“In corpo presente”, the IED Firenze project that turns the body into a collective language With the participation of Sabato De Sarno, Jacopo Benassi, and Sissi

In Florence, an educational experience took shape that aimed to transcend the boundaries of traditional training, transforming into a shared and radically creative process. In corpo presente is the new collective project promoted by IED Firenze, a path of research and experimentation involving students from different disciplines in an investigation of the body as a space of relation, action, and belonging. At the heart of the project is the involvement of three figures from different yet complementary fields: the artist Jacopo Benassi, the designer Sabato De Sarno, and the performance artist Sissi, who will not replace traditional teachers but will act as guides within an open laboratory, where knowledge is built through direct experience.

The project will unfold over several months, starting from December and culminating in the final event scheduled for April 28, 2026, with a collective performance inside the former Teatro dell’Oriuolo, today one of the most innovative hubs dedicated to visual and digital arts in the city. It is not merely a performative outcome, but an articulated process in which the extended time of research is an integral part of the educational experience. The path involves around fifty students, called to work chorally on contemporary themes such as freedom as an imperfect practice, physicality in an era dominated by the digital, the sense of belonging, and the possibility of authentic collective action. In this context, the body is not a subject to be represented, but an active instrument of knowledge and relation.

A central element of the project is the dialogue between body, sound, and textile matter. The garment becomes a modular and shared device that can be inhabited, transformed, disassembled, and recomposed, while the fabric turns into a sort of blank canvas capable of accommodating tensions and movements. But the essential part is the collective sense of the project, based on common gesture, contact, and continuous negotiation between individuality and group. Complementing the material aspect, there is work on sound and image intended to surround the textile creations with a dense sensory environment that amplifies the sense of physicality and adds new layers of meaning. The result will be a sort of tableau vivant in continuous transformation, far from any idea of spectacular staging and closer to a collective, fragile, and necessary declaration.

From an educational perspective, In corpo presente aims to ensure that training is not the classic transfer of skills but a shared experience capable of developing listening, sensitivity, and critical awareness. The idea is to rediscover new possibilities of expression and thought through the encounter and clash between different practices—fashion, visual arts, performance, and theoretical research. For this reason, the project fits perfectly into the dialogue that IED Firenze maintains with the territory and the city, bringing its activities also into the historic places of the city and transforming them into spaces of experimentation.

In corpo presente does not offer definitive answers or pre-packaged solutions but seeks to invite pausing on the experience, recognizing the complexity of the present, and imagining, through the body and matter, new forms of relation. A project that restores centrality to the physical and collective dimension of creative making, reminding us that every gesture can become an act of awareness and shared freedom.