This year I'm writing you a letter by hand

performance by and with Laura della Gatta
harp improvisations: Irene Soundrisen Project
curated by Roberto Cavallini and Barbara Lalle
2022

Time, things, and the value of relationships

by Roberto Cavallini and Barbara Lalle

Time is at the center of Laura della Gatta's performative action; it is a time that leads back to the deepest dimension of the ego. It is the time of her existence, as a desire for conjunction and reunion with the other, filling an unknown space through the use of the written word, which finds its creation through daily rituals rooted in a remote past that is real or imagined by the artist.

It is an attempt to stop time through writing, an account and recomposition of one's own experience.

A slow writing whose words, phrases or abrasions remain as indelible marks on paper, eschewing digital immateriality, mediated by a technology destined for obsolescence.

The epistolary exchange, which started on January 22, 2022, the artist's birthday, will end on January 22, 2023; a year of epistolary relationships, of personalized letters, all strictly handwritten and enriched with drawings if necessary, a gift of one's own running time, which turns into a reward for the time spent waiting for a response.

A year-long distant but intensely intimate encounter with each other, during which the performance lives its gestation and growth in the womb of the artist's home, among the objects that have a deep connection with Laura, her clothes, her desk, her pen, her personalized papers, the warmth of tea, her harp.

The harp, the relationship with music, the music itself, which, filling the intervals of the writing, becomes creative food for the latter and gives the epistolary contents another dimension that, transcending the mere exchange of words, transforms them into metalanguage.

The Spazio Boario studio hosts Laura della Gatta's performance during the time of writing one or more letters, in a setting that re-proposes the homey, familiar space of the artist, with her lamp, her writing desk, her pens, the silent company of her books, the tray with her teapot and her cup of tea.

The sound of the nib on the paper is the sound of writing, the rest pertains to the heart and the mind.

And the heart and mind will speak to us through the music Laura della Gatta gives us with her harp and the sound diffusion of her thoughts, reflections, and moods that arose and diligently pinned down during the year of epistolary activity that is coming to an end.

Upon completion of the writing, the artist will go to post the letters, duly stamped, at the post office. Gift and reward.