After the grand success of the first Poetry Box, winner of the “Maestri a Milano 2022” award, the artist Filippo Papa in collaboration with the poet and writer Joan Josep Barcelo presented “Poetry Box 2” in Italy. The performance attracted hundreds of lovers of poetry and arts.
The performance aims to represent love, the contact and the strength of poetry, basing its solid roots on the concept of “FREEDOM”. Papa with the expression of his body and Barcelo with the power of the word will tell a story steeped in “soul”.
Poetry Box 2 = Poetry Box al quadrato
The addition of the number 2 on the title indicates the second edition of the performance and also the “al quadrato” evolution towards a higher concept. Historical facts tell us about prisons of ideas and freedom, which paradoxically can lead the individual to a prison of inner solitude. The art within this scenario can make us reflect on society, its dynamics and tell us about them. Papa and Barcelo take the performative act already expressed with the first “Poetry box” to the next level. A “universal” message is born from the complaint of violence against women. A “SCREAM AGAINST VIOLENCE”.
The performance took place within the edition of the “1st Biennale Internazionale di Asti”. In the event organized by Pablo Toussaint and Romina Tondo together with the critic Roberto Portinari, Papa remained closed again in the transparent box, already signed by the passage of the first poets who wrote on it, accompanied by Barcelo’s poems, where instinctively perked up upon hearing his words. Unlike the first performance, we saw a new element take over as the performer entered the box with his smartphone and photographed the outside world from inside his transparent prison.
The act of photographing has a double interpretation, the first linked to the professional figure of Papa who in addition to being a performer is a photographer, while the second mentions the world of social networks and the daily act of sharing the world around us. Paradoxically, if they are abused, social networks can become a prison of being as reality and the way of life is distorted and the boundary between fiction and reality becomes more and more unstable. Freedom of thought and speech are incorporated in this so-called “metaverse”.
At the end of the performance, after Barcelo’s readings, all the guests of the event in a choral act of love wrote a meaningful sentence on the box, also becoming an indelible trace in which time, body and soul have merged.
Poetry Box remains as an installation
The “Box” remained as an installation within the exhibition spaces of the Asti art gallery in Asti. All visitors to the biennale will be able to leave a message of love, peace and freedom both inside and outside the box itself.
