CENOTAPH
Matteo Melotto | Davide Rocca| Lux Aeterna
MAY 7th - Paris 3e
A ceremonial immersion at the intersection of art, ritual, and transformation.
CENOTAPH is the latest collaborative project by Matteo Melotto, Lux Aeterna, and Davide Rocca in Paris unfolding through performance, sound, and video as fragments of a single immersive ritual.
Conceived within a present marked by war, systemic violence, and ecological collapse, the project positions itself in a speculative “after”—a post-apocalyptic threshold where the body and technology converge as agents of transformation. In this suspended landscape, ritual becomes both resistance and regeneration, opening the possibility of reactivation beyond collapse.
For two hours, performers inhabit sculptural structures composed of iron, organza, and epoxy resin, their bodies absorbed into architectural forms that function as post-spiritual totems. These hybrid presences dissolve the boundary between the physical and the sacred, between body and monument, creating a condition where presence is simultaneously restrained and intensified.
Through immobility and durational tension, the work establishes a controlled temporal space in which transformation occurs slowly, almost imperceptibly. Projected light operates not as illumination, but as an active technological ritual—generative rather than descriptive—animating the surfaces of the sculptures and reconfiguring them into living totems. Light becomes a force of production, shaping a speculative terrain that evokes the emergence of a new world from the ruins of the contemporary one.
The exhibition extends underground with STELE, a four-minute digital video tracing the passage of a white blind deer moving through the charred remains of a fallen world.
As a silent counterpoint to the live performance, STELE centers on the deer as an archetypal figure of rebirth and persistence. Emerging from subterranean darkness, it traverses the ruins as a regenerative apparition—a fragile yet enduring embodiment of life beyond devastation.
Here, blindness does not signify loss, but another form of vision. The deer becomes an imaginal force, reconstructing an idealized natural memory as an act of survival. Movement is guided not by sight, but by remembrance and projection, suggesting imagination itself as the final territory of resistance within darkness.
Surrender.
Transform.
Purify.
Awaken again.
Artistic Direction: RÖ
Where :
Thursday, May 7 • 7 PM - 10:00 PM
STELE
STELE is a 4-minute generative video piece by Matteo Melotto tracing the trajectory of a white blind deer traversing the blackened remains of a collapsed world.
Operating as a silent counterpoint to CENOTAPH, the work centers on the figure of the deer as an archetypal symbol of rebirth. Emerging from subterranean darkness, it moves through the ruins as a (re)generative apparition, carrying within it the persistence of life beyond collapse.
The passage unfolds as a form of inner vision: the blind deer embodies an imaginal force that reconstructs an idealized natural past as a means of survival. Within this framework, movement is guided by memory and projection, positioning imagination itself as a necessary condition for survival within darkness.
