Ex Anima

Costanza Giordano, Francesco Giordano, Ivana Xhani, Nicolas Tagliabue

Ex Anima is an art-engineering collective from Lugano, founded in 2019 by a computer engineer, an architect, and a performer. They create immersive performances blending technology, physicality, and research. Their collaborative work explores the space between art, society, and technology, asking: what is beauty, and how can performance reshape how we perceive the world?

In conversation with Ex Anima during the exhibition Oltre la pietra at Castelgrande, Bellinzona.

Can you tell us more about your practice?

Francesco: Our work is performative, so it always starts from a framework of physical improvisation. We begin with a series of exercises that range from dance to physical theatre, to animal-based movement, essentially, work on the body. Our pieces emerge in the moment when we go beyond the threshold of physical exhaustion, of fatigue. It’s beyond that limit that the deeper ideas start to emerge. The creative process starts with long improvisations. Then we move to a second phase, moments of exchange, where we either share or keep to ourselves certain images, words, moods, or atmospheres that we felt were decisive.
Things that broke through the everyday and allowed our bodies to enter a space that felt truly different from the ordinary. Then we try to revisit these decisive elements, to re-engage with them through more limited, focused improvisations. The idea is that the final piece becomes a kind of reduced, distilled improvisation, more defined and contained each time.

Ivana: even a more structured or conventional piece goes through these more open, creative phases. We explore different languages and then choose what to keep, what feels meaningful or worth deepening. That’s how the final stage piece takes shape. I started as a dancer and choreographer, and later came into the world of theatre. Together, we studied theatre and dance with Quelli di Grock in Milan, and then later in Paris at the École Jacques Lecoq, both making a master’s degree. While Francesco approached philosophy earlier, as a sort of Plan B.

Francesco: What we ask ourselves is: how can performance, specifically theatre in our case, really bring out those rare moments where the viewer experiences something different? I don’t want to call it a moment of ecstasy, but perhaps a shift, a change in tension, imagination, or emotion. Even just a flicker of something that deviates from everyday life and the constant production of images and stimuli, which, in my opinion, are often quite poor, lacking in artistic depth, overly consumerist, and limiting human existence rather than enriching or deepening it.

Tell us about the project you exhibited at “Oltre la pietra”

Ivana: the theme we brought to “Oltre la pietra” came from a personal need to explore our origins, to draw from our lives and biographies. In my specific case, my parents immigrated to Italy from Albania. Francesco’s father, on the other hand, migrated from Sicily in the 1970s. We left Italy to study abroad. So we’re constantly reflecting on the question of where to be, where to live in the world. There’s always this recurring theme of leaving, of departing from home, something we felt the need to explore more deeply.

What’s the purpose of your work?

Francesco: it’s about discovering something in yourself that hadn’t really surfaced yet. Like when you read a book that reads you, and you think, “Wow, this is something that represents me, but I didn’t know how to say it”. We talked about the theme of moving away from your roots, but also about rebuilding. What does it mean to rebuild your home? Is it even possible? What does it mean to belong somewhere? So this tension, between the home we’ve lost and the home we’re dreaming of, is the underlying thread that holds our work together.

Ivana: some people are naturally inclined to build, and others are not. Some people can create a “nest” anywhere; they move to a place for just two months, and already their home feels lived-in, loved. And others, for whatever reason, find it more difficult. Maybe they’ve never really experienced the feeling of being at home. This exploration is very free of judgment. Because I think we all carry both of these tendencies inside us. Sometimes you want to leave but don’t, other times you leave but deep down wish you could stay. There’s a constant inner pull, and I think that’s what the work investigates. In the end, I believe, though of course the audience will tell us, that people connect with different parts of the show depending on who they are. Everyone receives what they need to receive.