The research at Domus residency in Galatina Salento concerning the cultural phenomenon of Tarantata, was at its heart an exploration of different ways and states of being, a bit like a part of a vibrational atlas. My research at Domus originated in long-term project An(Other) Breath in which explore poetry and respiration as forms of resistance against algorithmic realities of cognitive commodification of the world. Following Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s ideas presentedt in TITLE, I tried to envision poetry as the excess of the field of signification, as the premonition of a possible harmony inscribed in the present chaos.

Berardi’s book is dedicated to the contemporary condition of breathlessness. He goes back to the metaphor of poetry as the only line of escape from suffocation. This was my starting point at Galatina. This and spasm of grief for our dying and re-emerging self.

My initial reflection originatted in feeling that tarantata’s actions are a reaction to a state of breathlessness. The tarantata fights suffocation. poetry, which is in her case in movement, was a means to regain rythm, cosmic atunement and breath. Her irrational identity very much aligns with protest against the ‘project of reason’ that Berardi proposes.

The resulting collaboration with Giulia Ottavia Frattini was an opening, a beginning rather than the end. I understand Giulia’s proposal as a way to create an instance of irrational movement within the living space of the San Paolo’s chapel. Chapel associated with history of tarantism and possession, haunted by ghosts of the past, other lives and traces of monstrous spidery bodies. Her sonic presence was an invocation and an invitation to partake.