Activities —
“Ghosting” Residency: AHILAN RATNAMOHAN
Residency
October 30, 2023 - November 6, 2023 Lavanderia a VaporeTorino
“Ghosting” Residency: AHILAN RATNAMOHAN
Lavanderia a Vapore, Collegno, Torino, Italy
October 30 – November 6, 2023
As one of the On Mobilisation artists, Ahilan Ratnamohan was invited to “ghost” the artistic process of Daniele Ninarello, and to inhabit the Evening School on Care that took place during his residency at Lavanderia a Vapore.
Ahilan is a performance-maker working with atypical forms in the theatre context, in particular football and language- learning processes. Thanks to his background in dance and his experience with non-professionals, he was a valuable ghost to Daniele’s artistic process.
Ahilan indeed participated in the morning training with Daniele and the group of dancers involved in “Healing Together” from November 1 – November 3, offering the team external feedback on the lived experience and the choreographic materials. From November 4 – November 6, he participated in the morning sessions that was open to nonprofessionals, reflecting with Daniele on the potential of the practice in facilitating self- awareness and collective spaces for encounters among different bodies.
Ahilan also actively participated in all the events of the Evening School on Care, despite any possible language barrier thanks to his artistic research on informal language learning, indirectly nurturing own artistic interest.
His feedback was valuable to point the curatorial value of the overall event and, in particular, he focused on Ninarello’s practice introducing the theme of consensus and touch, very urgent theme in his national environment and globally. He invited Daniele to acknowledge the power of his work, due to the regulated practice, to become a space for silent negotiation and agreement, disclosing meaningful trajectories for future development of his research.
Ahilan Ratnamohan writes about his experience during the “ghosting” residency at Lavanderia a Vapore:
My time at Lavanderia a Vapore was spent attempting to understand what “ghosting” can be and how an outsider can integrate themselves into a hyper-local context. Within all of this, but not always integrated, I continued my own research by throwing myself into the Italian language in a quite intensive manner, albeit in an extremely limited period of time.
I “ghosted” Italian artist Daniele Ninarello, who was in the last days of his creation process for “Healing Together”. This involved joining the ensemble during their physical warm- ups and observing the final runs of the show leading up to the premiere. Deciding how I could contribute to the process was a delicate negotiation. I was extremely aware of the vulnerable position an artist is in before a premiere and at the same time aware of the fact that I could never understand the process they were undertaking after a few days of observation. I would offer Daniele a few thoughts after each run of the show but did not attempt to involve myself in the group feedback sessions. These sessions were being run in Italian, and it felt quite strange to join and also request that the language of command change.
This was also a theme of my time observing the festival. Most of the events were intended for an Italian audience, and planting my participation sometimes could result in the whole group changing language for just one English-speaker. At the same time, a lot of the events were purely based on movement or were more one-on-one, which allowed us to integrate into the community in a strange, slightly exotic, but nice manner.
