Mpasturavacche is the dialectal name in Apuglia, Italy, of the common four-lined snake, which was believed to suckle a cow’s milk while entwined around its legs. The artwork Mpasturavacche. The milk-suckling snake is a one-to-one Art and Science performance that lets participants explore the perceptive abilities of snakes through wearable technologies. By disclosing the instincts and impulses of the lizard brain in the human animal, the artwork makes sense of and alleviates humans’ estrangement from nature.
During the performance, the artist/performer and the participant/co-performer are linked by an “umbilical cord” that acts as a communication channel between the two. The participant receives a VR headset with thermal vision, an Arduino board and a highly sensitive voice sensor mounted close to the mouth. The device is connected to the artist, where a wearable technology system ‒ made of micro motors mounted on a piece of isothermal textile ‒ pulses in time with the visitor’s breath. These interfaces mimic the sensory properties of snakes, such as thermal vision and the responsiveness of the snake’s skin to vibrations.
The performance explores the ancestral communication systems of reptiles (snakes) and their impact on human perception and behaviour. The intimate setting of the performance awakens and challenges the sensory nature of the communication and signification in the human [and more-than-human] animal. (Source: author)
Production: Jatun Risba, Franco G. Livera, 2025
Feel the rush that dispels your sorrow,makes the heart beat as one with the moving leveldown and above you, just for an instant ...A moment of eternity aiming to dilute your breath and your self ad infinitum. Poppers2 is a work that embodies ecstatic mo...
Production: Jatun Risba, Franco G. Livera, 2025
The video Europa is an evolution of a photographic project of the same name, created by authors Risba & Livera in early 2023. By incorporating the re-enactment practices of Photo-Therapy (Martin 2009; Spence 1986) into the video-making process, the mo...
Production: Jatun Risba, 2024
This video extract documents the Be-coming Tree: Tipperary performance for camera by Jatun Risba during their research Artist in Residence period at Instant Dissidence in Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Ireland in January 2024. The performance is a re-inaction o...
Production: Jatun Risba, 2024
‘Poetics of Colour nu.1’ is an art intervention by Jatun Risba inspired by an ongoing research about the Atlantic Slave Trade History and Vodou & Winti rituals connected to the region of Zeeland, NL. The track in the video is a poetic inte...
Production: OPENS para-academic forum, Jatun Risba, Jireh Koh, 2024
Ganachakra was a transmedia performance and esoteric ritual - a gathering of human and nonhuman kin for healing, revelry, and transcendence. The audience was invited to drink libations, make merry, and enjoy performances by Jatun Risba (SVN) and Jireh Koh...
Production: Jatun Risba, Simon Macuh, 2024
"Ultimately, there is no other. The other is part of us and I will engulf it fully and tenderly." The Intimacy of Otherness is a durational transmedia multisensory performance lecture in progress about radical self-healing from Multiple Sclerosis (2012-19)...
Production: Jatun Risba, Studio Alta, 2024
"Ultimately, there is no other. The other is part of us and I will engulf it fully and tenderly." The Intimacy of Otherness is a durational transmedia multisensory performance lecture in progress about radical self-healing from Multiple Sclerosis (2012-19)...
Production: Jatun Risba, Galerija O.K, 2024
Casting Sun and Oxygen for a Collective Rebirth is a body casting performance by Jatun Risba that was premiered at the opening of the exhibition Terra incognita: Jatun Risba, Ivana Filip and Nikolina Butorac, curated by Marta Sirotich at Galerija O.K. in Ri...
Production: Jatun Risba, Franco G. Livera, 2024
When a tree falls, the motion disturbs the air, causing ripples that radiate far away. The event gets incorporated into the wheel of life (bhavachakra). Beautiful idea depicts a surreal resurrection from a tree tomb of the mythical “forest woman&rdq...
Production: Be-coming Tree, 2024
A recording of the first Be-coming Tree live improvisation, featuring 19 international artists in the collective performative action Together As One Woodland, which took place on February 4th, 2024, at Live Art Ireland in Ireland. The event coincided with...