“When we talk about hate, we must ask the question: Who hates, and why do they hate? What power dynamics and systems of domination lie within these individuals?”
(Hate, Şeida Kurt)
Motus’ new creation, Frankenstein_diptych (love story + history of hate), is now a two-headed monster.
United in the form of a diptych, the two chapters of this project—dedicated to the figure of Frankenstein—explore the polarities of human existence: love and hate, creation and destruction, desire and rejection. They interrogate the fragilities that define our contemporary condition, delving into what it means to feel like an outsider in today’s world.
By composing and deconstructing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Motus transforms the romantic myth into an urgent warning and a plea for empathy in this “new dark age.” The work investigates the relationships that either form or destroy the very possibility of living together.
Frankenstein_diptych doesn’t merely revisit a literary myth—it reactivates it as a political mirror of the present. What happens when we are not heard? When otherness is perceived as a threat rather than a possibility?
The project confronts the dynamics of vulnerability and rejection, presenting a work that is both critical reflection and poetic immersion.
In Frankenstein (a love story), 2023—the first part of the performance—we enter the abyssal solitude of Mary Shelley and her creations: hybrid, marginal, restless bodies in search of love and connection that prove impossible; unregulated affections; recognitions never granted.
Here, Motus explores the fragile boundary between human and non-human, between care and abandonment, between desire and fear—through three characters on stage: the creator, the creatress, and the creature—symbiotically one and the same.
Frankenstein (History of Hate), 2025, is the backlash—the consequence of rejection, of society’s inability to handle the relationship with the Other. It is what happens when love—denied and humiliated—breaks; when an encounter fails and turns into rejection and rage.
Here, tenderness implodes, benevolence distorts, and the monster appears—in the flames, in the void of listening, in the wound of loneliness.
He was not born evil: he was made so through pain and misunderstanding, transformed by the gaze of others.
Frankenstein_diptych (love story + history of hate) is a visceral and political inquiry: the monster is not born, but made—by a community unable to recognize him. In this dark mirror, we see reflected the present: a world that rejects, discriminates, and creates new marginalities. Meanwhile, Motus’ creatures continue to search—stubbornly—for a place in the world, because it is at the margins that monsters proliferate, between worlds.
As a bridge between the two parts, Daemon was born among the Norwegian fjords in 2024—a site-specific performance exploring the creature’s transformation in dialogue with her creator (Mary Shelley/Alexia Sarantopoulou).
In collaboration with Eduard Papescu, the children’s workshop I am alive was developed, along with the adult lab/happening My rage is a silent raving, designed for Mama Umbria International and Kampnagel (Hamburg).
Crowning this long journey, in March 2026, the film/documentary [ÒDIO]—winner of the ITALIAN COUNCIL 2024—will be presented at Mambo Museum in Bologna.
