One eye in the Boxes and the other in the Persian Shahre Farang

Lo sguardo della RE.M Attraversamenti Multipli 2023, 7 Luglio 2023

Kaleidoscopes, manipulations, moving objects, sounds and optical effects: it is the theater of Unterwasser, a research group, founded in 2014 by Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio, which investigates the mutual contaminations between puppet theater and the arts visual.

Inside the small and evocative building at the entrance to the Torre del Fiscale park, which hosts the Crossings Multiples festival, a series of boxes have been arranged. In the first room there are two that contain two micro-worlds, to be precise a swimming pool and a forest, which can be explored by immersing oneself through sight and hearing. There are also three boxes belonging to the “Postcards from Rio” project which contain stories of people who tell their stories through their favorite places in their cities. We then proceed to a second room where four stations have been prepared, each occupied by one of the BOXES: an exhibition installation whereby the worlds inserted in these boxes come to life thanks to the manipulation by the Unterwasser performers with the participation of Francesco Capponi. From objects that come to life inside a drawer of an old grandmother's piece of furniture, to the psychedelic magic of a hand-painted kaleidoscope. From the little interactive theater in a box, to the stories of children, their innocent questions and the answers that are pure wonder.

But what is hidden behind a box, inside a casing, in the eyes of the beholder? A world, or rather, many worlds.

«These boxes identify the stories, the life, the path of each person which is always different from the other». says Kante. Chiara also finds small worlds looking through the peephole: «it's like entering them delicately, slowly, with education and respect», she says. She is struck by the wonder of Nawshin, who cannot explain how it is possible to fit a forest into a box, and then Ali who finds it a beautiful image to be able to admire the forest in miniature while listening to the voices of the birds.

Boxes and stories that evoke memories: Dabo tells of when in primary school, in Gounfan near Bafoulabè in Mali where the two rivers of different colors meet but never mix, he and his teacher taught with projections of lights and shadows. Ali remembers, despite being kilometers away from Dabo, that in Libya he too played by spying inside a box full of images and lights. Mitu remembers her children in Bangladesh. «I heard the sound, I saw many trees, the birds chirping, the light was dark, I saw a dance of pain inside the box» says Salma. There is also nostalgia in Deborah's experience and the memory of Zara's moving boxes, when sometimes she would waste hours looking at what was hidden inside her. And then Zara tells us one word: Shahre Farang. And she shows us these photos before starting to tell the story.

https://fa.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B4%D9%87%D8%B1_%D9%81%D8%B1%D9%86%DA%AF

Zara: «About 125 years ago, a king of Iran, of the Qagiar dynasty, made a trip to France. His name was Mozaffarin Shah. Shah means “king”. During his journey Mozaffaridin saw a magical machine, inside which other worlds could be seen. The magic machine impressed him so much that he picked one up and took it with him to Iran. Little by little he began to travel with the magic machine that everyone began to call "Shahre farang". Shahr means city. Farang or Faranghestan was a word that Persians used to indicate European countries, TV and cinema were not yet widespread and therefore this machine built a new visual culture. Town criers, sightseers, street vendors, began to travel the streets with these machines. Children, but also many adults, paid to see the images inside the Shahre farang!

Arriving in the streets, the singers called the audience with a verse that began like this:

It's the city, it's the city of Farang, look closely! He's on tour! It's colourful!

The city, the city of Farang! There are a thousand beautiful cities in the world!

Look at the cities with domes and minarets!

Look at the cities with bell towers!

Look at the cities with the golden-haired people!

The poem sung by Morteza Ahmadi is this. Close your eyes, listen to it, and travel to the city of Farang too.

There is also a famous Iranian film, Hasan kachal by Ali Hatami which begins like this; in the first scenes the viewer's eye is invited to look, through the screen, into the hole of a Shahre Farang".

After listening to Zara, and the memories and visions of the Re.M companions, some words heard in one of Unterwasser's boxes resonate in me. Delicate and innocent words spoken by children who ask things with the curiosity that only children have.

“What is sympathy?

It's when you meet another person,

is taking a journey together,

hold the other's hand.

It's making many discoveries together."

“What is enthusiasm?

It's the hunger for beautiful things.

And then you make these beautiful things your own, like treasures.

And then you tell these beautiful things to someone else to make them hungry too."

