THE MIRROR AS ELEMENT
The mirror element is central in Espelho meu, distorting a linear time and space.
Foucault (1984) says, in Dits et écrits, and elaborating on the relations between utopia and heterotopia, that:
[The] mirror is, above all, a utopia, since it is a place with no place. In the mirror I see myself, where I am not, in an unreal space […]. (p. 47)
According to the same author the mirror is also:
[...] a heterotopia, since the mirror really exists, and where it has, on the space I occupy a kind of opposite effect; it is from the mirror that I am absent from the place where I am [...]. (p. 47)
The mirror is a fascinating element starting from either the mirror as physical object or as a virtual mirror that exists only in a layer of reading a space and a time.
Espelho meu, departs from a site-specific approach and interacts, from its conception, with space and time (9 minutes of performative act, 9 columns at the top of the FBAUP entrance foyer, 4 slices of video projection, 4 columns at the bottom of the same foyer, a statue, a performer) from there to the deconstruction of a possible pre-signification.
This appropriation of space in the decision of the work macro-structure, as well as of its presentation, is another way explored to remove obstacles between public and performer, between space and event, allowing the interaction without being imposed and creating the ground for a meeting between performative exteriorization (an outside the performer) and emancipated reading (an outside the viewer).
The separation of stage and auditorium is something to be transcended. The precise aim of the performance is to abolish this exteriority in various ways: by placing the spectators on the stage and the performers in the auditorium; by abolishing the difference between the two by transferring the performance to other sites by identifying it with taking possession of the street, the town or life. (Rancière, 2009, p. 15)