Softshell – a series of new performative art works, delivered to spectators by post

Softshell is a bold and visionary organism that activates different identities and functions: a very innovative curatorial project, a performance production house, a theatrical season without a physical venue that wishes to reach spectators from all other the world. Softshell consists of two main lines: a collection of art works and an international magazine dedicated to performing arts on a messenger app. Softshell will commission art works from a selected and curated group of artists who explore performativity in different ways, whose work has a social and political impact and from whom we can learn something new. All the artworks commissioned will be performative objects, delivered worldwide by post to spectators who will experience them in a domestic "venue". Each performative object, upon a limitation of production cost and dimension/weight, can have a very diverse nature and shape: a song, a text, a lipstick, a t-shirt – accompanied by a set of instructions to render it performative. Together with the production of new works specifically commissioned, the project will open a news channel on the messenger app called Telegram, with contents related to the artworks produced and updates/news from the global performing arts scene. The Telegram channel will be curated by the Softshell curatorial team and the contents will be written by a board of international artists, curators and critics, who will work on rotation. In this way spectators will receive by post the commissioned object and on their mobile the discursive contents/news part of the project. The need of re-imagining production models is rooted in the belief that how you produce and communicate an art project is as important as its dramaturgical content and has to carry the same ethics and values. In this historical moment, artists and institutions are struggling to adapt contents and formats to newly imposed fruition rules, online and live. Why not imagining something different from the beginning.