And perhaps this is also the definition of wonder: entering the different small worlds that everyone carries with them, in their own box, with delicacy and curiosity and letting oneself be amazed.

Giorgia Belotti with contributions from Zara Kian, Kante Bangaly, Dabo Abdoulaye, Maria Chiara Bisceglia, Ali Jubran, Deborah Ponzo, Mitul, Nawsyn Laela

In the Boxes of Unterwasser, see the world. Sara Matloob

Peering through a small hole into something unknown is exciting enough on its own, whether on the other side there is the wonderland or a dark forest with towering trees, scattered rays of light and the echo of birdsongs. It is also nostalgic. It takes you back to when there was no Matrix and Terminator yet. The world was simple and fantastic, and an empty box of 'Shahrefarang' with its still black-and-white photos could take you on an amazing journey.

In recreating reality, leaving blank space in the audience's mind is as important as describing the details of the imaginary world. Our imaginations flourish while trying to fill in these blanks, and we complete the story step by step as only our minds can. These empty spaces are evident in the boxes because they only show a bit of reality. Some images: a child who laughs, a view of the sea and a small toy that goes and comes back; some voices: a child's voice that asks fundamental questions like all children; Some familiar objects and some colors and light.

The strongest spectator's role in the creation of the story probably occurs when watching the first box. This box has two holes instead of one, and two spectators sit facing each other on both sides. You will experience a great deal of suspense if you are the one who must carry out the orders of the god of the box since nothing will be revealed until the end of the first run. However, your contributions will influence the show your partner watches.

The wonder of grandma's drawer is of a different kind. We cannot simply compare it to a stop-motion work because it offers a direct connection with objects. The old clock, the broken pair of glasses, the pill bottle, and the thimble really exist on the other side of the hole and dance before our eyes. This imaginary but tangible world contrasts the real world of virtual images where we live in. And at the end, the artist confirms this pleasant fact by inviting us to open the small upper drawer to take out the grandma's gift, an old fashion toffee.

Another attraction of the boxes is the shared experience of the artist and the spectator when creating and watching the artwork simultaneously. Artists often have a considerable distance from us, especially in the case of visual arts. We arrive to see the piece of art when s/he is absent, expecting his work to communicate with us. Here instead, when looking at the boxes, the artist comes forward with a bright smile and invites us to sit and watch, and then she starts to work. In this way, an intimate relationship establishes that affects our experience.

The gift of the boxes is a sweet return to our raw and simple childhood minds, to the pure joy of getting amused for a while in Shahrefarang.

Assalamualaikum. Elma Akter

Assalamualaikum to everyone, just like saying “hi, hi” when you meet someone; so we who are Muslims, when we meet someone, say Assalamualaikum which means may peace be upon you. Anyway, my name is Elma, I currently live in Rome, Italy, I'm from Bangladesh, I've been in Italy for two years.

I had the opportunity to come to the Attraversamenti Multipli festival invited by my Italian teacher Deborah, and here I learned and experienced many new things. On July 1st the Unterwasser company showed us some magic boxes; in one there were many different floral designs and the sound of the wind, I felt like I was sitting in a flower garden, in another three girls were dancing and thinking about something, everything seemed very alive. In yet another a mother told a very beautiful story, as far as I could understand, the story of her father was told to her child, that is, the story of the child's grandmother. She used to visit many places with her father, they went to the seaside, they ate together, she remembered all the times that she had spent with her father in her childhood and he missed her father a lot. It brought tears to my eyes after watching it. I have never lived without my parents, today I haven't seen my parents for two years, yes, I see them on video calls on the phone, but I can't touch them, I can't hug them. I've never cooked and now I do, but I don't like cooking as much as my mother's hands. Even if I feel bad here, I don't let my parents know because they are already very worried about me. Sometimes I feel alone every time, without my parents, brothers and sisters. But my husband is close to me and gives me

KILOWATT IN CORTONA: UNTERWASSER, LEO BASSI, LUNA CENERE, CONTROCANTO, FANNY & ALEXANDER

by Tommaso Chimenti -July 28th 2022

[…] In our analysis we must absolutely start with what, in our opinion, was the flagship of the event, Boxes by the Unterwasser collective, a real surprise and happy discovery, a touch of nostalgia, a lot of poetry and a return to childhood that opened memories and imagination, fantasy and dreams, memory and breath.

