I tremble on your tongue of lava
The project investigates the intra-agent relationship between Mount Vesuvius—a geological entity in a state of emergency latency—and the communities inhabiting its territory.
It starts from the hypothesis that a deep resonance exists between volcanic quiescence and the latent, somatic, and psycho-political expressions of the collective, configuring a single entity-in-becoming composed of human and non-human agents. From this perspective, latency becomes a privileged field of research-creation-action.
Thus, the project explores a Vesuvian onto-epistemology: a set of relational knowledges that emerge from the continuous co-production between the geological dimension and local communities.
E/rupting Latencies: A Trans-Volcano-Feminist Methodology to Queer/Cuirize Vesuvian Onto-Epistemology
The research addresses the development of a performative methodology for approaching the study of a volcanic onto-epistemology of Vesuvius (Naples). The main hypothesis of this work is that Vesuvius, beyond being a territorial and geological entity, is an intra-acting phenomenon that manifests itself in the material-discursive practices that configure Vesuvian bodies and their relationship with the environment. The specificity of Vesuvius as a latent volcano and the persistence of its eruptions in the oneric experience—identified here as a space of emergence for latent materialities, gestures, and events—suggests investigating the field of latency as a characterizing and differential dimension of this phenomenon.
In this context, the term onto-epistemology designates a theoretical-practical framework that conceives of the volcano as an agential entity: a relational and material phenomenon where geological agents and the life forms that cohabit with them intra-act, co-producing material realities, knowledges, and particular forms of existence. A trans-volcano-feminist methodology, in turn, is a critical and performative practice that proposes to explore the relationship between bodies, territories, and knowledge, from an affective, intimate, somatic approach situated within a queer/queering, ecofeminist, and posthuman perspective.
The research develops different strategies that, at various levels, address the materialities co-produced by Mount Vesuvius and the Vesuvian communities, integrating the somatic, the oneric, and the poetic:
- The body is approached as a surface of affection, record, dispute, and negotiation of the material and the political, as a place where situated and embodied knowledge is produced. The practical part of the somatic research proposes a queering of body-space dynamics, where touch and contact operate as interfaces capable of blurring the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, the biological and geological, the "natural" and the political.
- Furthermore, it raises the possibility of establishing a connection with the volcano through a "latent" linkage with the oneric dimension. Starting from the observation that Vesuvians dream of Vesuvian eruptions, a proposal is articulated that addresses dreaming as a device for hosting issues that inhabit and agitate the collective body in a latent manner.
- Finally, it speculates on how latency can become a space for reorganizing the imaginary and political action through poetic provocation and artistic practice. In this case, the preproduction of In My Dreams, There Is an Eruption is analyzed—a poetic video essay that gathers the latencies of the research process and translates them into an audiovisual piece.
SpSpeculative drifting: becoming disoriented in one’s own skin, entering the skin of the volcano
Speculative drifting: becoming disoriented in one’s own skin, entering the skin of the volcano consisted of an ecosomatic exploration in/with Vesuvius: an encounter between bodies that inhabit the volcano – in its geographic, symbolic, and existential dimensions – to stir what moves underground, in a state of latent activity, through the convergence and intra-action between bodies, volcano, and somatic fabulation.
The aim of this exploration was to engage the volcanic through contact, through touching-oneself/each other, to disorient the perception of boundaries between space and body, to shake the geosomatic dimension as a site of poetic and political fabulation. Through dynamics inspired by ecosomatic practice, we sought a form of connection with Mount Vesuvius that emerges through a queer dis/orientation of space, practicing a sensual touch and a binding contact, and touching the volcano from theStrangerWithin.
In my dreams, there is an eruption
In my dreams, there is an eruption is a poetic video essay that gathers the latencies from the E/rupting Latencies process and pours them into an audiovisual work. The piece is currently in the editing phase.