Pavilion 9B will be engaged for the entire duration of the project by a series of delegated performances that will alternate and interweave, using the entire area of the pavilion as an arena thanks to a series of drawings on the floor that articolate the sequences, determine the place where the performances take place and define their own space even when they are inactive.
The centre of the pavilion becomes the arena for Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years in which two performers occupy the space defined by a design on the floor depicting a large white circle with a second negative circle inside it. Whenever one of the two actors moves, the other has to alter its position in such a way as to maintain the same distance that they had agreed upon at the start of the performance. All of this has to take place while they maintain eye contact. At a given moment this becomes impossible because the two circles are not concentric, thus the performers have to start their endless game of ongoing negotiation over again from scratch. Evoking metaphorical walls, the designs on the floor remind us that even the least visible walls often determine the course of our actions. The performance The Sinthome Score transforms the roles of speaker and listener into those of reader and dancer. The score in this instance is based on an Italian translation of Jacques Lacan's 23rd Seminar entitled Le Sinthome (1975 – 1976), a series of ten lessons that dipped into James Joyce's writings to explore the concept of language and the unconscious. In the score, drawn by the artist as a protocol of the performance, each lesson is accompanied by a list of movements. Two performers establish the performance's rhythm, pace and speed. García's choreographic score offers the visitor the opportunity to join in this study of text and movement, of a casual stuttering of the body and of lapsus linguae. At the back of the space, in The Labyrinth of Female Freedom, a woman performer reads poems written by female poets, modulating her voice between public proclamation to private whisper. The space of this performance is defined by a white circle on the floor, a written text with the words “Position, Voice, World” (a quote from chicano feminist activist and writer Gloria Anzaldúa) and a small drawing on gold depicting a dismembered female figure. The project is completed by three nomadic performances which move throughout the space and even expand into the outdoor space: The Sphinx, The Messenger and Little object “a.” In the first performance a woman selects a visitor (seemingly ignoring all the others) and proposes a game involving answering a set of questions with either a "yes" or a "no". If the answer is correct the next question is asked, but if the answer is incorrect the game ends. Only the sphinx knows the answers and how she decides whether an answer is correct or not remains an enigma. In the second performance a performer (desperately) seeks to get visitors to help him decipher a message printed on an old piece of paper. The performer runs, hides, stands up, giving people the impression that he is carrying a burden he has to get rid of at any cost. In the third performance, a performer walks around the space with a clenched fist. Every now and then he scrutinises one of the visitors, drawing close and opening his fist, briefly revealing a small gold item in the palm of his hand which he then rapidly recloses.
A project in which would be hard put to seek a single or standardised plot that whisks us off into a mysterious and fascinating dimension. A labyrinth that is a straight line of seeming digressions and allusions where symmetry and disorder compose a design whose outlines we discover through time, duration and repetition. It is an attempt to replace the memory in as much as we repeat what we refuse to remember, a nod to the fragile nature of existence and an allusion to the ceaseless signs that we refuse to see or to interpret and that prompt us to eternally repeat history.
Performers
Michelangelo Miccolis (coordinator), Geoffrey Carey, Brianda Carreras, Roberta Da Soller, Lyncoln Diniz, Maria Elena Fantoni, Ilaria Genovesio e nick von kleist
Schedule Performances
Tuesday to Friday
from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years and The Labyrinth of Female Freedom
Saturday and Sunday
from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
The Sinthome Score and The Labyrinth of Female Freedom
from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years, The Labyrinth of Female Freedom, The Sinthome Score and – alternating - The Sphinx or The Messenger or Little object “a”