Martina Rota With All My Strength by Martina Rota inaugurates Another Week – the site-specific art installation hosted at BASE’s Ground Hall

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dance
performance

With All My Strength, the performance by dancer and choreographer Martina Rota, inaugurates and activates Another Week, the installation by Matilde Cassani Studio that opens the doors of BASE to the weeks of art and design. 

With All My Strength, the performance conceived by Martina Rota and previously presented at BASE during the ENdangered ENsemble residency, returns to BASE for Art Week 2025 and inaugurates the permanent installation Another Week by Matilde Cassani Studio.

What lies behind a hypertrophic and monumental body? What are the fragilities behind their architecture? What are the obsessions? What are the questions that drive these bodies? What stereotypes can they conceal?

With All My Strength is a research project by performer and choreographer Martina Rota, who, through the practice of bodybuilding posing, explores contemporary masculinity, body-related obsessions, and the construction of a synthetic identity, thus tapping into feelings of strength, obsession, and vulnerability. The performance features three bodybuilders—Massimo Palmieri, Massimiliano Palmese, Arold Triberti—whose bodies engage in an evolving series of actions that question the concept of image and its meanings, through the materiality of their bodies and the practice of posing.


With All My Strength
, the ongoing project that has taken the form of a performance, a short film, and a publication, is revisited for Performing Architecture—the architecture and performing arts festival conceived by BASE and DOPO?—and is placed in dialogue with the installation by Matilde Cassani Studio, which will occupy the Ground Hall of BASE from April to September 2025.

With Another Week, Matilde Cassani reflects on Milan as a city of events and speed, creating an installation that contrasts with the frenzy of the Fuorisalone and the thematic “weeks” that increasingly characterize the city. In the Ground Hall of BASE, a large carpet made of rubber soles will invite you to slow down and immerse yourself in a suspended and relaxing environment, where carpets and sports mats suggest a waiting space. Another Week invites a different way of experiencing the Fuorisalone, reducing stimuli and focusing on the relationships between bodies. Rota’s performance is the quintessence of this research. 

Bio

Martina Rota (Bergamo, 1995) is an artist active in the field of visual and performative arts, co-founder and curator of the community-based movement and art workshops EXPANDING MOVEMENT and of MASSIMO, an independent exhibition space based in Milan. Her artistic research, characterized by a strong interdisciplinary approach, explores the urgencies, desires, and traumas of the body in both collective and personal dimensions. After graduating from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, she studied dance between Italy and Europe. She participated in the Venice Biennale as a performer for Boris Charmatz’s work (2016) and attended the SNDO School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. In 2018, she joined DA.RE, an advanced training program for contemporary dancers, directed by Ariana Borriello in Rome. From 2019 to 2021, she was part of the Incubatore per futuri coreografi C.I.M.D research project, directed by Franca Ferrari with mentoring from Daniele Ninarello, Davide Valrosso, and Marco D’Agostin. She is currently working as a freelance choreographer, movement director, and Dance Well teacher between Bergamo and Milan.

Carolina Papetti is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and movement director. She currently lives and works between Amsterdam and Milan. She graduated in choreography from SNDO – School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. She has worked as a performer for various artists, including Boris Charmatz, Rodrigo Sobarzo, and Keyon Gaskin. She has directed and presented her works in theaters and galleries in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Milan, and has worked as movement director for Moschino and fashion magazines such as Lampoon Magazine, The Collector, and T-mag. Her works develop an unstable atmosphere, oscillating between familiarity and dark threat. Images and meanings are evoked and then rejected, creating new narratives. She uses space to create ambiguous and seemingly unfinished scenes, blending visual and temporal elements that continuously evolve, stimulating the subjectivity of the spectators.

