LANGUAGE: LIS, Italian
DURATION: 50 minutes
TICKET: €13 full, €11 reduced
At the end of the show, an aperitif will be offered by Proposta Vini to the audience.
In 1891, four years before the Lumière brothers’ first screening, Georges Demenÿ invented a device capable of projecting a moving image for the very first time: his own face saying “Je vous aime” (“I love you”). A fleeting projection, but technically revolutionary, later remembered by History as a grand artistic experiment.
Je Vous Aime starts here, but looks beyond official History. Through storytelling, LIS (Italian Sign Language), video, and Visual Sign, the performance brings to light the anti-history – the lives and experiences erased from mainstream narratives.
Demenÿ’s projection was not an artistic experiment: it was designed to teach lip-reading to Deaf youth, who had been forbidden from using sign language after the 1880 Milan Congress. This historical denial of using the body and a movement-based language becomes the ethical and kinaesthetic core of the performance. (Italian Sign Language was officially recognized only in 2021).
Je Vous Aime examines prejudice against Deaf people, challenges the primacy of spoken language, and rewrites the “literature of the masters,” restoring voice and movement to those erased from history.
IN SHORT
Inspired by Demenÿ’s first moving image, originally created to teach lip-reading to Deaf youth, the performance uses storytelling, video, and LIS to explore prejudice and question the dominance of spoken language.
By Diana Anselmo
With Diana Anselmo, Sara Pranovi
Production CHIASMA
Video testimonies Paolo Girardi, Leonarda Catalano, Mario Minucci, Maurizio Anselmo, Anna Folchi, Vincenza Giuranna, Diana Vantini, Matteo Pedrazzi
Supported by IntercettAzioni – Lombardy network
Photos Sara Meliti
Diana Anselmo is a Deaf native signer and Queer visual artist and performer. Bilingual in ITA/LIS, he made his debut in 2021 with Autoritratto in 3 atti (Self-Portrait in 3 Acts) and abroad with Le Sacre du Printemps (2022) by Xavier Le Roy. His research on Deaf History led him to the performances Je Vous Aime (2023) and Pas Moi (2025), which later became exhibitions at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin) and Scuola Piccola Zattere (Venice). Since 2024, he has been collaborating with Cristina Kristal Rizzo, with whom he co-authored Monumentum DA.
Since 2025, he has been the artistic director of the Repubblica Sorda performing arts festival, which will see its second edition in 2026.
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PAROLE MOSAICO
At 18:30 at Sala Maier there will be “Parole Mosaico”, a short meeting before the show led by the artistic direction, to share the themes, history and language of the performance and offer some keys to interpretation.
