Vol. 1 / Issue 1
Une revue littéraire et culturelle bilingue
Vol. 1 / Issue 3
“I think of my work as being about queer community and chosen family. I’m not trying to represent any broader “queer community” – just my specific queer community of friends.”
Émile Luminaries:
Cordelia Stagno
actress / performer / director / author
With the director Lucia Falco, I founded the TIR TeatroInRivolta Cultural Association (2001), and the Skaraventer Collective (2015). Together, we collaborated in the organization of three international festivals (Morocco, Algeria, and Italy) as well as a theater season, La Città dell'Uomo, in Rivoli. At the same time I participated in the production of numerous shows, mainly as an actor. Starting from 2015, our theatrical conception leads to more hybrid forms of entertainment, embracing site-specific projects, with productions being hosted at the Subscene and Faki Festival. In 2021 I am one of the two artistic directors of the Presente Festival, organized in Turin by the TIR Association in partnership with the La Scimmia in tasca Association: a performative event aimed at creating urban regeneration actions in the complex Barriera di Milano area.
"Cheap and Chic is a performance which evolves over time: days as an ordinary photo model, lived in everyday places, in temporary rooms, in shopping center garages, or at my house. A story that winds through hashtags without a future and images mostly stolen with mobile phones, in the name of that temporary celebrity that our era grants us, asking in exchange for a part of our lives. A project started in 2020 in collaboration with the director Lucia Falco and subsequently opened up to new looks of the photographers Giuseppe Caldarella, Pino Cappellano, Stefano Puzzuoli, Doriana De Vecchi, and Emanuele Pensavalle, the playwright Francesco Olivieri, the art director Carlo Musso, the social media writer Manuele Falco.
Photo Credit: Giuseppe Caldarella
Photo Credit: Doriana De Vecchi
Photo Credit: Lucia Falco
Photo Credit: Lucia Falco
Photo Credit: Lucia Falco
Photo Credit: Lucia Falco
Photo Credit: Cordelia Pond
"Today is Women's Day. But what does it mean to be a woman? Is it a natural, psychological, biological fact? A goal to achieve ? A land to defend? A question of social roles ?
Photo Credit: Lucia Falco
"Starting from 2020, the year in which I chose to publicly live my female identity, I shifted my attention toward spectacular forms more open to the inner flow and direct involvement of the public. Of particular importance is my online diary, continuously updated on my Facebook profile (a performative form of writing, in constant evolution). At the same time, I am carrying out a process of narrative fragmentation of my image, both by photographing myself and by collaborating with other photographers.
In 2022 I started the show "Penelope" (taken from Joyce's Ulysses), a scenic de-construction project dedicated to literary characters that I feel resonate with the spirit of the time and with my daily experience. Penelope is the will to return that flow of memories to the body, extracting emotions, sweat, and movement from words."
Photo Credit: Lucia Falco
Photo Credit: Emanuele Pensavalle
TNR: You've been working as an artist for over 20 years, has that been rewarding?
CORDELIA: It's been very rewarding from a human point of view, because I've had some wonderful encounters and often found myself in surreal circumstances and unusual places, and I feel more alive when the apparent normality of life reveals its most secret, absurd, and poetic side. But it's also been very frustrating, because in the country where I live (Italy), the difficulties in making art are huge.
TNR: How do you define success?
CORDELIA: Economic success is something I don’t know. I know I shouldn’t say it, because it’s uncool and it’s wrong as a marketing communication model. But I don’t care, because my goal is to produce art, not marketing. Art wants truth. Of course, I can’t always be true, either. But I try. What I have is human success. When my shows end people are touched, their eyes sparkle, we often hug. So how do I define success? Success is being masters of heaven, even if you don’t have enough money to get to the end of the month.
TNR: Would you have altered course away from being an artist, if you could today?
CORDELIA: Sometimes, I've thought about opening a coffee shop, far from Italy, and also from Europe, and spending my days as a waitress.
TNR: Have you obtained what you'd like to, from being an artist?
CORDELIA: My first artistic goal was an alchemical goal. That means sharpening my sensitivity, spreading my consciousness, acquiring more and more awareness of me, developing courage, following my instincts, breaking my cages, transforming myself. And from this point of view, I can say that I am promoted with good grades.