What can be seen from the many towers that guard and watch over the coastline of Puglia? And what can be seen from the other side, from the sea? Elena Bellantoni chooses this latter viewpoint to drop anchor, an anchor, a corpomorto(literally translated dead body: a marine term for a heavy object used as an anchor on the sea bottom of a buoy or a safety buoy). A gesture, a physical and symbolic effort to throw, to launch. Something about courage: the courage to dive and cross the sea.

This gesture lies at the very heart of Corpomorto: placing something on the bottom of the sea that turns into a safe anchorage and at the same time requires an element of courage (from the Italian an-coraggio). Semantic implications recalled by seafaring terms. The term corpomorto suggests the presence of many dead bodies in the seas making reference to the weight of cement (the heavy and cheap material of which a corpomorto is actually mainly made up). An-courage emphasizes the action of jumping into the sea, the courage to approach a dock and reach the mainland.

The artist as an anchor during a documented performative action whereby letters made of concrete at the bottom of the sea compose the nominal phrase anchor corpo-morto (dead-body) between the sky and land-courage. Even without a predicate, this sentence becomes a warning, a poetic, politically coded message. From the sea does emerge a vision of the tower, a phrase that can be enriched with new syntagms, a new discourse always susceptible to change and transformation.