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Interview: Seth Footring
Images: Gabrielle Rosati and Luca Notarfrancesco
With thanks to Joe Goodwin
Cote et Ciel worked with Gabrielle Rosati and Luca Notarfrancesco on a film and an installation in London. The images and film from it are very cool, they’re two very cool Italian guys who are really good at what they do - photography, creative direction, film making, movement direction - and we got the chance to ask them a couple of questions and show you guys the video and some of the images from the space/event/collection.
SF: How did you work together?
We are like brothers.
We know each other since we were young because we come from the same small village in Tuscany. Despite not keeping in touch for several years, I believe that our relationship has always been solid. We felt so. Both humanly and professionally speaking.
We think the same way, see things in the same way and above all we feel a passion, an urgency to create that binds us and that will do it forever. So, working together is really smooth, spontaneous and above real.
Even in the few times we don’t agree, we always find a way to listen to each other and from there explore solutions together.
We trust each other blindly. We listen to each other. We support each other.
It is a natural process for us that often even people outside feel, see and absorb.
There is a precise, structured working method we follow but we also leave room for the unpredictability of things, of sets, shows and performances. In a way we too, despite being both very meticulous people, love that grey-area of doubt..because it creates amazement and consequently fuels the desire we have to keep doing things.
What did you enjoy most about this project?
The process.
From the initial brainstorming, to preparation, to the day before the event until the evening of the performance. The trust of the C&C team, the hard and meticulous work of Alberto and his team.
Our fear. Our adrenaline. Our emotions. Literally everything.
Without forgetting how incredible it s been to observe Francesco and Sem (the two performers) who rehearsed in about only 5 h a routine of 3 h without had the chance to do this earlier. The trust they have placed in us has been mesmerising; that it’s been perhaps the most breathtaking moment.
Gabriele, how did you take your work; playing with composition, materials and transparency, and apply them to the performance?
G : My background comes from various disciplines such as theatre, sculpture and painting.
I think these last two are very often translated in my photographic work too, because the model is like a clay loaf, the treatment is like the choice of colours and the image-composition replaces the lines of force of a drawing or the skeleton you create to start a sculpture.
All these aspects often adapt, transform and/ or evolve according to the project I have to deal with, but certainly the use of materials, the different spaces I love creating with a set design team as almost "stages" of my subjects, are all consequences of my mixed background.
Luca, how was the start, middle and end of the process with the movement and the direction of the video?
L: I am quite research based and methodic as we mentioned before. One side of my education has been very technical, where everything needs to have a reason, a meaning.
And this permeates the process around this video, until it doesn’t.
It was born as movement study.
The start comes from deep-diving into research and exploration, through different techniques: books, observation of people, movies, sculptures. The middle part has been a lot about listening to what I gathered and understanding what was the story I wanted to tell besides the analysis of the movement. What were the feelings I wanted to explore – first within myself, then with the performers, and only afterwards with a possible audience.
The end of the process is where we completely broke that meticulousness and planning in order to add an emotional side to what it was suppose to be an analysis. To add a story that is told through movement and interactions. And it has been possible that’s to the great team and especially the DOP and Editor, Lavinia, who has a great sensibility towards the way I work.
Both of you, how was the space in London?
G: It was nice, a very London vibe I would say. Small but with attitude; a good place to work.
Can you tell us about the workshop?
We absolutely adore it because the way we work, which is very much based on empathy, the creation of a relationships, of a connection within our models, or, let's say, performer or in general people. People need to trust you in such a short time so hat we did was structured preparation months in advance. We needed people to get to know each other as they’d never met and in some cases had to work together, so first of all it’s crucial they get each other’s names, or a little piece of information about each other. Then we asked them to work individually on a series of outputs that could have come from a series of references that I’d printed out and put on the floor to develop a routine. We then wanted to put add the bag to the routine. Another big part of our job and our research is you know how you can distance it from the idea of just performing with the body, we always try to make the model a performer and interact with an object. In this case the object is the bag and for us it's crucial to see how you can involve that element in the routine that the guys were already two hours in to. So we gave them some time to rehearse and work it out and then we went through the choral part, which is also a big part of our research, because we love working with many people's doing the same thing to create a loop of a movement.
So how was the preparation of the event? I would say very, very structured again Luca & I we try to always work with a very specific method and workflow, because this helps us a lot to understand where we are going, what we are doing. We presented our idea to the brand, to Joe and the team and they were super happy and just as excited as we were. So after that we went through the technical part of things; how do we do this? How do we achieve what we set out to do? What was so important for me and Luca, was that everyone involved was passionate and dedicated and that was pretty much a blast. Sometimes Luca and I are very ambitious or seem pushy but then people can see that they can really trust you, which is incredible to see, you get different responses and feedback from the event night. We do it for reactions, reactions are absolutely everything we do it for.
What was it like to prepare for the event?
So having the chance to do a workshop for us was something huge on a personal level, I would say, also in a professional one and we’ve attending workshops and wanted to direct one together for years. It’s incredible for me, besides what Gabri said, the trust that we saw in people's eyes, people abandoned themselves to the process and trusted it 100% and were enthusiastic about it. They pushed also a bit the limits to match what we were asking for. A lot of them were not dancers or performers, some of them were photographers, stylists. What was super interesting to me was how the event kind of informed the workshop, as we were planning the workshop, we were also planning the event. At some point they crossed somehow, because I love the moment where we were structuring the event and everything was kind of like leaning towards this obsessiveness of movements that would repeat themselves many times for three hours. We felt how this repetition would be a sort of obsessive process but would also be meditative. It was great to talk to the few dancers that took part on how it was interesting to become somehow a sort of puppet, but in a good way during the process of the workshop. They mentioned this thing of like “I was an object, but like, in a very interesting way.” This really gave me a lot to think about how movement can be directed, how movement affects the people. Afterwards we were both over the moon with how it went and we talked for two hours about what we felt because it was so emotional to do it together.
Images of the pre-event workshop:
End.