Where Architecture Ends
21 min, Venice, Italy, 20252-channel video installation, color, sound, loop - Produced by Scuola Piccola Zattere
Excerpt 1 - 1min50
Excerpt 2 - 1min30
© Giacomo Bianco & Matteo de Mayda
The video installation is articulated in four chapters that follow one another in a continuous flow. Each part explores a spatial axis and an affective core of the Zaouia, a place of retreat and mystical rituality for specific marginalized communities in Morocco. The work investigates it not so much in terms of its architecture, but rather in terms of the generative condition in which bodies find ways of ritual reworking, political autonomy, and embodied transmission. Through the practice of Jedba, a particular somatic state of Moroccan possession rituals, the body of dancer and choreographer Bilal El Had becomes a living archive, a vehicle for genealogies, collective traumas, and practices of transmission. This choreographic device is juxtaposed with a montage of archival footage of southern Italian rituals, creating a sensory dialogue between different territories and times that transforms the images into active fragments, capable of evoking a persistence of the past in the present and a shared sensibility beyond geographical boundaries. The installation reflects on architecture, the body, and rituality as interconnected spatial and symbolic systems.
Curators: Irene Calderoni & Margherita Falqui
Credits:
Production: Scuola Piccola Zattere
Direction: Nabil Aniss
Director of Photography: Stefano Steno
Editing: Nabil Aniss
Dancer and Choreographer: Bilal El Had
Talent: Tony Brunello
Original Music and Sound Design: Ilias Kampanis
Vocals: Irini Konstantinou
Gnawa musician: Mehdi Qamoum
Cello: Alexandros Kasartzis
Production: Eugenio Ambrosin
Production Coordination: Filippo Taccini
Unit Manager: Francesco Lughi
Assistant Director: Gaia Campesato
Assistant Camera: Nicholas de Luigi
Gaffer: Davide Lionello
Best Boy: Giovanni Sambo
Spark: Lodovico Centurioni
Colorist: Nagore Eceiza
Archival Footage: Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna
Il culto delle pietre, Il male di San Donato, Magia Lucana, La Madonna di Pierno – Luigi Di Gianni
Stendalì, La canta delle marane – Cecilia Mangini
La Taranta – Gianfranco Mingozzi
Many thanks to: Carlotta Bandieramonte, Erica Bartesaghi, Irene Calderoni, Margherita Falqui, Emma Lecchini, Riccardo Licciardello, Andrea Meneghelli (Cineteca di Bologna), Hélene Molinari, Marco Scurati (Fucina del Futuro)
©2025 Nabil Aniss