, Stellacci explores how dance and choreography can preserve the memory of someone we have never met. Boccalero emerges at the intersection of concert, performance, and homage, where imitation becomes a method of exploration and dance a profane form of prayer. Three dancers create three versions of the nun, although none of them attempts to become her definitive image. Their bodies are drawn near, they move away and they listen, thereby opening up space for her indirect presence. The choreography draws on somatic practices, postmodern dance and pop choreography, as well as the concert form. Its power is revealed gradually through subtle, precise and often restrained gestures that affect us almost viscerally even before they acquire any specific meaning.

ticket is valid also for Laventure concert

Choreography: Liza Baliasnaja, René Alejandro Huari Mateus, kemelo nozipho sehlapelo, Laura Stellacci
Performing: Liza Baliasnaja, kemelo nozipho sehlapelo, Viktorija Ilioska
Costume design: Reiner-André Törner
Music production: Paolo Stellacci
Lighting design: Laura Salerno
Sound design: Antonia Alessia Virginia Beeskow
Technical director: Patrick Faurot
Dramaturgy text: Nouria Behloul
Feedback: Alexandra Hennig, Jacq Azarmi, Viktorija Ilioska
Production management: take the money and run GbR
Production: Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm; HMWK – Ottilie Roderstein emerging artists scholarship (Ottilie-Roderstein-Nachwuchsstipendium)