2021/05

CURADURA

Curadura cohabits and ferments at the TBA. During three weeks, a group of experiments, studies and conviviality with artists, thinkers and jelly disks of kombucha and other bacteria is proposed to transversally imagine theatre as a public space of social responsibility. Curadura intersperses an ongoing artistic residency with a series of Polemic-Poetic Assemblies at the weekend and Fire/Friction moments during the week, in which the research and practices of the residency are open to visitation.

“Like kefir, we and all nucleated cell organisms, from amoebas to whales, are aggregates, not just individuals,” said biologist Lynn Margulis. Curadura proposes to look at performativity from an expanded duration – of the theatrical space and its materialities, of the body from bacterial life and its fermentations, of words and slogans as drapes where “genres” and “natures” are artificially fed or, simply, cultivating attention on plants. The theatre is proposed as a place for relationships that are decentred from the “vision”, a space for sharing what is usually unseen, questioning its often forced models of collectivity. Indisciplining the practices, multiplying temporalities, and opening the experience to the indetermination of the processes, we want to problematize the political borders of theatre, overflowing them.

The Poetic Polemics Assemblies (Assembleias Polémicas Poéticas) are weekly public meetings that function as “energy concentrates”, where a group of resident artists and occasional guests orbit around liminal questions that need many human and extra-human people to think.

Curadura’s first assembly is organised in collaboration with the BEE. project, a creative hive/queerlombo and unit for the reception, support, visibility and resistance of queer black artists from the Lisbon scene in party form. It is a reverence to Ballroom culture and Afrodiasporic rhythms, from Vogue to FUNK, from Carnival to Funaná, from R & B to dancehall and whatever the beat takes us.

#desbundar #artedodesbunde #aqueerlombamento #blacklivesmatter #allblacklivesmatter #blackqueermagic #supportyourlocalqueers

On the second weekend, the assembly is held in collaboration with Rizoma Cooperativa Integral, a self-managed community grocery store in Lisbon, and Hugo Dunkel, eternal passionate about food and digestive culture. In the same way that the micro-organisms present in kombucha contaminate the biome where they are found, the public space is imagined as a fertile biome for encounter, speculation and transformation. Food on the table, or even turning the table upside down to eat closer to the ground.

#fermentation #decomposition #living food #bacteriasthainhabitatus #hotelofkombuchas

At the closure of Curadura, the assembly is organised in collaboration with the Chimera Rosa collective, a nomadic laboratory created in Barcelona in 2008 that investigates and experiments with the body, technoscience and identities. Quimera Rosa has been questioning the boundaries between humanity and vegetality through the Trans*Plant project. We will also investigate Lisbon’s contemporary “urban forest”, composed of urine-fed weeds.

#vegetality #trans_plant #chlorophyll #biotariat #weedsdwarfs #edibleweeds

Fire/Friction (Fogo/Fricção) is a moment to cultivate joy with moments of shared study, collective experiences, readings, film watching, warm up practices in the course of the residences.

The first meeting tried to find the glow of the possibility of being together and make the space vibrate, with a vogue workshop organized by BEE. and Adriano Vicente.

The second was a moment of surprise where micro-organisms mediated processes of fermentation and rambling. Finding relief in the possibility of being together, talking and contemplating space and time expand. In this session the film Becoming Extinct (Wild Grass) by Elke Marhöfer was also projected.

The third was composed by a showcase of small films, organized by Teresa Castro and João dos Santos Martins, where it was possible to glimpse the relationship established between the capture of the movement of plants, allowed by the appearance of cinema at the end of the 19th century, and choreographic experiments of incorporation of these vegetable beings. The two activities follow the course of the “century of movement” through various techniques and positions that open points of reflection for an interspecies interaction. Some of these films were accompanied by spontaneous conversations and performances.

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⌂ TECHNICAL INFO

Organization: Ana Rocha, Ana Rita Teodoro, Carlos Manuel Oliveira, Claraluz Keiser, João dos Santos Martins, Rita Natálio

Participants and co-organisers of the assemblies: BEE. The United Kingdom of Beeshas, Carmo Gê Pereira, Hugo Dunkel, Puta da Silva, Quimera Rosa e Rizoma Cooperativa Integral

In residency with: Adriano Vicente, Alina Ruiz Folini, Bruno Caracol, Di Cândido, Filipe Pereira, Gisela Casimiro, Inês Neto dos Santos, Letícia Skrycky, Lula Pena, Quimera Rosa, Sara Vieira Marques, Vânia Doutel Vaz, Teresa Silva e Teresa Castro

Executive production: Claraluz Keiser/Associação Parasita

Video: João Martinho

Photo: Isabel Cordovil

Image: Dayana Lucas

Coproduction: Associação Parasita e Teatro do Bairro Alto

Acknowledgements: André Matos, Carlota Lagido, Francesco Rocca, Lucas Almeida, Manuel João Martins, Teatro Praga