Today is September 16.
Yesterday, I came back from Berlin to Milan. I had slept through the entire day and night. Berlin Art Week had been intense. I even didn’t unpacked my things, I just lay in bed, and lay there, and lay there. I had no energy for anything else just to listen to Wagner’s Prelude from Lohengrin on endless repeat because it really renews my being.
Then it was 7 pm. I got up, took a shower, got dressed, got on a Lime bike, and rode to Francesca’s for dinner. On my way to Francesca’s, I passed a street called Via Tessa. I stopped for a second to take a photo and immediately sent it to my friend Tessa Nijdam. She replied right away that it must be some kind of sign. I told her I’m waiting for her in Milan. That’s the sign.
Then I arrived at Francesca’s address. I passed by Cadorna station and thought, how convenient it must be for her to travel when she lives so close to Cadorna, where she can take the direct Malpensa Express train to the airport. She never has to worry about whether she’ll make it on time.
I walked through enormous wooden doors, as if I were entering a castle, climbed the stairs, and, breathless from the walk, rang the doorbell.
Francesca welcomed me with sun in her smile, as always.
I brought her a little gift from my Radical Empathy edition, written in Cyrillic. “ФРАНЧЕСКА, НЕ БРИНИ” Even though she is Italian and can’t read Cyrillic, she understands my intention. She thanked me for the gift, which she loved, and placed it next to an iconic Jeff Koons sculpture.
It was my first time at Francesca’s home, and I had the feeling that I wasn’t entering an apartment but a museum. From the entrance door all the way through the living room and salon, works of art were displayed everywhere.
Francesca told me that she was crazy about art and took me to a secret room to show me a new work that had just arrived. It was a painting by the artist Issy Wood, still unopened in its packaging.
On the table in the salon, candles were burning and filling the room with such a noble scent. I think it was Santal 33. I didn’t check.
I noticed a David Hockney book on the table, and right next to it, Cattelan’s book, and his Passport. I picked it up to look through it.
Then their charismatic housekeeper approached me, wearing white gloves, and asked:
Do you love Cattelan?
I said: I do. I really do.
He then helped me, with his white-gloved hands, to make a video of it.
We sat down at the table and dinner began.
Francesca’s husband had prepared risotto with porcini mushrooms. It was delicious. Then came an elegantly prepared meat dish, which I skipped because I haven’t eaten meat since I was ten years old.
The wonderful housekeeper in the white gloves immediately began worrying about what I would eat. He brought me the most delicious fennel I have ever tasted, homemade hummus, and a salad of the most delicious cherry tomatoes and rocket, with some kind of dressing that I am still thinking about.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate fennel and cherry tomatoes that good. Maybe I never have.
Slowly, the evening passed. The plates and glasses became emptier and emptier.
Then it was time for dessert. It was a homemade cake that her friend Nicoletta had brought. It was a traditional dish from Turin, but I’ve forgotten its name.
The housekeeper in the white gloves began serving it, carrying one piece after another to the table, while Francesca’s husband followed behind him in parallel, adding a little cloud of whipped cream to each plate.
As the whipped cream melted and the dessert slowly disappeared from everyone’s plates, I felt it was time to fill the room with another kind of treat: a lullaby. It was bedtime anyway.
In my artistic practice, I have an edition called Sonic Room, where I enter someone’s living room like a kind of sonic intruder, or a sonic thief who comes into your living room not to steal something from you, but to give you something instead.
That is what I do. I transform ordinary living rooms into sonic rooms by initiating them through sound – through my voice, when I feel like it.
And that evening, I began because I felt as if I owed Francesca an emotion.
So the two of us quietly conspired and agreed that she would slowly turn off the lights, and that I would open my mouth.
And that is exactly what happened.
From the noise in the room, from the sound of spoons touching porcelain plates, suddenly, in the half-darkness, the only thing echoing through the space was that lullaby.
When I finished, I thanked my choir of angels who are always with me, singing alongside me, because I never sing alone. My luminous, sonoric army is always with me, bringing peace and joy into other souls.
When that happens, when peace is activated inside another human being, my mission is complete. At least for that day. And that is exactly what happened.
I finished singing the lullaby, and then there was applause. But the silence that followed, and the blissful expressions on their faces, said much more than the applause ever could.
I felt that somehow, everyone sitting around that table, everyone in that room, had become connected, as if we had briefly become one single entity – suchness, together with all the paintings and artworks surrounding us.
The man sitting next to me, whose name I have forgotten, said that through the song he had truly felt my country and its spirit.
I told him; But that wasn’t a song from my country, its was Japanese lullaby.
Everyone started laughing, but the man was actually right.
