A performance on course with Martina Rota

Martina Rota is the protagonist of our first fanzine. We spoke with her about her discovery process as a performer and artist, the importance of corporeality, her struggles and victories and the dichotomy of working with objects and the body as a creation and exploration of her inner self. 

Photography: Marco Lombardi, Styling and Interview: Francisca Ceballos, Visual Design: Benedetta Stefani, Makeup: Dahyana Piedrahita

Body as a medium to express, how did you find it? Is it the first medium you found?

No, it’s not the first medium I met, I think all of it started with painting and in particular with colors. I was very interested in the surface, with the materiality of the surface, but I was also curious about mixing and matching different things, stones with hairs, glass and varnish, food and fabrics. I am very grateful to have had the possibility in my high school to do such crazy things. I think it was a very open and safe place to experiment. 

Regarding the body, I think it all came with the fear of itself, even though it's a horrible thing to say. When I was little I was not very agile and athletic. I wanted to be, but I just wasn't. But I was—and I am, tremendously curious. And this was the key to finding my approach to corporeality. At 11 years old I started suffering from PTSD in a very bad way, and I was forced to dialogue with my body. I started to ask myself. What is going on? How can I stop this pain? How can I use it? Of course, these questions came up over time. For several years my dialogue with it was subtle and unconscious. 

You also work with other mediums such as sculpture, images, poetry, choreography, photography, installation. Why so many mediums? What do they give to you?

For me the important thing is to have more possibilities to work with, many mediums obviously work in different ways and they involve different publics. This point for me is essential to communicate with a large range of people through many roads. 

You started your practice performing with Boris Charmatz and Daniele Ninarello. How did they influence your practice? 

I met the work of Boris Charmatz when I was very young and my knowledge of dance, performance and art was not significantly elevated. At that moment I was utterly lost, I had just returned from Paris—where I went in search of luck but didn't go as I expected. It was March and I couldn't apply to any university. Also during the year before I had quit dancing because I felt like my body was not “the right body” to dance. I didn’t know what to do until I saw this Open Call from La Biennale. They were looking for a group of amateurs. I decided to take the audition and surprisingly I got accepted. It was an advantageous experience, here I discovered the world of Merce Cunningham at the show Roman Photo showcased in the Biennale by Charmatz where they revisited the movements of Forerunners and John Cage. The performance created a sort of ready-made choreography that questioned the mechanism of gesture reproduction. 

After this experience, I returned to study dance and art and I am still so happy about it. 

Daniele Ninarello is another chapter, a big chapter of my education. I consider him a sort of mentor for my research even if I think he doesn't appreciate this word in particular. He is also a friend, a person whom I deeply respect for his genius, generosity and madness. He was one of the first people to believe in me and my work—even when I didn't believe in it, and I think it's important to recognize and be grateful because it’s the people who critically support your research that actually change you. Daniele Ninarello's research is deeply articulated, sophisticated, precise, embodied, and anatomical. Meeting and working with him made me able to shift the attention of my research from mind to body. I might be taking a risk by saying that with Ninarello I discovered I had a body and I started to create a dialogue within, started to study its parts and found infinite possibilities to move with. 

Please tell us more about your residence in CCAP with Cristina Caprioli and why would you like to live in this scene?

Cristina Caprioli is another arrow in my heart. I met her during a workshop in Firenze and then she invited me to Stockholm in her studio center to do a residency for one month. It was my first l art residency alone, just after COVID. I remember in Italy there were still some restrictions and when I flew there and saw all these people without masks, all together without social distancing, I was shocked as I came from the first epicenter of COVID-19. For me the quarantine was devastating. 

The experience was an amazing cultural shock. I fell in love with the city and its openness, from the very beginning I had this sensation of being at home. Maybe it was just a vibe, but I still consider visiting the city in another period of the year, maybe during the dark months and seeing what's happening.

During this period I worked on DIRTY SWEAT, a solo where I tried to experience orgasms in different parts of the body. The main task of the movements was asking myself: How can I perceive pleasure on my skin? On the top of my head? Under my feet? In the pelvis? What is the negotiation between the input of the movement and the let-go? How many ranges of motion? What intensity? All these questions were made in the hyper presence-presence of corporeality, not in idealism.

Intuition is one of the elements you work and trust, but you also dialogue with images. How is this creative intertwining?

I think trust and intuition are two faces of the same coin. You have to work with both, it doesn't matter what comes before or after. I have an example: if an image appears to you, this is an intuition that comes from somewhere and you have two options, trust it or leave it.

How to choreograph emotions?

I think the answer is in the making. Every emotion or feeling lives in the body, each day, in different ways. How could I choreograph emotions? Today is the 12th of September of 2023 and my answer is: Take a big step, pause ten seconds, close your eyes, take a small step, sit in an uncomfortable position, look at the sky for ten seconds. Repeat this for 15 minutes. 

How to work with objects and interact with them?

I like to choose objects or elements that can be easily integrated with the environment or with bodies. Elements that have the least possible impact. For example banana peels or a heap of popsicles—they manifest their movement by undergoing their presence in time and transforming themselves into something else, always in unpredictable ways. I often work with print on glass because I love the transparency and because it’s fully recoverable. I usually like to put things in order, arrange them in a clean aesthetic way and let the movement and relationship do the rest. 

You share with your spectators discoveries and failures too. Why sharing the whole process?

I think of them in terms of tools, both are part of my poetry. You could empathize with one of them or both. But if I share the whole process you can dig deeper into the agency of the work. 

As a statement: Art is your home. In this way is your safe space, but isn't it also a place to take risks? 

Yes of course, but to reverse perspectives you can take risks when you feel very safe in your body. 

Please tell us more about your project Massimo and what is your role in it.
MASSIMO is an independent art space founded with Giulia Parolin and Stefano Galeotti, my best friends and two greatest colleagues. We decided to create MASSIMO as a place where emerging artists could work, create a network and cultivate their research. I don’t have a specific role in the process, because we have known each other for a long time.  We don’t have a hierarchical method of work, we try every time to do our best and to listen to the necessities and how to be efficient at the moment. 

You collaborate in Fashion projects too. Why does this world attract you? What does it add to your practice? 

What attracts me the most to the fashion world—particularly the luxury fashion world, is the attention that you must have to details. And this, I think, is very relevant for life in general. We don't need many things, many relationships, many houses, or many types of food. We just need quality before all. For me, fashion and luxury are related to this. 

Another aspect that I love about fashion is that it doesn't hide, immediately tries to reach everyone, to infect them. Hopefully positively. Fashion nourishes my practice giving me lightness and beauty, and I don't think this is a small thing.

You definitely are an interdisciplinary person. How do you manage to put together all these practices in your life?

Yes definitely, sometimes I wish I was different—a monothematic person doing just one thing during the day. To be honest, I don't think I have found the right way to manage all the stuff. My daily routine responds to just one question right now: What is the priority?

Finally, can you please share with us your three favorite places (either physical or imaginary)?

A birch forest, the Etna Volcano and “La Scarzuola”.