‘Birds singing electrons flowing in circuits’ is a mixed media text-based video and performance. It is part of ‘A Philology of Emotions’, an ongoing multidisciplinary project that investigates the body in relation to illness and physical pain. Using video, performance, photography, sound, text, and embroidery Gentili aims to create an alphabet of gestures, movements, sounds, and embodied text to identify a universal language able to translate and transform inner worlds of sickness, liberating the persona from the stigma of being ill.

‘Birds singing electrons flowing in circuits’ explores illness and pain focusing on the human electrical system and brain. It also questions the concept of femininity connected to the sick body.

It develops as a dream where two women are intertwined by illness. They belong to different dimensions. One is a savage figure connected to the animal and magical world, while the other one is connected to the social world translating the brain areas into movement and stillness.
They both resonate with the landscape through the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water that represent the alchemical journey of metamorphosis.

The text is written by Gentili mixing embodied writing, medical terminology, and text taken from Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebooks.

In the live performance, Gentili disassembles language and recreates it playing with tone, rhythm, repetition, the physical presence, and the projection of the video.