Beatrice Perego (1995) is a director born in Bergamo. In 2018, she graduated in New Technologies of Art from the Brera Academy and in 2019, she moved to Palermo to study documentary directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Her graduation film Fino alla Fine was presented at several festivals, including IDFA (Amsterdam), Visioni dal Mondo (Milan), Sedona Film Festival (Sedona), Sole Luna Doc Film Festival (Palermo), and Indy Film Fest (Indianapolis). Her works move between video art and documentary cinema, seeking hidden or denied realities related to loss, pain, and mourning; realities in which the director immerses herself personally. The result is a visual, dreamlike, contemplative, and intimate experience where the image becomes a living trace of the repressed. Since 2021, she has worked as a freelance filmmaker between Milan and Palermo. She has collaborated with Fondazione Prada for the exhibition New Society by artist and director Miranda July. Since 2022, she has worked with the artistic duo Masbedo. She has created the backstage of their upcoming film Arsa, the work Il diluvio Universale, and the performance Ritratto di città. She is co-founder of CORRENTE, an association that organizes film screenings in the Ballarò neighborhood of Palermo.

Alessia Prati is a PhD student at the Department of Visual, Performative, and Fashion Arts at Iuav University of Venice, conducting research on the interactions between publishing, performance, and choreography. She currently lives in Paris, where she is conducting research at the archives of the Centre National de la Danse in Pantin. She collaborates as an editorial advisor for Spazio Punch in Venice, overseeing exhibitions and the public editorial program. She has worked as an assistant for the Integrated Choreography Labs at Iuav University of Venice, led by choreographers Cristina Krystal Rizzo, Michele Di Stefano, and the Publishing Lab of scholar Saul Marcadent. She co-curated with the artistic collective MiamiSafari editorial projects – “Flexin Flexin Try to Exercise”, “Meet Me in the Bathroom” – in dialogue with a group of artists including Annamaria Ajmone, Sonia Brunelli, Mara Oscar Cassiani, Camilla Candida Donzella, Leila Gharib, Sara Leghissa, Marco Mazzoni, Jacopo Miliani, Giulia Vallicelli. She has written for Mimesis Journal, Kabul Magazine, and NERO.

Umberto Guidi was born in Milan in 1997. His practice, deeply connected to writing, starts with words and leads to staging. He studied documentary cinema with the ENECE film collective and Tommaso Perfetti. He then studied screenwriting at the Civica Scuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti, where he was mentored by, among others, Maurizio Braucci, Paola Mammini, and Lara Fremder. He collaborated with director Sergio Ferrentino on sound experiments for the theater company Fonderia Mercury. He is currently working with the artistic duo MASBEDO.

Filippo Pizzocrì (Pavia, 1997) is an artist active in the world of performing arts, where he conducts research as a performer and actor exploring the concepts of limit, will, and state of grace. Particularly, Pizzocrì is interested in investigating the here and now of performance: artistic ecstasy, transcendence, and what makes those on stage feel part of a greater whole. His training began at the University of Pavia, where he graduated in Philosophy. In 2021, he encountered the world of theater, studied at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi, and then continued in a two-year program at LAB STUDIO, directed by Claudio Autelli. Between 2022 and 2023, he attended advanced training courses organized by Teatro del Lemming and IDRA Teatro. Among his notable work experiences are encounters with the artistic duo MASBEDO within the opera Il Diluvio Universale; RATTI- Talent Show for a Spectacular Apocalypse by Paola Pannizza, presented at the Venice Biennale in July 2022; and Voci dal Mondo Reale, a nomadic soirée directed by Alessandro Sciarroni and Alexis Paul at Triennale Milano. He currently works as an acting coach, assistant director, and performer between Milan and Pavia.

Credits

With All My Strength
by: Martina Rota

Performers: Massimo Palmieri Bormolini, Massimiliano Palmese, Arold Triberti
Creation Assistant: Filippo Pizzocrì
Film-makers: Beatrice Perego, Umberto Guidi
Set Designer: Carolina Papetti
Editorial and Cultural Consultant: Alessia Prati
Photographer: Carolina Amoretti

With curatorial support from: Gabriele Tosi, Sofia Baldi Pighi
With the support of: BASE Milano, PERFORMATORIO, MIC project, winner of the Nuovo Grand Tour and 2025 funding
With the support of: Lab121

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