“Breaking Archives – History of a Femicide” is a workshop-performance by Isabelle Demangeat and Irene Pittatore that questions the perpetuity of a crime through international judicial archive documents, paying tribute to the feminist street collage movement.
The indictments, statements of the accused, and testimonies echo each other, revealing how femicide is most often interpreted as a “crime of passion.”
“I couldn’t live without her.”
“I loved her too much to hit her.”
“I had no other reason [to kill her] than to prevent her from living with others after spending three years with me (…).”
The goal of the workshop is to analyze recurring expressions, making them resonate—or dissonate—with the participants’ experiences, and highlighting their connection to entrenched power relations.
In a collective performance, participants confront the persistence of the models that generate exculpatory narratives, making them visible and audible in order to better recognize and combat them.
The format was developed as part of a research project at Aix-Marseille University coordinated by Karine Lambert, with a group of researchers and artists (Aartemis, Adrienne Arth, Claude Ber, Isabelle Demangeat, Sylvette Denefle, Karine Lambert, Irene Pittatore).
At this link, you can find further methodological insights, as well as photos and videos from the French and Italian editions of the workshop/performance, held at the INSPE of the Académie de Nice in October 2021, based on documents from the Archives Départementales du Var (1848), and at the Intercultural Center of the City of Turin for the Intercultural Animators course of the City of Turin in collaboration with ASAI – Intercultural Animation Association, coordinated by anthropologist Silvia Stefani. Based on archives from La Stampa and judicial archives from the courts of Turin and Florence (1790 – 1987).
