THE SPACE OF THE TONGUE
By Ambra Pittoni
This project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (14th edition, 2025), with the aim of promoting Italian contemporary art internationally
Hanging from ropes as she attempts to descend into the abyss, Lisetta loses all sense of distinction between herself and the cave. The void calls her, vertigo seduces her, and it only takes an instant for her to fall. Trapped in the depths of the earth, Lisetta begins an inner journey that alternates moments of orthopedic diagnoses with existential and philosophical reflections. The work investigates the relationship between darkness and processes of knowledge. The cave, a geological environment long associated with oracular and otherworldly dimensions, encounters the mouth, the space of linguistic articulation, where the tongue, from its dark cave, incorporates and excorporates the world.
The Space of the Tongue explores language in its poetic, critical, and dysfunctional forms. It follows the path of Semantiche Clandestine, inspired by écriture féminine, which imagined a form of writing capable of giving voice to a female subject historically deprived of her own language. At the same time, it addresses language in its fragmented, iterative aspects, in dialogue with linguistic and pathological phenomena linked to repetition and sound forms such as refrain, reverberation, and echo.
Ambra Pittoni is an artist and choreographer based in Turin. She is co-founder of Scuola della Fine del Tempo (The School of the End of Time) and co-artistic director of Workspace Ricerca X – Research and Dramaturgy. Her works and performances have been presented at Museo Madre, Rinomina, Crédac, De Appel, OGR Torino, CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Fondazione Baruchello, Lavanderia a Vapore, PAV (Turin), Ashkal Alwan, . She co-curated the Educational Program of the 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (The School of the End of Time) and coordinates various artistic research projects within and beyond academic contexts. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Arts Linz with the artistic research project The Promise of the Abyss: Body Practices and New Spaces of Knowledge, for which she received a research fellowship from the VALIE EXPORT Center. Her recent publications include Ten Obvious and Not So Obvious Questions About Artistic Research in Performer les savoirs; Dwelling in the Unhomely: Of Unconstituted Subjects and Their Legendary Psychastenia in Friends Make Books; Raineri & Associati, Flash Art Italia No. 363 and The Choreographic: Thinking in Motion, Thinking Through the Others in P+Arts / Unframing Knowledge.
