Elena Bellantoni traces the riverbed in performance at Montelupo Fiorentino

On July 7, 2022, artist Elena Bellantoni performed "Mi sono seccata" on the dry bed of the Pesa river in Montelupo Fiorentino. Dressed in black, she cut a 25-kilo block of red clay into slabs, then threw, pressed, and stamped them onto the riverbed, blending clay with stones, wood, leaves, plants, and trash. The next day, she wrote "MISONOSECCATA" in white liquid clay on the riverbank. The performance involved audience participation: spectators could take clay slabs and place them on the riverbed, mimicking the artist's tracing action. Bellantoni described the work as a process of "formalizzazione finale" or "trasfigurazione," emphasizing the relational and processual nature of the artwork. The piece references the Pesa river's importance to local identity, history, and memory. The artist's gestures were characterized as spontaneous, open, free, precarious, impermanent, fragile, mobile, mutable, alive, and frayed. The performance was part of a broader reflection on community art, collective creation, and the unpredictable outcomes of artistic processes, drawing on Federico Fellini's account of filming 8½ and ideas from Josif Brodskij and Carl Schmitt.