Total Anastrophe, Volcano Extravaganza
2018Performance & Costumes
Fiorucci Art Trust, Italy
28 July 2018
At sunset, Casa Falk in the Piscità district will be courteously open to the public by its owner Martin Hatebur. There, while Alex Cecchetti will quench guests with sensual poetry along with amorous and erotic cocktails from his Love Bar, Osman Yousefzada will present a Total Anastrophes—based capsule collection and performance, for which he will create a limited number of garments inspired by plate tectonics theory, matryoshka dolls and the island itself. Instead of a catwalk, the garments will be organically introduced through the designer’s new format of a performative house party, and will be worn by locally cast models. Co-presented by the Trust with The Store X Vinyl Factory, Cecilia Bengolea will perform a new choreography, evoking the primordial symbol of the serpent with its mutating qualities.
At sunset, Casa Falk in the Piscità district will be courteously open to the public by its owner Martin Hatebur. There, while Alex Cecchetti will quench guests with sensual poetry along with amorous and erotic cocktails from his Love Bar, Osman Yousefzada will present a Total Anastrophes—based capsule collection and performance, for which he will create a limited number of garments inspired by plate tectonics theory, matryoshka dolls and the island itself. Instead of a catwalk, the garments will be organically introduced through the designer’s new format of a performative house party, and will be worn by locally cast models. Co-presented by the Trust with The Store X Vinyl Factory, Cecilia Bengolea will perform a new choreography, evoking the primordial symbol of the serpent with its mutating qualities.
Total Anastrophe, Volcano Extravaganza
2018Performance & Costumes
Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh
On the occasion of its 8th edition, the Volcano Extravaganza — the annual festival of contemporary arts conceived and produced by London-based non-profit institution, the Fiorucci Art Trust — erupted away from its volcanic centre in Stromboli, and reimagined the 8th edition of the annual Volcano Extravaganza in Dhaka. Instead of engaging with Stromboli’s landscape and the talisman of its active volcano, the programme transformed the inside of the Shilpakala Academy’s Auditorium into the inner echo chamber of an active volcano. Performative interventions evoked themes of isolation and distance; memory and mysticism; cosmic energy and the violence of nature; improvisation and theatre.
Taking the empirical and ephemeral experiences collected on the island, the Fiorucci Art Trust migrated the knowledge, the collaborations, the artists, the talks, the volcanic activities: the mind as a volcano and the emotional body with Total Anastrophes. The auditorium was turned into a theatre inside of a volcano, into an echo-chamber pervaded by sounds and moans, magmatic hertz, vibrations: frequencies of a harmonious language inside a unique cradle for performances, where voices were born from inscrutable sources and latent memories evoked. Visitors were greeted by slowed movements, reverberations and distorted sounds.
The Artistic Leader was Bangladeshi-born, London-based artist Runa Islam, while the festival was curated, as per tradition, by Milovan Farronato. The participants included Cecilia Bengolea, Alex Cecchetti, Patrizio Di Massimo, Haroon Mirza, Tobias Putrih, and Osman Yousefzada - all figures belonging to the astral orbit of the Trust.
Taking the empirical and ephemeral experiences collected on the island, the Fiorucci Art Trust migrated the knowledge, the collaborations, the artists, the talks, the volcanic activities: the mind as a volcano and the emotional body with Total Anastrophes. The auditorium was turned into a theatre inside of a volcano, into an echo-chamber pervaded by sounds and moans, magmatic hertz, vibrations: frequencies of a harmonious language inside a unique cradle for performances, where voices were born from inscrutable sources and latent memories evoked. Visitors were greeted by slowed movements, reverberations and distorted sounds.
The Artistic Leader was Bangladeshi-born, London-based artist Runa Islam, while the festival was curated, as per tradition, by Milovan Farronato. The participants included Cecilia Bengolea, Alex Cecchetti, Patrizio Di Massimo, Haroon Mirza, Tobias Putrih, and Osman Yousefzada - all figures belonging to the astral orbit of the Trust.
