"Transitus Animae. We are all just passing through, we don’t know for how long. If we care to stop for a second, we will see our daily dance with death and the constant transit of the souls."

--Firenza Guidi, Artistic Director

The Butler International Theatre Project presents a site-specific performance at the IMA entitled "Transitus Animae: an exploration of the taboo" with guest artist Firenza Guidi, Artistic Director of European Live Art Network (ELAN). Developed in response to IMA galleries and public spaces, takes the audience from the IMA parking garage all the way up to the third floor of contemporary art.

Note: the performance is 45 minutes in length and may not be suitable for young children.

Excerpt from Artistic Statement:
"Transitus Animae is part of the 2006-2008 taboo season of work: a journey and exploration into the darker side of being. I began my visiting the galleries and interacting with space, from the underground car-park right through the "never odd or even" palindrome, and into Breaking the Mode and On Procession exhibitions. The spaces visited began to fester in my imagination. Back in Butler studio my performance work was unfolding on a separate plane, using old and new elements of physical and emotional language which is now my own. I returned to IMA. Over and over again. Words began to appear. On Procession made me focus on walking as a personal or political statement. It made me focus more attentively on our title Transitus Animae, Transit, In transit, the passage of the souls. As different kinds of walking were explored as performative means of inhabiting the space, the words, spurred by the observation of how people moved in space in IMA, began to proliferate: Walking, sleep-walking, parading, processing, running, strolling, loitering, strutting, catwalking, escalating, walking up, walking down, simply putting one foot in front of another, passing, passing by, stopping, standing, staring, sitting, shuffling, sliding, hovering. And always. Always, back to walking.

Ultimately, Transitus Animae is a total sensual experience. What the audience will feel is an energy, a music, a smell, a touch, a performer gazing right into their eyes as they search for clues. This is not theatre. It is performance. Performers incarnate: they do not represent, illustrate or describe. That, of course, does not stop my performance installations from being full of theatricality. The location of any performance is a co-player. Nothing happens, there is no narrative, no named characters, but for an hour we inhabit another world, one forged by the nature of the place, what we see and hear from the performers, and what we contribute by our presence and our own selective engagement."