Dialectics of Body and Space | 2014

At the beginning of the stairways of the building at the Paço da Liberdade there is a big bag with 57 plates of foam, and 57 woolen yarns. I take from the bag one of the plates and tie it to the sole of my foot with the woolen yarn. I climb the first step and place the yarn on it. I take another foam plate from the bag and another woolen yarn, and also tie it on my other foot, carrying the bag to one more step and again place the yarn on the next step. For each step I climb I take a foam plate and a yarn from the bag tying them to my body and placing the yarn in each step. 

There are 56 steps to the second floor of the building. I climb every step completing precisely this action. When I am close to reaching the second floor with only a few steps remaining, I cannot manage to tie the plates and all the yarns turned into a big bundle of tangled yarns. I put my head into the bag and walk to the second floor. I get stuck to the stairway due to the tangled yarns. I start moving around in order to turn around trough the back of the stairway. As I’m not able to move anymore I tear off some of the threads fixed to my body. Once I manage to walk around the stairway, I take a pair of scissors and start walking down, this time cutting the threads at each step walking down. Once I reach the first step of the ground floor, where the performance began, I cut the last woolen thread, which ties the last foam plate to my body, ending the performance.

This performance was created specially for SESC’s building Paço da Liberdade Because this building is under protection as a National Heritage, there are several rules and limitations that make it impossible to use performance materials like for example water, ink, powders, etc. This work arises exactly from this aspect to that limitation common to historical estates. Thinking in an action that would “protect” the space, I worked with materials that would not harm the building like foam and wool. The colors of the woolen yarns were taken from the colors present in the building. 

Like in other works, the teleological structure of the action appears as a base of the work and the aimed end (telos) becomes more and more difficult to be reached as I develop my action. Nevertheless the action here reaches a new sense, a sense which establishes the relationship of my body to the space. It is the action that builds the dialectic between body and space.