Working in artist residency in Venice – what is Cat Care Calling?

What happens in an PMP artist residency? Here is one example from Venice, Italy, where multidisciplinary artist Raffaella Menchetti worked in May 2024.

How to transform an act of violence into an act of care?

Cat-calling literally means ‘cat-calling’, a sound that was used in the 18th century in theatres to criticise obnoxious actors. Today it encompasses all verbal or gestural manifestations (whistling, vulgar compliments, unsolicited remarks, sexist insults, loud comments, honking, rude jokes, unwanted compliments) addressed from person to person on the street or in public places.

Cat Care Calling is a dance performance studio that began with a collection, a vocabulary of gestures. Cat Care Calling takes shape in a series of practices inspired by the video archive selected by me, Raffaella Menchetti.

Start at the Workshop Week in Venice

In the PMP Workshop Week in April at Live Arts Culture center in Venice, I started to make video interviews with artists who came to the workshop. The interviews served as a basis to begin the work of Embodiment of Gestures. The bodies of the interviewees and other pre-selected videos allowed a creation of a Vocabulary of Gestures.

I am very enthusiastic about the work done and look forward to continuing with this work.

Vocabulary, Embodiment, Future Mythology and Re-approviousness were the 4 chapters/body practices that led to the creation of a performative and processual presentation between practice and improvisation. The mimetic choreographic practice raises questions of participation and responsibility, while dancer Giselda Ranieri’s body is transformed into a living archive leading to personal empowerment, where care is seen as a claim to one’s own power.

Meeting so many people and artists from all over Europe gave me the opportunity to talk about this topic with people from different socio-cultural backgrounds.

Thanks to the residency host Perypezye Urbane and the Professional Media Presence project, I was finally able to realize the first practical study of Cat Care Calling, a fundamental step to be able to turn this idea into a dance performance. The possibility of meeting so many people and artists from all over Europe during the Workshop Week gave me the opportunity to talk about this topic with people from different socio-cultural backgrounds.

Thanks also to the collaboration with Giselda Ranieri we created a first approach of corporal practices to create the final performance. I am very enthusiastic about the work done and look forward to continuing with this work.

 

Raffaella Menchetti is a Multidisciplinary artist, Director, Visual artist and Performer based in Italy. You can follow her in Instagram at @chetti_ra_men_art and Giselda Ranieri at @gisiran.

 

Photos: Francesco Coccolo