Six stations for five spectators at a time who rotate their experiences in front of small engineering projects, in front of artisan machinery that is complex and simple at the same time where sweetness and sagacity are mixed in a bubble, inside a parenthesis suspended in time and space.

Really usable for children of all ages, even grown ups and adults.

Because these stations fish inside the viewer, who is not only passive here, for emotions, they bring out a completely personal past, an experience to be linked to the proposed vision.

Everything is small, fragile, with that dreamy air of play, that patina of fable-like and fairy-tale unreality which paradoxically makes everything credible and powerful in its elegance and grace like a delicate caress from a mother, or even better, from a grandmother.

The deep warmth that it releases is precisely comparable to that feeling of home, of protection and affection that is distributed in every pore, releasing endorphins and making us all leave the performance with a smile on our faces, with the strength only to say a heartfelt thank you, almost moved by the generosity, the softness, the tenderness.

There are fans and feathers and buttons to use that enter into the dramaturgy and interact with micro-actions of projections, there is the use of headphones that look after and muffle the sounds of the soul to calm it, massage it, handling it with care and caution, c It's a small pool where you can discover its miniature characters among tanning obsessives and fish and freedivers, octopuses and crabs and starfish while you notice and scrutinize all this habitat, this microcosm through a diving mask.

The underlying issue is the trick of the keyhole, of the voyeur that is in each of us, here without malice but only with the curiosity and cunning of the child who spies on life with the illusion of not having been seen.

We are voyeurs, perhaps we are looking into the abyss of our life, we are Peeping Toms recalling the spirit of when we were little and everything was still in progress, everything was still possible and nothing had been written.

Here is a chest of drawers where inside a grandmother's world slowly stirs: the glasses, the radio, the medicines, the watch, the sewing thread.

The sepia photographs with the flavor of nostalgia, the Rossana sweets.

Here is a magical kaleidoscope that changes and mutates with psychedelic and colorful spots and leaves and plants, now we come across a mini grove to conclude among the hives while the questions, so absurd and so true, of the children (these interludes made us remember the video project Dear Jesus by and with Michele Di Mauro and with Fulvio Cauteruccio) resound in our ears and heads, questions to which adults, now wise and dried up and serious and contrite, no longer know how to answer.

How did we lose all that amazement, all that beauty, that naivety and freshness and lightness and purity? “What is the smell of bread?”, “How do you make memories?”, “When is the time?”.

We come away with a couple of lessons to write down and carry with us: What is enthusiasm? It's the hunger for beautiful things, and again What is it now? It's time to grow your wings.

Under (the surface of) the water (the German translation of Unterwasser), under the surface of things incredible things happen, all to be seen and discovered, you just need to have the curiosity to stick your head inside.

A vibrant and astonishing microclimate, a theater of small things, as small as the tears that fall. […]

History and ghosts come to life in Cortona

by Mario Cervio Gualersi, July 30th 2022

Grouping the multiple proposals of this second part by genre, let's start with the one to which it is difficult to give a precise label: initiatory journey, installation or puppet theatre? Boxes by the UnterWasser company is a bit of all this. 5 spectators at a time are led, almost by hand inside the Cloister of Sant'Agostino, one by one, by Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio and Francesco Capponi, in front of 6 large boxes that we could define as small machines full of surprises. Equipped with headphones and with eyes well positioned on peepholes, like forced voyeurs, we begin to interact by pressing knobs and raising or lowering levers, touching feathers or waving fans while miniature figures move inside or children's voices ask impossible questions to that adults can't answer, like "How do you make memories?" or “When is the time?”. It is then the turn of a kaleidoscope that immerses us in a forest with multicolored leaves and plants or inside a small swimming pool with bathers hungry for the sun and in the background the voice of Edoardo Vianello with one of his summer hits. We then feel ourselves regressing to our childhood, gratified by the Rossana candy and surprised by an envelope given to us bearing the question "What is it now?" with response inside: “It's time to grow your wings.” A descent into the dimension of poetry and tenderness that are difficult to forget.

