Text by Marta Federici
Moira / Mɔjra / Mɔɪ.rə is the title of Caterina Silva's project, conceived to inhabit the virtual space of MACTE Digital and centred around the story of an enigmatic creature, who unexpectedly ends up inside the museum website coming from another dimension. The name chosen by the artist for this character contains a stratification of meanings and references to various cultural contexts: from the Moirai of Greek tradition, the three daughters of Night who weave the thread of fate for human beings; to the mouras encantadas of the Portuguese folklore, the ancient Dolmen builders who are said to have lived under a spell imposed on them by their fathers or brothers. In the Christian tradition, the name Moira is not amongst any of the saints mentioned in the liturgical calendar and is therefore identified as masterless. The artist has delicately remixed these distant undertones to compose a fertile terrain where to plant the seeds of a new narrative. The plot structured by Silva echoes a contemporary mythology, which germinates among 2.0 web and bears the nuances of videogames.
Expanding on the artist's research into the relationship between power and codified languages, Moira / Mɔjra / Mɔɪ.rə specifically proposes an investigation of verbal language, understood as a tool that shapes reality and as a universe in which we are immersed. The project’s lines of reasoning move on two parallel planes: in the background there is an allusion to the process of abstraction affecting language globally in the age of late capitalism - technological and financial capitalism, which produces and incessantly modifies reality through alphanumeric strings; in the foreground, there is more of a direct analysis of some of the mechanisms underlying the functioning of human beings’ language. Using Italian, her mothertongue, as a reference, Silva exposes the linguistic dimension as a non-neutral field, in which the speaking subjects’ domination over the named objects represents a pattern constantly reproduced and nurtured. The micro-dynamics of power pointed out by the artist are at once the consequence and the origin of broader processes of prevarication taking place in social reality.
Where does the boundary between subjects and objects lie beyond verbal language? When, how and why is a person referred to as an object? Neither completely "thing" nor clearly "person", Moira embodies the shifting relationship between these two poles and tries to unhinge it, shattering the device of linguistic signification with her gestures and words. Overall, the events involving this character can be read as a long exercise in deconstructing the subject (on both a linguistic and physical level), but also as an unusual transformative ritual, seeking to lead the spectators towards unknown territories, where it is still possible to try and restore to the word its capacity to describe and transform the world without subjugating it. As the artist states, "the space where this may happen is a limbo, an halfway crossing, where words that aren’t known can be used in order to generate a language that one isn’t meant to learn. These words can be used to utter mysterious and extremely dangerous things".
The project is structured in four consecutive stages aligned with the phases of the lunar calendar.
The first stage will open on Tuesday 11 May 2021, when the new moon enters the sign of Taurus; three days later, on Friday 14 May, the second stage will be unlocked; on Wednesday 19 May, Moira will enter MACTE website; then the journey will come to an end with the full moon on Wednesday 26 May, when a choral performance configured as a greeting, celebration and rite of reconnection to reality will be broadcast live on Twitch.
It will be possible to access each stage by navigating through the museum's website.
After the project, a glossary of Moira's words will be made available for download from the MACTE Digital portal.
Concept and making Caterina Silva
Curator Marta Federici
3D animation and modeling Ruben Piergiovanni
Soundscape Andrea Koch
Moira’s voice Ornella Paglialonga
Performers Caterina Silva, Giuseppe Vincent Giampino, Marta Montevecchi, Matteo Locci, Natalia Agati
Language Consultant Andrea Zaninello
Filming Margherita Panizon
Produced by MACTE Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Termoli
Design Sezione Grafica
Code Dude