Biography

Elisabetta Consonni choreographs everything: human and inhuman beings, moving and motionless objects, maps, interstices and group holidays in outer space. She weaves relational networks, subtle and strong, as sugar glass.

A formal education in Cultural Studies and dance techniques in Italy and London (The Place) and a broader, unofficial, nonlinear education brought her to live in Rotterdam, Poland and then Milan, crossing somatic practices and the use of voice. At some point, she starts to questions whether performing arts can provide tools for urban and social policies. Her research intends to expand the choreographic practice to the point of being a tool for making shifts of attention happen, observing relational dynamics, overturning narratives and critically re-reading contexts. She keeps on creating new formats that are participatory in different ways. All her artistic outputs result from shared processes that include the contribution of different people, both with their work and with their heart and intelligence: Francesco Dalmasso, Masako Matsushita, Daniele Pennati, Sara Catellani, Cristina Pancini, Susanna Iheme, Marta Ciappina, Olimpia Fortuni Alessandro Tollari, Barbara Stimoli, Silvia Tagliazucchi, and many other people in different ways. Her works have been presented in various contexts in Europe and Canada.

Since 2024, she has been curating the artistic direction of Festival ORLANDO in Bergamo, following her need to operate on a single territory, in a long term perspective, combining relational practice, artistic sensitivity and a wish to multiply voices and actions within a  specific context.

Artistic project

“ I’m writing [this book] because I am tired of being immersed in a narrative that presents private poperty related to housing as desirable and natural, because I’m fed up of witnessing the destruction of the future and having to be also resilient” (Sara Gainsforth) 

The project  proposal is dealing with the issue of the housing crisis in europe and abroad. In less than 10 years, according to Eurostat, house prices in the EU increased by an average of 48%. Considered  fundamental good by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, housing today has become a product, the object of economic speculation. Due to the privatisation of public housing, more and more citizens are at risk of insecurity and housing exclusion. Tackling the problem of access to housing is a matter of social justice. The slogan ‘housing first’, previously used in the 90s regarding the condition of homeless people, it now needs to be used and reclaimed as a base for social policies.

I’d like to address the topic with an artistic project which is hybrid, involving performing art, installational and fictionality. The idea is to imagine a fictional estate agency intertwining the private and commercial dimension of housing with the personal stories of housing struggling and the 'pubblic dimensione' of dwelling issue. As many others true real estate agencies, the location will have a window in the street exposing different commercial proposal of selling and renting dwellings. On the contrary to reality, the advertisments on the window will underline the absurd condition of the real estate market we are living in. Inside the ‘office’, a couple of ‘agents’ will propose different real estate products shaped around the local stories of privatisation, poor condition of inhabitation, scarcity of public housing but also activism around the topic and alternative housing model .

Format: performative installation 

Size of audience: 10 to 20 people

Specific location: shop with window in the street

Timing / duration: 30 to 50 min