Cortona, Kilowatt Festival closes abroad

by Sandro Avanzo / July 29, 2022 / Teatro

The show “Boxes” of UnterWasser Company is left as the last mention (if we can use the term "show" for this kind of experience, similar, to give a perhaps better known international example, to the Agrupación Señor Serrano), because it is the event that it touched the souls of the participants more deeply and intimately. At least that's what we seemed to be able to say, also based on the testimonies collected. Each replica involves the participation of 5 spectators, who in rotation and individually find themselves in front of a "drawer" containing a single surprise. A micro-performance, a game, an interactive installation, based on what was organized and created to amaze the spectator in the decades and centuries of pre-cinema. As indicated in the motivation for the Valter Ferrara Prize awarded to UnterWasser at the 2019 Radicondoli Festival before their debut at the 2020 Biennale, "the company... manages to absorb the knowledge and experiences of each element: puppetry, sculpture, visual art". If the individual experiences of Boxes were described here one by one, it would deprive future spectators of the possibility of being surprised and moved by the unexpected and the possibility of recognizing in themselves the eternal innocent look that remains intact in everyone's subconscious. However, we can praise the artisanal skill with which the individual scenic objects are constructed, from the very small to the most voluminous ones, and the imagination with which they are given the possibility of opening up new universes, transforming anyone into a new Alice faced with wonderful new worlds all to explore. Like the wardrobe in which a sort of museum of the innocence of grandmother's objects between Proust and Pamuk comes to life.

At the Kilowatt Festival, urgency is (not) sought

by Anastasia Ciocca

The Roman research group Unterwasser with the executive production of Pilar Ternera/NCT recreates the spatiality of the imagination through the poetic delicacy of the device of the magic box: the container and the content propose a continuously changing game.

Now a container of memories, now a kaleidoscopic lens, television screen or playstation ante litteram, the Boxes preview by and with Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio and with Francesco Capponi is an invitation to know how to modulate one's point of view, to regulate the intensity of focus, choose lightness to participate in the imaginative and non-imaginative game: downsize, become familiar with a geometry that is not suited to the protean nature of the human to discover how much humanity there can be between the edges of a box.

Kilowatt Festival 2022, at the roots of the sense of theatre

By Matteo Brighenti , PaneAcquaCulture, August 3rd 2022

If Leo Bassi strengthens our determination to seek and find ourselves, UnterWasser awakens in us the attention to the little things on which the soul of those who love us or have loved us, and perhaps no longer exist, rests. Boxes are the magic boxes for spectators only with micro-performances, interactive installations and games inside that Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio with Francesco Capponi have created and bring to life before our eyes through the hole of a key like time.

In grandma's dresser, in a forest or in a miniature swimming pool, optical effects and techniques existing before the advent of cinema lead us into poetic and kaleidoscopic mini-dioramas. They are small universes of visual theatre, on the border between puppet theater and the visual arts, which require us to be penetrated to be understood. That is, to abandon ourselves without any resistance to the vision and to what it brings out from the emotional baggage of each of us. It's like staring at a cloud and tracing the profiles that allow you to imagine, to intuit a subject, a figure that, once defined, is already ready to change.

Cordelia, Boxes

by Lucia Medri, Teatro e Critica, August 2022

Going down the stairs that lead to the garden of the Cloister of Sant'Agostino in Cortona, during the Kilowatt Festival, we enter a small room on the left, almost a dark room, guided by the welcome of the Roman group Unterwasser. Located in the room, each in a defined portion, there are six Boxes waiting for us. The five spectators will attend six different projections, each box contains a portion of imagery which can be accessed by placing the eye in front of a hole or crack. Six prodigious universes built by playing with light, the superposition of moving planes, the reversal of optics, solicit an empathic, light and curious participation in those who look inside. We don't want to miss anything that could happen, the artisanal perfection resulting from raw knowledge with which these six panoramas are constructed, and the fact that four of these are operated by the hands of the performers leads to a mode of vision that date; you force yourself to see inside, you close one eye and with that open you try to grasp every element: from your grandmother's chest of drawers, passing through the passage of time in a forest, to the spots of colour, the photos of a walk hand with dad, passing through the tricks of a magic box that reacts to our commands, and then ending along the edge of a mirror/pool. And it also happens that the act of observation materializes in a tangible gift to take with you. (Lucia Medri)

Kilowatt Festival: the Cortona stage among the new features of the 2022 edition

by Mario Bianchi, Klpteatro, August 13 2022

Finally, another female collective that we have known since the beginning for their precious puppet theater itinerary, always recognizable in its diversity. In “Boxes” UnterWasser creates a real journey made up of different boxes, in which the viewer's gaze can be immersed in mysterious and evocative micro-worlds, recreated through small and ingenious mechanisms of skilful inventiveness.