Men in movement? Metamorfosi immaginate

The essay tells of the meeting on several occasions between a sociologist who has long been passionate about gender issues - expressed above all through the lenses of counter-narratives and artistic languages ​​- and a performer (actress and illustrator), equally interested in the theme through various artistic productions (street theatre, puppet theatre, drawings with different techniques...). This meeting gave rise to a double product: first - during the first Covid 19 lockdown - a volume with drawings (not an illustrated book) that combines 'eros' and 'logos', in which images and words have equal space and equal dignity and then - almost two years later - a video, created starting from the book with the help of a professional videomaker and activist in the feminist and LGBTQ+ world. The work, with a plurality of languages ​​and perspectives, thematizes the transformative processes of masculinities, restoring their crisis dimension, but also the possibility/need to widen - if it is not yet possible to remove them - the cages that establish precise boundaries and rules to perform 'being a man'. All the males encountered are also included and evoked in some way and, in particular, those who verbally (in interviews and focus groups) shared pieces of their biographies: they too are a precious and indispensable component of this collective process.