La Generalissima

La Generalissima s the third of 5 books that accompany the Comune di Bologna’s "e la volpe disse al corvo project - Corso di Linguistica Generale", curated by Romeo Castellucci and Piersandra Di Matteo, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio.

La Generalissima accompanies the play ‘Uso umano di esseri umani. Un esercizio in lingua Generalissima’ at the Ex Ospedale dei Bastardini in Bologna. The action – which is based iconographically on Giotto’s The Raising of Lazarus - uses la Generalissima, an artificial language created in 1985 by the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, based on creoles and Ramon Lull’s ‘Ars Magna’, which was based on numerology.

Carefully formulated by Claudia Castellucci based on four-hundred comprehensive terms, la Generalissima proceeds to even more abstract levels – from the most common, to the purest, which is made up of only four words – through each of which, it is possible to communicate. The scene which sees the Lord go towards Lazarus’s body, while family members are covering their noses due to the rotting stench, is recreated according to these combinatorial principles. The atonal light from the sun that passes through the enormous space at the Ex Ospedale dei Bastardini prepares the audience for a contemplation of a profound transformation.