A Believe is not A Belief, because the Truth is Unbelievable
2020Costumes for an Opera by Haroon Mirza
Lahore Biennale Performance
A Poem & A Performance
Here to Stay
Poem by Osman Yousefzada & Red Medusa
Look at ME
Get used to my face
My thick and slender frames
My weird and wild ways
Observe my displays of femininity
Get use to what you see
LISTEN
Whether you like it
Whether you do Not,
I am here to stay
My bhindis, locs and traditional frocks
More than a fashion statement,
More then appropriated symbols of identity
More than part-time adornments of the privileged
They are symbols of MY survival
You have a history of Theft
Taking from us, putting us on ships
Shackling our Hearts and Splendor
Enslaving us
Enslaving us for your profit
Except I am free
It makes me smile to see that in your ignorance
In the wearing of my culture,
My Heritage, My History
My colours and symbols,
My gifts and my curses
You are celebrating me
So copy, reinvent, try to obliterate who I am
But the truth is, and always will be that
I am here to stay
I have survived your long famine
And now fill my belly with love
I have survived your wars
And replaced them with my peace
I have survived your poverty
And am rich in spirit
I have survived your technologies
And transformed your weapons
From the Whip, to the Gun, and into the pen
Which joins these letters to write these words
With which I will change the world
Because I was taught that
You were better than me
That God is white, that God is male
That this God was chosen to rule over ME
Except I was born of a WOMAN
I grew in her womb
Nurtured by breasts
And it was SHE who gave me Breath
SEE
I am more than Kipling’s “white mans’ burden”
I am more than the sum of my Ancestors labour
I am my language,
I am my struggle
I am the glory of my heritage
Despite the crimes of colonialism
Capitalism and its father, neoliberalism
I am still the Perfume of Arabia
I am still the Silk of the Silk Route
I am still the Comfort of cotton
I am still the kohl Black that lines the eyes of MY beauty
I am the strength in the tin pots you mock
I am the pride of your Britain
I also built this place
And now you protect your statutes, your histories
Yet these are my histories, of how I got here
And here I will Stay
Occupying spaces you said I had no right to
I will fight despite your insults
And here I will Stay
And you will insist that I get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged!
I am Here to Stay
See my face
Remember my name
Because I have and always will
Be here to stay.
Look at ME
Get used to my face
My thick and slender frames
My weird and wild ways
Observe my displays of femininity
Get use to what you see
LISTEN
Whether you like it
Whether you do Not,
I am here to stay
My bhindis, locs and traditional frocks
More than a fashion statement,
More then appropriated symbols of identity
More than part-time adornments of the privileged
They are symbols of MY survival
You have a history of Theft
Taking from us, putting us on ships
Shackling our Hearts and Splendor
Enslaving us
Enslaving us for your profit
Except I am free
It makes me smile to see that in your ignorance
In the wearing of my culture,
My Heritage, My History
My colours and symbols,
My gifts and my curses
You are celebrating me
So copy, reinvent, try to obliterate who I am
But the truth is, and always will be that
I am here to stay
I have survived your long famine
And now fill my belly with love
I have survived your wars
And replaced them with my peace
I have survived your poverty
And am rich in spirit
I have survived your technologies
And transformed your weapons
From the Whip, to the Gun, and into the pen
Which joins these letters to write these words
With which I will change the world
Because I was taught that
You were better than me
That God is white, that God is male
That this God was chosen to rule over ME
Except I was born of a WOMAN
I grew in her womb
Nurtured by breasts
And it was SHE who gave me Breath
SEE
I am more than Kipling’s “white mans’ burden”
I am more than the sum of my Ancestors labour
I am my language,
I am my struggle
I am the glory of my heritage
Despite the crimes of colonialism
Capitalism and its father, neoliberalism
I am still the Perfume of Arabia
I am still the Silk of the Silk Route
I am still the Comfort of cotton
I am still the kohl Black that lines the eyes of MY beauty
I am the strength in the tin pots you mock
I am the pride of your Britain
I also built this place
And now you protect your statutes, your histories
Yet these are my histories, of how I got here
And here I will Stay
Occupying spaces you said I had no right to
I will fight despite your insults
And here I will Stay
And you will insist that I get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged!
I am Here to Stay
See my face
Remember my name
Because I have and always will
Be here to stay.
Spring/Summer 2021
Osman London - Garments
︎︎︎ @osmanlondon
︎︎︎ osmanlondon.com
A Poem & A Performance
I’m Coming
by Osman Yousefzada
Bring the dark dust from my feet
I’m coming
Our footprints that intermingled in the past
I’m coming
To protrude forward and create our new cosmos
to heal, to muster up our amulets and potions
I’m coming
To flower and let them feed off me
I’m coming
To germinate and activate my metabolism
to rise each morning when the sun breaks it’s dawn
and each future is new
I’m coming
And when I’m gone... the animals trample over me
and the roots of the plants entangle and sustain off me
I’m coming
When I turn back to see its cycles... its haste
...its speed... its consumption... its harm... its humanity...
I’m coming...
I’m coming
Our footprints that intermingled in the past
I’m coming
To protrude forward and create our new cosmos
to heal, to muster up our amulets and potions
I’m coming
To flower and let them feed off me
I’m coming
To germinate and activate my metabolism
to rise each morning when the sun breaks it’s dawn
and each future is new
I’m coming
And when I’m gone... the animals trample over me
and the roots of the plants entangle and sustain off me
I’m coming
When I turn back to see its cycles... its haste
...its speed... its consumption... its harm... its humanity...
I’m coming...
Osman London - Garments
︎︎︎ @osmanlondon
︎︎︎ osmanlondon.com