Manifesto

Manifesto was conceived during a creative writing exercise in a workshop at Residenz Theater Munich, within the theme of “Manifestieren”. It was successively refined and concluded individually, intentionally shifting away from the workshop’s original political conception of manifestos.

Manifesto is a post-human meta-linguistic ritual, a performative text that comes to life only through the act of reading, speaking, or listening. An act of acknowledgement and gratitude between language and who pronounces it, questioning the bodily and cognitive nature of language as an act of shared existence. Structured as a living manifesto, the piece stages the moment in which language shifts from written mark to embodied presence. It begins with a declarative, rhythmic voice, oscillating between English, Italian and German, which gradually opens toward the audience, inviting them to inhabit the text as co-agents rather than observers.

The performance evolves through layered modes of expression: articulated language, echoic repetition, shifts in volume and pacing and spatial movement. Each section highlights the text’s dependency on the performer and the public, emphasising how meaning is continuously regenerated in the encounter between bodies, voices, and attention. Minimal gestures, controlled breath, and deliberate pauses frame the vocal delivery, creating a sensory experience where the audience becomes part of the text’s temporality. The final movement marks a progressive dissolution: from declaration to sound and breath. This transition from semantic speech to Phoné and respiration foregrounds the human body as the primary site of language, revealing how every utterance ultimately returns to its physical origin.

Presented as poetry, performance, or video work, Manifesto examines the opaque limit and continuity between sign, language, meaning and subject. In an era shaped by digital fragmentation, it proposes an alternative temporality—slow, relational, and co-created—where language survives only through the shared act of keeping it alive.