works — michelafilzi

WE ARE ONLY HUMAN

March 2025, BRAZIL

"We are human only in contact and conviviality with the non-human"* is a video installation that portrays two dreams mirroring each other through images, text and sound. In the frame of the „Dream Acting“ residency Cris offered her dream for the world, which speaks of love for nature and the desire to live in a world moved by dignity and respect for human and non-human beings. Her dream speaks of the belief that all beings are sentient and deserve to live and thrive. Michela received this dream with a strong sense of resonance, Cris's dream mirrors hers in all its generosity. In the two videos, the audience witnesses an encounter between Cris, the dreamer, in her house, in her garden, and Michela and other dream characters. Cris shares her knowledge, ancient and everyday, of the plants she lives with, cares for and which in turn care for her.

In the second video, Michela gives form to her imagination, unleashed by the relationship and connection to the dream she received, her own dream for the world and the stories that permeate Barra do Sahy. With nature as the greatest source of inspiration, healing and awe, the images become a dance, a slow coreography of interconnection, and the music a sonorous reverberation of the feeling of being in this place, here and now, dreaming in an awakened state.

Credits:

concept and creation: michela filzi
performance, support and collaboration: Beatix Joyce, Cecilian Erismann, Charlotte Watson, Teo Arjueyrolles
music: „só o Amor“ by Daniel Moray voice and guitar
„Barra do Sahy“: pandero and voice Maritaca, voice and arrangement michela filzi
„Carangueijo“: voice and creation michela filzi and Pedro Maia
video, editing and installation: michela filzi
technical support: Lucas Prada, Victor Naccashe
*Quote by David Abraham from the book „The Spell of the Sensuous“

SOLO FOR FORESTS

January - February 2025, PERU

"Solo for forests" is an artistic research into the relationship between humans, plants and rituals in indigenous cultures around the world, and how is it translatable in the contemporary performing art context.
In a two months residency at Sachaqa Centro de Arte, in the rural area of San Roque de Cumbaza, in the high Amazonian forest, michela filzi led an ecosomatic research, focused on traditional plant medicine and shamanic practices of the Chazutina and Lamas indigenous cultures.

LE LANGAGE SECRET DES PLANTES SAUVAGES

July 2024 - Villereal, FRANCE

"Le langage secret des plantes sauvages" is a solo dance piece presented in the form of a performative walk in the garden of the Moulin Scalagrand for the „Un festival a Villereal“ 2024. As a choreographic approach, michela filzi explores the wild plants growing in this garden, by translating their shapes, colours, smells and tastes into performance. During the performance, the audience is offered culinary delights prepared from these plants, such as dandelion, nettle and mugwort. A toast is made to each of these plants, inviting the audience to celebrate them while experiencing them in a multi-sensory way.

The participatory aspect informs this solo performance which, interweaves choreography and spoken words, offering new perspectives on the language of the plants that inhabit the landscape, and how the people who live there relate to them.
michela filzi developed this format in a year research called URBAN PLANTARIUM, conducted in Berlin between 2022-2023.

extract from the performance’s text:

“Si on peut dire que on est ce qu'on mange, alors j'aimerais être enracinée et libre, spontanée et sage, comme les plantes sauvages.

translation:

“If it's true that we are what we eat, then I'd love to be rooted and free, spontaneous and wise, like wild plants.

To Nettle, who grounds us, with their stinging boundaries.
To Clover, who inspires us to surrender and attune to change.
To Dandelion, who teaches us strength and perseverance.
To Motherwort, who reveals gentleness and spaciousness.
To Elder, who invites us to move through vibrations.
To Mugwort, who shows us how to follow our intuition and dreams. To Saint john's wort, who brings us inner peace,
and to all plants who give their lives for our life on this earth.”

