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words by Chiara Spagnol
During the second industrial revolution, many philanthropists fought to guarantee workers fundamental rights such as holidays, working hours and acceptable wages. It was precisely in this period that many employers understood the potential positive influence of a fit workforce would have had on industrial production. Despite the crucial importance of their role in the system productive, women were not encouraged at all to pursue their competitive ambitions.
In the nineteenth century, calisthenics and disciplines performed to the rhythm of music were
considered socially acceptable for middle-class women and girls. Far from violent corporality of group sports, this type of gymnastics recalled an ideal past with a flavour generically ancient and ancestral, the result of an imaginary made up of contortionists and dancers, portrayed summarely on Egyptian pottery and tombs or sometimes even on the pyramids in the act of throwing into the air a ball François Delsarte, father of modern rhythmic gymnastics, argued that physical exercise was the key to perfect poise, beauty, health and success. His method expression was considered useful for improving performance in singing, dancing and theater. His discipline was shaped on the basis of two fundamental concepts movement and aesthetics. Good part what we are used to recognizing as Rhythmic Gymnastics is due to its extraordinary recognizability of histools - hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon and rope - as well as the exaggerated and flashy appearance of the leotards worn by athletes. In a world dominated by neutral shades - allies of camouflage, distant from the brazen theatricality of the bright and flashy colors - the rhythmic gymnastics continues undaunted to proudly show off a nostalgic taste for lycra and aposematic velvets, often adorned with thousands of crystals to best show the definition of the abdominals and triceps. Aposematism, also called aposematic mechanism. Biological means by which a dangerous or harmful organism makes itself known one’s nature to a potential predator. The predator, recognizing the organism as dangerous an unidentified prey desists from attacking it. Aposematic, or warning, mechanisms are evolved in parallel with protection systems; it is generally beneficial for the organism aposematic do not risk the injuries that could also occur in the event of an attack by an predator, although successfully repelled. The most widespread aposematic mechanism manifests itself in possession of bright and contrasting colours, such as black and yellow in the case of many wasps or the red of ladybugs or other beetles. Other organisms, such as North American rattlesnakes, use acoustic systems of alarm. Aposematism has a lot to do with competition, since the latter represents the sublimation of natural selection. You must seem poisonous, or at least dangerous. Even if we are accustomed to thinking of camouflage as a form of protection and a synonym of camouflage, the biology confirms that the imitation of colors and shapes belonging to the environment can be protective, aggressive or even casual and without a specific purpose. You know what they say, right? Imitation is the highest form of flattery... things like that. Mimicry, in biology, is a phenomenon characterized by similarity superficial of two or more organisms not strictly related from a taxonomic point of view. This similarity gives one or both organisms an advantage, such as protection from predation, thanks to which organisms compromise the normal process of natural selection. The selection agent (which can be, for example, a predator, a symbiont or the host of a parasite, depending on the type of mimicry encountered) interacts directly with similar organisms and comes deceived by their resemblance. This type of natural selection distinguishes mimicry from other types of converged similarity that arise from the action of other forces of natural selection (for example,temperature, eating habits) on unrelated organisms. In the most studied mimetic relationships, the advaged is one-sided: one species (the imitator) benefits from the similarity with the other (the model). Maybe looking like that is the key to success. Maybe it's the key to intimidation.