7 Configurations (2014-2019) is a cycle of performances and installations conceived by performance artist, composer, director and inventor Marco Donnarumma. The cycle focuses on the integration of new technologies in human bodies and lives, as well as its implications. How to understand the effects of AI and robotics on interpersonal and institutional power?

Through combined research on movement, dramaturgy, sound and technological engineering, each of the works in the cycle combines human bodies, robotic hardware, machine learning software and microorganisms into a particular ‘configuration’. For Donnarumma a human-machine ‘configuration’ is a hybrid form of embodiment, where each element affect the other to the point that the borders between them become confused. He uses this idea as a template to create actual, new configurations of humans and machines that are then staged as performances, installations of photographs.

The 7 Configurations cycle begins with the formation of hybrid bodies without predefined identities, the amorphous configurations of Corpus Nil (2016) and Amygdala (2018). The focus then shifts to the coalescence of multiple identities into one body, with the monstrous and graceful configurations of Eingeweide (2018). Taking a wider view, Alia Zu tai (2018) concentrates on the relations among mongrel bodies and their struggle to co-exist. Finally, Calyx (2019) exhibits bodies that have become relics, ruins of those configurations, remains of what once was or could have been.

Each episode of the cycle creates tensely intimate and physical experiences for both audiences and performers through a symbiotic relation between movement and sound. By expanding Donnarumma’s previous work on biophysical music, the pieces in the cycle couple interactive music created in real time with amplified sounds from the performers’ muscles with choreographic methods inspired by ideas of coercion, use and abuse.

For the project, Donnarumma gathered a group of artists, scientists and designers and led them through a multi-year close collaboration. As a result, the 7 Configurations offers a complex combination of body art, dance theater, sound art and media art with science and technology. The cycle embodies, thus, a multi-layered art form with a focus on performativity; of machines, of bodies, of gender, of non-human agents. It is a statement on the effects of new technologies on the enforcement of conformity, as well as their potential to reframe the very idea of ‘human’.

The works included in the 7 Configurations toured extensively for 8 years reaching 19 countries worldwide. The pieces are currently part of Donnarumma’s repertoire and available for booking in various formats and combinations. The cycle has been realised by Donnarumma as part of his Fellowship at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Graduiertenschule, and received the support of numerous co-producers and institutions, including Goethe-Institut, Wissenschaft im Dialog (DE), CTM Festival (DE), Chronus Art Center (CN), Retune Festival (DE), Goldsmiths U. of London (UK), Baltan Laboratories (NL) and Resonans Festival (DK).