Fronte Vacuo is a transdisciplinary performance group founded by artists Marco Donnarumma, Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. It combines body art, dancetheater, audiovisual performance and emerging technology to create pieces that are “rarely seen in conventional theaters” (Neu Wiener Theaterkritik). The group’s practice is defined by unexpected methods of audience interaction, radical bodily performances and rigorous work on symbolism. Their materials are human and nonhuman bodies, organic symbionts, artificial intelligence machines, spatial sounds and images interwoven into tumultuous biomes.

Fronte Vacuo’s repertoire tours state and independent theaters, galleries, festival and parking lots, including so far among others, Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Radialsystem (DE), HAU Berlin (DE), Donaufestival (AT), Volkstheater Wien (AT), tanzhaus nrw (DE), CTM Festival (DE), KONTEJNER (HR), PACT Zollverein (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains (FR).

Since 2019, Fronte Vacuo has been working on the cycle Humane Methods, the saga of a broken, future society oscillating between new forms of algorithmic violence and posthuman empathy. The stories and the cosmology of this society are told through stage productions, street performances and hybrid live installations where audiences experience sensorially charged and evocative actions.

During the residency at iii, Fronte Vacuo will work on Murmur, a 70 km walking performance and the 7th episode of the saga. Murmur is a travelling performance that combines street theatre, body art, interactive musical instruments and live video streaming. The piece will reflect on forced displacement as a key implication of the ongoing ecological disruption. With new geographies emerging, new biotopes being established, interactions and conflicts across species will arise.

How can live art playfully engage urban and rural communities with this notion of displacement and its power dynamics? How can it emphasise a form of feminist attunement and solidarity towards kin species other than our own? And what role can a corporeal approach to music and technology play in all of this?

Murmur is a production by Fronte Vacuo. Co-produced by Volkstheater Wien (VT) and iii (NL). Co-funded by the Digital Transformation Fund of the Austrian Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlicher Dienst und Sport.