Fronte Vacuo is a transdisciplinary performance group born and based in Berlin. Fronte Vacuo combines body art, dancetheater, audiovisual performance and technology. Its works are defined by unexpected methods of audience interaction, radical bodily performances and rigorous work on symbolism. Their materials are human and nonhuman bodies, organic symbionts, artificial intelligence machines, spatial sounds and images interwoven into tumultuous biomes. In Italian, “Fronte” means military or political front, and “vacuo” means vacuous, without contents. “Fronte vacuo” refers thus to a militant front empty of meaning, a cynic reference to today’s blind belief in techno-capitalism.

The group’s ongoing project, Humane Methods (2019-ad infinitum), is the saga of a broken society reemerging from a ruinous futuristic past. The stories of this fictional society become stage productions, street performances and hybrid live installations where audiences and performers live hyper-real science fiction scenarios. Defined by an intense sensorial charge, their performances and installations reflect on the methods of violence of today’s algorithmic societies, while offering a space where to corporeally test questions of responsibility, interdependence and power.

Fronte Vacuo was founded in 2019 by artists Marco Donnarumma, Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari. Witnessing the convergence of ecological disruption, socio-political polarization and technological advance, they combined their individual practices into a single artistic entity. Fronte Vacuo, thus, enmeshes elements of media art, performance, interactive music, video art and bioart into a practice that sidesteps delimitations of genre. The group functions in a mode of dynamic authorship. Works may be directed by any member of the group, while creative roles are shuffled in ever-changing ways. Fronte would not exist without its allies and its research network – a local and international community for artistic and scientific research in the performing arts, art & science and technology.

Some facts

During the two seasons 2022-24, Fronte Vacuo has been invited to join the Volkstheater Wien as Artist in Residence. The group is currently creating 6 new productions in collaboration with the theater’s team and ensemble. The project, entitled [6XXX6] – 6 movements for 6 spaces, started in autumn 2022 with δISSOLUTION and will continue with five site-specific performances conceived for the guts and stages of the Viennese theater.

Being radically transdisciplinary, the group’s works is presented across different artistic landscapes, including theater, dance, media art and art & technology. Their performances have been shown in national theaters, galleries, independent venues, festival and parking lots in Germany, Austria, France, UK, Croatia and Italy. Fronte Vacuo co-producers include Volkstheater Wien (AT), tanzhaus NRW (DE), CTM Festival (DE), Kontejner (HR), PACT Zollverein (DE), Romaeuropa Festival (IT), Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains (FR).

Institutional funding and support has been provided by Fonds Darstellende Künste, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Berlin and Bündnis internationaler Produktionshäuser (DE). Their research into performing arts and technology happens in collaboration with a range of partners, including, among others, the Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique (LRI) of Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Academy for Theater and Digitality, Dortmund.