This work is intended to retrace the various moments of the life of Moses, as they are narrated in the Book of Exodus. In the events of this man’s life there is something that inheres in the substance of our time.
As with Michelangelo’s Moses - described in the text that Freud dedicated to this work - the prophet of monotheism is presented here as a man, forced to react when faced with the difficulties that this God –without name and without image- puts before him: the abandonment of his newborn body in the waters of the Nile, the mystery of the burning bush in which the blinding splendour of the glory of YHWH - in the kabod - manifests itself, and the 40 days passed on Mount Sinai where he receives the tables of the law only to discover, on his return, the golden calf erected and venerated by his people.
The character Moses is dissolved across the scenes, disregarding biographical narration to extend itself over concepts, sentiments and premonitions of a revelation that acts now, in our time. Moses is brought closer to the spectator’s gaze, embodied in every element of the performance, which is conceived in tableaus and fragments; psychic vibrations that emerge like ripples across the space-time of life, at once routine and obscurely perceived as an exile.
The title evokes the famous spiritual sung by the slaves of America, who identified themselves with the Judaic people, presage of their return to Africa. The Israelites, able to return from their exile in Babylonia and - thanks to Moses - from their slavery in Egypt, were the symbol of their next release, as well as now, that singing of the slaves in America, it may mean the condition of our slavery incorporeal, exiled from being. Two images, ultimately, channel and guide this long performance, like the two faces of one and the same coin: the burning bush, that represents the true image, that negates any and all representation - “I am he who I am” - and the golden calf, that instead portrays the false image, the one that illustrates this same phrase. All that lies between is the object of this work.