Pathosformel

Pathosformel – biographical notes

edited by Lorenzo Guerrieri
Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Paola Villani met in Venice in 2004, as students of Giorgio Agamben at IUAV, after having attended different courses (history of art, design, political philosophy). The study of Aby Warburg moved them to choose the name Pathosformel for the company they were to create. “Pathosformel” indicated the constant recurrence of certain archetypical images all along the history of art. The first projects they presented were Volta (Vault) (2007) and La timidezza delle ossa (The shyness of the bones) (2008), for which they received a special praise of the Premio Scenario 2007.
Together they took part in an academic workshop with Societas Raffaello Sanzio, and after that Romeo Castellucci offered them a six-months residence at Cesena’s Teatro Comandini. Since 2007 Pathosformel has been part of the project Fies Factory One, and a member of Apa,the European network for performing art.
In 2008 the new company put on La più piccola distanza (The shortest distance), and was awarded the Special UBU Prize 2008 for the realization of a theatre that was “abstract and physical, a theatre carried on with a distinct, stratified mark, that makes of the research on body and matter a starting point from which it restores a visionary, fragmented, deconstructed theatrality, extremely charming, bursting in the national as well as the international scene. All this realizes a crucial link between conceptual art and theatre”.