69562

 

Performance review 69562

Name of the show: existência / existence_reprise
Concept and direction: João Fiadeiro
Performers and researchers: Sílvia Pinto Coelho, Luca Bellezze, Luara Learth Moreira, Julia Salem, João Estevens, Joana Von Mayer Trindade, Iván Haidar and Julián Pacomio
Place of the performance: premiered in Paris 2002, mentioned in CCB’s João Fiadeiro. INTROSPECTIVE
Opening time of the show: May 5th – September 22nd, 2024

The opening act of a show begins with the monologue about a body and a museum wall. We observe a body, crushed to the ground and struggling to get up in an attempt to gain consciousness over situation. As we watch the body struggle we can draw a parallel with struggles of the narrator to identify a connection between a body and a room.

Given the complete freedom in a white cube, what does a body do to experience the space? Nature says it acts like a gas, trying to fill all the void and every crevices, trying to feel every surface. The interpreters are interacting with the interior of an empty exhibition space trying to mimic the body of a museum and get as close as they can to becoming one with it.

As a social institution with rich ever-developing history, a museum already has its own rituals and practices, yet João Fiadeiro here attempts to invent a completely new way of existing within a space usually curated for still images and breathless figures by breaking the rules and the routes of the exhibition parkour. Testing the limits to the point of overstimulating and overwhelming the bodies and the space. Using everything that an empty hall of a white cube has to offer we get to notice those specific features of a space. The museum space is now filled with character, playfulness and creates a dialogue with creatures filling its walls.

What adds to the flow of the performance is that it made as a Real time composition. With no score or direction of action, performer’s only goal was to enchant the viewer into the dramaturgy, to gain the viewers trust and for them together to get lost within the space. This practice is supposed to bring you to the true definition of presence and so it does as the narrative writes itself on stage and with each performance it allows for a new scene to be depicted.

From my perspective this performance talks about a relationship of a human body with a body of a museum. Expanding on what place does a performing body takes in a modern museum of arts. Questioning boundaries and connections between an organism and an institution.