During two periods of Elisabetta Consonni’s first residency at Lavanderia a Vapore, in January and February 2024, she hosted her artistic research as a development of the ongoing project Special Handling, which ultimately generated a constellation of practices/exercises titled How to Become a Platypus.

Special Handling began as research on the invisible knowledge possessed by often marginalized people. In the specific context that originated the project—a park in a multicultural area of Milan—this knowledge was primarily related to physical practices held by female migrants. Since then, Consonni has been questioning what knowledge is and how its acknowledgment and legitimation are determined by political acts of supremacy that enforce privileges.

In 2024 at Lavanderia, she shifted the research question from invisible knowledge to the possibility of relinquishing control to allow knowledge to emerge through doing and by surprise, as an alchemy born from the mixture and encounters among different agents, both human and non-human, present in a common space. During the first weeks of her residency, she focused on redefining the theme of her long-term research from invisible knowledge to how to create the conditions to make new knowledge raise, escaping from the frame of what is knowledge and what is not, with the dramaturgical support of Silvia Bottiroli.

In her second residency in March 2024, Consonni transformed the project Special Handling into How to Become a Platypus. She engaged two artistic collaborators, professor and researcher Alessandro Tollari and dancer Barbara Stimoli, to co-create situations and games designed to trigger a non-functional, non-logical, and surprising aspect of knowledge. The project included playing games that challenge authority and individuality while fostering faith and collaboration. During this period, Consonni tested the prototype device with young students from Curie High School, a group of dancers, and community workers, also involving elderly residents from care homes connected to Lavanderia a Vapore.

From these shared sessions, Consonni refined the performative score and premiered the work publicly during the International Symposium. More about How to Become a Platypus will be revealed in the following posts. Stay tuned!
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