Heroes

Inter and Intra-cultural photography and dance project 
Idea and production: Cinzia Schincariol
Artists: Cinzia Schincariol and Elma Hache
Due to the sensitive content of the final video as it includes images of Elders no longer with us, the video cannot be shared on line. Please contact me directly for more information.

‘Heroes’ is an artistic project that aims to offer the opportunity to explore the bridges between youth and aging through a creative process offered by dance, movement and photography. If youth is driven by energy, growth, learning, experiencing, discovery of self, others in the world, aging deals with the ‘undoing’ of the body, loss of mastery but also with the distillation of the learning from life and a profound desire to share all this with the next generations, which instead is fed by unlimited on line information.

This is an intra-cultural ‘issue’ that is manifesting throughout the world. The roles of our parents and grandparents seems to fade away, especially when is about life skills and traditions and marginalisation is now the norm. Our attachment to life and perfect health can’t seems to be able to handle loss of memory, loss of faculty. And as we loose more and more the sense of community, our elders are just totally forgotten…

But can our elders be our heroes? What makes them special? How can they inspire us?  Do we really know them and how can we communicate with them. Can we see ourselves in our elders?

These questions become incredibly relevant in remote communities, liminal spaces between past and present.

 The project had three stages:

Workshops: offered to the children of the local school where they could familiarise with photography but also explore concepts of identity and perspective through movement.

Photo/Video marathon: Where the children were given the time and space to take photos and videos of their day to day life and the opportunity to interview their elders.

Performance: A final presentation to the school was made which included choreographed movement and the projection of the photos and videos captured by the children.

This project was developed in the land of the Kukuja people.

I would like to acknowledge the First Nations peoples of Australia as the traditional owners of the land.
I respect and acknowledge their spiritual connection as the custodians of their land and that their cultural heritage beliefs are still important for the living people of today. I pay respect to elders, past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded.