Stories in words, music, and poetry
English | Italiano
On March 28, 2026, the Pisa chapter of GRASPnetwork presented the production "OF WIND AND GLASS: FRAGILE CREATURES," conceived and directed by theater director and GRASPnetwork member Patrizia Falcone. The musical program was curated by GRASPnetwork founding member John Favaro, while Julia Favaro oversaw the poster and program graphics. The installation featured on stage is by artist Delio Gennai. In the intimate setting of the Gennai contemporary art gallery and studio, immersed in an aerial installation by the same artist, performers Patrizia Falcone, John Favaro, and Julia Favaro gave voice to fragility through a blend of words, music, and poetry, purposefully sharing this event with a small and intimate audience.
The artistic installation was the scenic element chosen to represent fragility, having been created with lightweight, cut paper triangles, tied together and suspended, allowing them to move in the wind created by the arrival of each spectator and the changing movements on stage.
The project's development is based on the shared thesis of Vittorino Andreoli, which is reached after a reflection on fragility in its various forms: within one's soul, within the family, within the social structure. In "The Glass Man," Andreoli demonstrates a thesis that may seem paradoxical:
"The fragile person is man par excellence, because he considers others, his peers and others, potential victims, because where strength imposes, rejects, and represses, fragility welcomes, encourages, and understands."
Our generation, born after the Second World War in the West, could consider itself a generation that lived without war, even though the winds of terrorism, as well as natural disasters, have repeatedly shaken us.
In 2020, however, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic marked a global epochal event: all human beings simultaneously felt their lives in danger. Having to fight against something invisible but lethal made us perceive fragility in all its power. But the struggle of those who made the invisible visible has led to new awareness for medicine, psychology, and human ethics.
We must therefore accept that fragility is part of us: it is in our nature, it is in our essence. We yearn for the stability of equilibrium, but as living beings, we need constant change, and change inevitably brings with it a disruption of that equilibrium itself.
Hence our myriad fragilities, which, in small steps, lead us to the great turning points of our lives. Fragility is therefore a value that bears the traces of our humanity and clashes with the vision of an era like ours in which arrogant and authoritarian impulses are elevated to virtues.
Of wind and glass because, as Simone Weil wrote,
"Like glass, human beings are fragile. Our extreme exposure to the precariousness and contingency of existence is evident in the very event of birth, but it is important to recognize and demonstrate how fragility is the intrinsic strength of human life."
The awareness of fragility is our strength, without which we risk being happy without knowing it.
Our answers, however, are blowing in the wind.