Psico.Lobo imagines new possible realities, figuring out new meanings (not only) in the urban space and re-activating deactivated places

“Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence”.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

At the beginning of the 70s Italo Calvino wrote a love poem to the metropolis, Invisible Cities, in a time when living in the city was getting harder and harder. Raissa is one of the “hidden cities” described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan, a city wrapped by the pain of living and by a general distress.
In the last fifty years there has been a lot of thinking about life in urban centres, revealing all the potentials that the city gives to its inhabitants but also revealing new forms of mental discomfort caused by bustles, claims and demands given by the city itself.The development of modern metropolis, characterized by the loss of personality of places and by the pursuit of hyper-capitalistic models, has created uncomfortable places for human life, which therefore experiences psychological trauma in everyday life.

In this scenario, Psico.Lobo comes as a creative interdisciplinary project: starting from the dialogue between performance and psychology, it involves the collective dimension of the public that is asked to act and react.
Art and psychology share the common ground of the notion of relation, among individuals, between the person and the world he or she populates, and, above all, the contact with the self: with the body he inhabits, with the actions he does and the processes of his mind.
Looking into the network of relations put together by the individual, psychology plays an analytic and explorative role that combines the practice of thinking and of creative action.

psico.lobo collettivo
Courtesy of Psico.Lobo

Psico.Lobo was born in 2020 as a visionary project from the idea of dr. Virginia Roghi, psychologist and psychotherapist, who has been interested in experimental theatre for more than ten years.Art and psychoanalysis are closely connected by the fact that psychoanalysis has always been attracted by the individual expression and has seen art as afundamental therapy and as an education tool. Dr. Roghi is engaged in many projects: she works with schools, but FKF LAB, born in 2017 at Macao, is the closest to Psico.Lobo. At FKF LAB there is a variety of participants coming from different backgrounds to join the experimental theatre workshop in which the psychological side is less relevant than in Psico.Lobo works.

“We made an investment on the stability of the relationship among Psico.Lobo members – says dr. Roghi – in order to create a coherent community who’s working on a process, and the idea of process is important, meaning something that requires energy, strength and dedication. When the team is able to stand in pain, then it starts to learn many things from different points of view. When the team operates together, everything works and grows faster and better because all the silent issues come to light first”.

Starting from here, Psico.Lobo works mostly on workshops that are attended by the members of the collective but that are also open to the participation of diverse audience, focusing on the experimentation and expression of the individuals through their bodies and on the enhancement of the emotional experience related to the exploration of verbal language. Words such as intimacy, identity, violence, consent become matter of confrontation, research and dialogue aiming to the comprehension of the self, using techniques and exercises borrowed from theatrical, artistic and performative practice. The Double will be the subject of the next workshop, planned for mid-February, as it has been announced on Psico.Lobo’s Instagram page with the publication of a series of talks in which some members of the group took part.

Performance comes as a moment of communication and exchange with the external environment, fundamental act for their curative practice.Sofia Baldi, the curator in the Psico.Lobo team, has been working with Virginia Roghi for quite a long time. The first collaboration in the Psico.Lobo’s context has brought to life the performance Nature is human – occurred during Still Possible Thoughts, exhibition curated by Sofia Baldi – that was focused on the relationship between humans and the inhabited space from the urban dimension to the domestic situation and on the issue of the loss of consciousness of the self and of the body, where the movement and a tautological gestural expressiveness are the main tools for calling on the public to grow new ways of thinking in relation to the topics of shared spaces and the contact of physical entities.

People of Ruins, their second performance, is the result of the dialogue with the French artist Alexandre Bavard and with his works from his latest Milanese exhibition at the Galleria Avantgarde, called Acid Bleach: a dystopic storytelling of the current times marked by a process of social and human decline.Performed on October 29, in a time when social distancing is a civic duty but also an obstacle to the everyday life, People Of Ruins is the description of an anarchic seasonof rebirth from the urban and social ashes coming from a tribe that lives outside the constructions of a pre-existing society. In this performance the bodies of the dancers tangle following primitive and ancestral moves as in a primal ritual with the background of the industrial sounds produced and played by the music producer Mace.

In both performances the Psico.Lobo team has done a site-specific work, visiting the places they were hosted by, catching the physical and human energies and bringing them into the performance, aiming to let the viewer recognize himself in their gestures. “In the situation we’re living” – Sofia Baldi says – “I asked myself what it means to come back organizing exhibitions, if something has changed in people and if we ourselves had to change something in our practice. The answer was yes, because we’ve seen a traumatized public, living a collective trauma. The pandemic has been exasperating problems that were already affecting people. That’s why we have decided to use digital communication in order to spread cultural instances, using it as an educational tool during the Milan Digital Week 2021”.

On that occasion, Psico.Lobo will set up the free workshop Sano come un pesce (Healthy as a horse), that wants to turn the digital in a safe and inclusive space, where the user will be free to turn on the camera and the microphone, whenever he wants to actively participate and interact with the work group. The workshop, curated by Sofia Baldi and led by dr. Virginia Roghi, Serena Lo Monaco and Greta Capelli, wants to give useful tools to create relationships based on self-care and care for others.
The clinic doodle will be the main tool for this therapy session, due to the fast-drawing technique, which is free from consciousness and rationality, perfect for digging into the unconscious.

psico.lobo collettivo
Courtesy of Psico.Lobo

Just like the invisible thread of the city of Raissa, Psico.Lobo draws new relationships among individuals reducing the distance that separates them, thanks to a theatrical and performative experience during which Psico.Lobo goes through the contemporary life mythology with analytic eyes and spirit of renewal. The aim is bringing back humans to the core of their feelings, exploring their vulnerabilities, doubts and relational motions meaning to create a new collective dimension where it is possible to take care of ourselves and of others.

Psico.Lobo was founded by dr. Virginia Roghi, psychologist and psychotherapist.
Psico.Lobo is a project curated by Sofia Baldi with a multidisciplinary team:
Serena Monaco (psychologist and sex therapist)
Greta Capelli (intern psychologist)
Chiara Airoldi (intern psychologist)
Sara Petretto (grad student in Archaeology and History of Art)
Eleonora Nardo (set designer)
Ada Karayel (graphic designer)
Roberto Paravia (sound designer)
Marta Marinotti (photographer and performer)