Funded by the European Union' and the Goethe-Institut

This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union'

SUMMER SOLSTICE CELEBRATION

21.06.2024 - Berlin, GERMANY
A reaccurring participatory performance, organised by michela filzi and her collaborators, a gathering to celebrate wild plants with dance, music and plant based foraged tastings. This public event aims at promoting environmental awareness, kinship with plants and the role of rituals and dance in ecology.
This year the community garden Himmelbeet (Wedding) hosted and supported this event in the frame of their cultural program Fair.Wurzelt

"We propose that we take inspiration from old rituals and create new ones, that we learn practices that reconnect us with nature, so that we can embrace the grief we are carrying. We suggest that these practices be small gestures of daily life, because we can't face up to enormous fears all alone, all at once."

cit. from the performance - toast to wild plants

concept and Dance - michela filzi
food art - Florancia Konekamp Kusch (Ohne Berlin)
music - Sebastian Faust
performance and support - Beatrix Joyce
photos by Gustavo Trujillo ©2024

FORAY AND INTUITIONS

video by Evgenia Chetvertkova ©2023

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, aid programm DIS-TANZEN by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland

April - June 2023 - Berlin, GERMANY

A series of ‘somatic foraging walks’ for small groups of participants in different parks in Berlin between (April - June 2023). In these guided walks I offered meditative propositions and shared my experience with wild foraging in the urban landscape. By somatic foraging, I refer to the practice of roaming in urban green spaces and foraging wild plants for eating and healing purposes. Foraging is understood in a metaphorical sense, where we encounter the landscape to seek and harvest a sense of belonging to nature and plant life, and a form of healing from our disconnected societal relationship to the natural world. Reciprocally, we encounter the landscape to give something in return, may it be a physical thing, a gesture or conscious attention and gratitude to all that we witness.

URBAN PLANTARIUM

2022 - 2023, GERMANY and ITALY
Eco-somatic research at the intersection between ecology and dance, combining foraging; the practice of collecting wild plants for culinary purposes, with somatic dance; focused on the attunement to the environment. This research is an exploration of the nomadic practice of foraging, which enables one to encounter any landscape and attune to it, in the ever-changing green areas, parks and gardens of the urban landscape. It resulted in a format for site-specific performances, inviting audiences to gather around encountering and celebration of plant life.

On the 20 and 21.06.2023, URBAN PLANTARIUM - performances and conviviality, took place in the yard of Uferstudios for the celebration of the summer solstice.

The choreographic research and the shaping of musical compositions, took place between Berlin's parks and the dance studio. michela filzi and sound artist Sebastian Faust, harvested field recordings and used them to compose sound scores through the use of a motion tracking camera. The inspiration taken from a specific plant is translated into a movement improvisation, which is translated into a sound score. The movement improvisation is guided by the association of the plant with a specific part of the body (energetic centres or chakras), a quality of movement and an energetic pattern.

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, aid programm DIS-TANZEN by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland

video by Kelakrok ©2023

“Our physical shapes are the results of energetic patterns giving rise to those forms over time. Roots, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, energetic gestures: ascending, descending, contracting, expanding. From a tiny roundish thing we stretch out sinking our root pole into the ground and reaching the leaf pole up towards the light. Expanding upon germination, contracting into flower buds, expanding into flowers, contracting into pollen, expanding into fruit, contracting into seed.”

TIPPING POINT

2022 GERMANY and FRANCE - ResearchLab

A dance research project by Michela Filzi developed as part of the #TAKEHEART residency funding program of the Fonds Darstellende kunste, in collaboration with Kampnagel (Hamburg).

The project investigates the changes and properties of a dynamic system in the immediate vicinity of a tipping point. In ecological and social terms, a tipping point is the point at which a series of small changes or events in a dynamic system become significant enough to cause a large, irreversible change. Based on the assumption that the body itself is a complex system and that a group of dancing bodies forms an even larger and more complex system, I have applied the phe- nomenon of the tipping point to movement research for a group of dancers and non-professional dancers.

METABOLIC ENCOUNTERS
(2020-2021) - MA research project on an object oriented movement practice - works created for the MA SODA at the HZT Berlin

videos by michela filzi © 2019-2021

MĀYĀ

(2018 - 2019)
Māyā is the Sanskrit word for 'measure', and its prefix Mā is related to the Latin words 'mater' and 'matrix'. A 'matrix' is a tool of the human intellect for measuring reality and the natural world. In this site-specific performance, the performer's body is seen as the measure through which space is activated and revealed. The piece metaphorically addresses and questions western society's understanding of our universe.

YOU, ME & DATA

2017 - 2018, GERMANY and HOLLAND
a multimedia performance that plays on the notion of screened reality and the absurdity of normality in the 21st century.

OLDER WORKS

2015 - 2018 Amsterdam, HOLLAND