Les Dormeuses
2024
Les dormeuses presents young female gymnasts sleeping across a sunlit field – their disciplined bodies surrendering to stillness. The film subverts expectations of these athletes, typically seen executing demanding movements, by capturing them in deep slumber. As art critic Lucy Lippard suggests in her writings on performance and passive resistance, such deliberate acts of sleep can challenge the relentless demands of productivity. These sleeping forms create an inadvertent choreography of resistance, transforming trained athletes into a living installation that questions our society's ceaseless drive for achievement.Professional artistic gymnastics athletes perform sequences of unconventional exercises. The rhythm is marked by a sound composition created from prerecorded sounds of the athletes' movements and breaths, in dialogue with a new video artwork that captures them in their most intimate moment: sleep. The body is removed from its exclusively performative function and reintroduced into a context of vulnerability and care.
Film by Marilisa Cosello & Lino Palena
Screenplay by Marilisa Cosello
DOP & Camera operator Riccardo Casiccia
In collaboration with:
Ginnastica Artistica Lissonese Società Ginnastica Pavese A.S.D.
Athlets participating in the performance: Amato Erica Fabiana, Amatruda Martina, Arosio Sofia, Bandini Elisa, Basile Giorgia, Bersani Anna, Brenna Ginevra, Del Bo Ines, Furno Emma, Sali Marta.