essays by Camila Sposati, Falke Pisano, Frédérick Keck, Marcelo Rezende, Paulo Rosenbaum and interviews with Andrea Sella and Juraci Dórea.
This fascinating book records the long and troubled history of the construction of the Anatomical Theatre of the Earth by the artist Camila Sposati during the 3rd Biennial of Bahia (2014). ). Placing the project in relation to earlier research and works, Stone Theatre brings out the specificity of the artists thought and gives a comprehensive introduction to Sposatis layered practice.
Anatomical Theatre of the Earth was a wooden construction based on the form of a small circular arena with the stage in the center and around it the seats for the audience watching the scenic performances. In form and concept it referred to the Renaissance amphitheaters where the first dissections of human and animal corpses, in front of curious and astonished looks, took place. The theatre was however not built on the ground, but excavated in it to a depth of nearly six meters, behind the still standing façade of a colonial house in ruin, on the island of Itaparica, next to Salvador. Sposati intended not only to create a space for theatrical experiences, but also - and above all - a framework that would lead the public to leave the surface of the world and down, literally, into the immemorial depths of the Earths inside.
"The hole is an image and also a vacuum that makes us question and feel a belonging to the Earth, the experience of being alive, vitality," explains the artist, about the project that was started far from Bahia, in Turkmenistan, where Sposati researched "holes" produced by nature and also by the exploitation of man in the Soviet era.
