Conferences can be offered on the occasion of a performance or can be attended independently.
Meetings can also be organised online, through digital sharing platforms such as Zoom, Meet or Teams.
Theoretical research
Conferences
o1.
Remedios Varo
Diego Sileo, theorist and art historian, curator at the PAC - Contemporary Art Pavilion in Milan and curator, among many others, of the Frida Kahlo exhibition, is responsible for making Remedios Varo known in Italy as one of the most important figures of female Surrealism, whose works inspired our shows Wood Shavings and Star Hunter. In 2007, he wrote a book about her, published by Selene Edition. Coppelia Theatre offers the opportunity to organize meetings with the author. His research pushed him to Mexico in search of primary sources, where he met and interviewed Leonora Carrington, English surrealist painter, wife of Marx Ernst, friend and art sister of Remedios.
Diego Sileo
Diego Sileo graduated in Art History from the Catholic University of Milan with a dissertation on Mexican Surrealism. He has worked at the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Milan in the organisation of contemporary art exhibitions. Since 2004 he has collaborated on exhibitions at the PAC in Milan, where he is currently curator and where - among others - he has designed the exhibitions of Vanessa Beecroft, Yayoi Kusama, Marina Abramovich and was also co-curator of the latter. Together with Jean-Hubert Martin and Carlo Severi, he edited the catalogue of the exhibition “Art political religion”, published by five Continents Editions.
02.
THE MECHANICS OF WONDER
Optical devices at the origins of the cinema
Conference Workshop
Participants will be taken on a journey back in time, to the origins of cinema, when drawings and still images began to magically come to life thanks to special optical machines: thaumatropes, phenachistoscopes, zootropes, etc. With simple materials, these ingenious devices will be built, giving life, in a short time, to small animated stories. They promote creativity and manual skills and offer the opportunity to experience a more active participation in audio visual languages. After an introductory talk, participants will be taken on a journey of discovery of the mechanisms of image movement through the construction of small prototypes of pre-cinema games and optical machines. The lecture is held by Dr. Valentina Tommasi and summarizes the results of her thesis in History of Cinema at the University of Pisa.
o.3
Puppet Theatre in the early centuries of the Christian era
Art and Religion
Research into the history of puppets usually skips over the period of early Christianity, devoting instead great attention to the reconstruction of the previous and the following phase. This research stems from the curiosity to better investigate, as Leopardi would say, this "neglected and disconsolate land". A curiosity tinged with challenge, in an attempt to combine Puppet Theatre and the history of ancient Christianity, art and religion, to be anthropologically understood as human facts and expressions of an organised mental activity; moreover, as two psychic needs of man, two elementary drives. The history of puppets is, therefore, inseparable from that of religions and, in various cultures, the very history of the creation of man is narrated as the construction of a puppet. The conference is held by Dr Jlenia Biffi and summarises the results of her degree thesis in Anthropology on Puppet Theatre from the 1st to the 4th century AD.