He had truly felt the spirit of my country, but from a previous life. In a previous incarnation, I lived in Japan, and through my voice and the emotion I carried while singing the Japanese Itsuki Lullaby, he somehow sensed it. So he was right, after all.
Even though in this life I was born in Serbia and have no connection to Japan, on a meta level, I am connected to the spirit and sonic essence of Japan.
Then they asked me about my surname – where the Italian surname Castellucci came from, since I am half Serbian, half Macedonian.
Francesca then asked me to tell them the story behind my surname and my long-durational performance.
So I briefly told them that I came up with the idea of changing my surname every seven years. I had read that, on a cellular level, everything in our bodies changes every seven years. So I started wondering: if everything in our bodies changes every seven years, why should our surname – or even our name – remain the same?
Well, I actually love my first name, because I was named after John Lennon’s song Julia, which he wrote and dedicated to his mother, who was also named Julia. I simply love the sound of my name, so I don’t want to change it. But the surname – that I will continue changing every seven years.
On the other hand, there is something good about not becoming too attached to a particular first and last name that you have built for yourself, because it is easy to fall into the trap of believing in your own image, in your own name-as if it meant something in the universe as a whole, where it means absolutely nothing. In that sense, it is good for me and for my practice to remain unattached rather than tied to my name, or to the image I have of myself.
It gives you the freedom to move and create, without cementing yourself into a single mould or getting trapped in one version of yourself, putting yourself in a box or even burying yourself before your time. Because the moment you start believing in one fixed thing and remain stuck in it for too long, that is the end of your career, of your creative process or progress.
And the reason I chose the surname Castellucci in the first place was almost an initial capsule.
In 2020, I met Romeo at the Cividale del Friuli at Mittelfest, where his performance / installation Il Terzo Reich was being premiered in a deconsecrated Chiesa di San Francesco. At the time, I had an art duo with my friend, the Ljubljana-based artist Petra Varl. We went together to see his premiere because we genuinely loved and appreciated his work and his aesthetic.
Then we decided we wanted to invite him to take part in a seven-minute interactive performance. At the time, we had costumes made of silver and gold foil, which looked extremely attractive.
Then, suddenly, Romeo appeared, and I immediately said: Oh, Romeo, I am the real Julia.
He replied: Oh, I am the real Romeo. You have a nice dress, so let’s get married.
We both laughed and that is exactly what happened.
We took a picture together in front of the Chiesa di San Francesco, and our marriage lasted exactly seven minutes, haha. So afterwards I actually changed my surname in my official documents, and now I am officially Castellucci but in my Cyrillic script, it looks like this: Кастелучи.
The story that we were married for seven minutes is not true in reality, but in my imagination it is. And it sounds good. It is a good story, and I love good stories, even when they are completely invented, haha. As long as they sound good, that is the most important thing to me.
And this story sounds good, and I have every right to tell it, even though Romeo Castellucci has absolutely no idea that I am his ex-wife and that we were married for seven minutes.
And so a lovely atmosphere developed around the table, with quite a lot of humour, because I love good humour. Then the man sitting opposite me, whose name I have also forgotten, told me that I had intelligent humour. So I immediately replied to that person, that you only recognise what you carry within yourself – nothing more and nothing less.
Then Francesco’s husband came over and sat next to me and asked me why I make this kind of art, what the point of it is.
I said:
Transformation. Changing states and changing feelings. Feelings are the most important thing in life, and it is important to keep changing them rather than remaining trapped in a single state or a single feeling. That is life. That is art, for me.
He understood when I said that to him.
Although he was surprised to see me there in their home, as if I had arrived directly from the cosmic middle of nowhere, and then Francesca explained to her husband how we started hanging out and how we fell in love, actually, we didn’t fall in love, we rose in it.
She told him that we first met on Hydra, that she was fascinated by me, and that I told her I was fascinated by the sun in her smile.
Then she told him that I am currently in Milan, on a residency at Viafarini, working on new research and developing my new acousmatic objects.
He asked me what that was, so I explained that I am making a sonic body-a new body, new organs: a sonic elbow, sonic shoulder, sonic knee. When I mentioned the knee, he said that he has two artificial knees from playing tennis. So I said:
Excellent. Arrange a meeting with your orthopedic surgeon and scientific team, and let’s see if we can do an experiment and make your knees sonic. Sonic knees. So that every time you walk or play tennis, your knees sing.
We all laughed because the idea was very funny, but it is actually possible.
By then it was already late, so at one point we all felt that it was time to leave.
We all went down the stone staircase in a very good mood, and then a married couple, whose names I have also forgotten, kindly drove us safely home.
We said goodbye and wished each other buonanotte.
When I got home, I took a shower and found myself thinking about the feeling between us. Even though we haven’t known each other for very long, we somehow sense each other. I love Francesca because she is real, and because she has sun in her smile, always when I see her.