PRESS PLAY: JOHN ROMÃO
PRESS PLAY
Exhibition of videos of performances and films by artists who question the relationship between the performing body, architecture and the camera. Artistic projects based on the profound relationship between body-chamber or body-architecture, here focused on closed spaces. The choice will be made directly either from the BoCA archive, or via partnerships with other institutions. We have a partnership with BoCA x Tate Modern, in which Catherine Wood (Senior Performance Curator at Tate Modern) selected 3 performances designed exclusively for the “BMW Tate Live: Performance Room” series (2011-2015), a series of performances broadcast live and designed exclusively for cyberspace, commissioned by Tate. BoCA x Fundação Serralves Collection will also present Portuguese artists, namely Silvestre Pestana’s videos-poems-performances.
WEEK 9
18 JUN, 10pm (West): John Romão, “Hard to be god” (2017)
Concept and direction: John Romão
With: Romeu Runa
Sound design: Tiago Cerqueira
Technical direction: Carlos Ramos
Coproduction: BoCA, Colectivo 84
In “Hard to be a god” spectators observe the performance through a glass window that separates the action from their own (protected) body, as if it was a screen, framing the action in the exterior. The public seats inside the building and watch the action, through the glass, that happens outside. We are living the end of geography. And an uninhabitable time. Our bodies are hiper-nomads and there is no more space for physicality. The protected body of the spectator, inside the building, is separated from the body of the performer (Romeu Runa), working in a natural space. In this work there is a deep listening, amplification, distortion and cut of/with the reality, in a real time composition made with elements such as the body, the architecture, the nature and the city surrounding, the sound of the city and pre-recorded sounds that make reference to the air. We live in an aeropolitic time. Drones will come to the surveillance of a dance. Which dance is that when cameras are guns pointed at us?
