Utopia Gym
2024 -2025
Utopia Gym transforms the athletic body into a site of political and aesthetic inquiry. Conceived by Marilisa Cosello and produced by VSA, the performance was presented at Bagni Misteriosi in Milan (2024) with professional artistic gymnasts, before manifesting as a distinct iteration at Palazzo Forti during ArtVerona (2025) with male athletes from rugby and fencing.
At Bagni Misteriosi, the rhythm was scored by a soundscape composed from the gymnasts' own pre-recorded movements and breathing patterns, in dialogue with Les Dormeuses—a video installation capturing the performers in sleep. At Palazzo Forti, the performance was stripped to its essential elements: the raw sounds of athletic bodies moving through space, as rugby players and fencers activated different spatial dynamics and gestural registers within the exhibition context.
Across both iterations, athletes execute unconventional sequences that resist the logic of competition and spectacle. Each gesture, sustained for prolonged intervals, is charged with aesthetic and symbolic significance, liberating the body from its exclusively performative function and reintroducing it within a context of vulnerability and care.
Utopia Gym constructs the microcosm of an ideal society, where the body is free to express itself beyond imposed limits, where failure becomes possibility rather than defeat. The work generates a system of correspondences in which the athletes' physical presence redefines spatial perception, activating new readings and unexpected meanings. In collaboration with Fondazione Bentegodi and Verona Rugby, the project articulates a persistent tension between athleticism and vulnerability, technical perfection and human fragility—ultimately extending an invitation to reconnect with one's own physicality, its limits and its possibilities.