Contínuo | 2014

In the space there is a table and a chair. I walk in carrying a box and a bag to the table. I open the box and take out a ream of paper. I open the ream on my leg, pull out the sheets and place them on the table. From the bag I take scotch tape, a pair of scissors and double-face scotch tape. I start by gluing one end of each sheet to the other, to lengthen its extension. I stop gluing the sheets of paper, take a typewriter from the box and place it at one end of the table. I also take from the box a bread paste roller and fix it at the other end of the table. I insert the extended sheets of paper in the typewriter and the bread paste roller. Fixing one end of the sheet to the other, therewith creating a continuous sheet that passes through the typewriter and the bread paste roller. From the bag I take a popular newspaper, I sit in front of the typewriter and start transcribing the news. Due to the bread paste roller being blocked, the paper does not flow with the engine of the typewriter, what makes it necessary to always move the typewriter to allow me to act. After typing half a sheet I cut the sheet of paper on the middle of the writings and with scotch tape glue it on the place’s external door.

The name “Continuo” produces two insinuations: primarily to the continuity possible in writing with the typewriter, in which the writing itself can become an overwriting, a continuity from a writing without having to stop to change the paper. The other insinuation refers to the profession of the commonly known as office boy. Practically all the actions that I develop in this performance – except for the typing technic, which I learned earlier – I have learned at the time when I worked as an office boy. The practice that had already appeared in the performance Playing Chess returns to my work, although now related to a profession and in a more complex way. Differently from The Typist, the practice of typing enters in this work as a technical, almost extinguished profession from someone that simply transcribed a text with a machine. A practice that doesn’t demand thinking but simply copying or as in English a “copy typist”.