Reacclimatizations
Night of the Museums, Barcelona 2018
Theatre Academy, Helsinki, 2018
Psi#26, Calgary, Canada, 2019
Institut Finlandais, Paris, 2019
Video-scenic installation/Performance
Reacclimatizations is a scenic installation based on the study of floral stage frames (wings) of the end of the 19th century and early 20th century theatre set models kept in the archives of the Museum of Scenic Arts of Barcelona. The material study of the selected archives is combined with a theoretical focus on the performativity of the vegetal in Catalan modernism and in contemporary art and architecture. The project stems from my doctoral artistic research on scenic thinking, (re)directing and queer-ed time ecology. More specifically, it looks into the reconditioning of human agency in the production of theatre, in transformative relationships with other-than-human entities and temporalities. Reacclimatizations engages with the critical plasticity of conventional Western theatre sets language and materiality. It proposes another example of reshuffling conventional scenic agencies, so far strictly distributed between the anthropocentric proscenium and the concealed non-human backstage. The title Reacclimatizations refers directly to the history – contemporary of the studied models – of the “gardens of acclimatization”. These gardens appeared in colonialist Europe during the second half of the 19th century in order to contribute to the introduction and “acclimatization” of exotic vegetal species for the entertainment of park visitors and eventual agricultural, pharmaceutical and commercial exploitation. Hence, to “reacclimate” here critically alludes to a possible resilient inversion process of this historical appropriation of the flora. By the materialization of the hybridizing collision between archives of theatre sets, dendritic architecture, psychoanalysis, post-colonialistic perspectives on flora, genetic engineering and new computational modes of representation, Reacclimatizations invites the spectator to an ambiguous scenic experience on agential regeneration.
INSTALLATION
The installed artwork consists of ten looping gifs – made of altered details of photographs of the wings of theatre set models kept in the reserves of the MAE, shot during a research period – projected on a tracing paper, hung as a backdrop, in an acrylic showcase box.
PERFORMANCE - TEST / INSTRUCTIONS
Sit on the chair. While you are watching you are kindly invited to answer these three questions: “what do you see? what do you feel? what do you think this is?”. You may keep your answers for yourself, you may also whisper them. You may also voice them aloud to share them with the other visitors around. Thank you for your participation.
Video-documentation above: Front and side -views of the installation / Duration:10'
