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A performance enquanto encontro íntimo
| Summary: | This thesis intrinsically departs from my performance practice, and I devised it as a mode for archiving, researching and understanding my work; in order to contextualize it among other artistic experiences in the same field. Since 2002, I have experimented and developed some performance projects that are conceived as a one-to-one encounter - or to a very small and intimate group - family related, friends, lovers. Because of their intimate nature, these performances oppose the concept of audience - as an heterogeneous group of people attending an event. Because of their private nature, these performances allow only very sparse forms of documentation. In my research, I have explored what intimacy is as a general concept. Intimacy seems to encompass an intense human desire for closeness. As an artist, I am interested, in the authentic intimacy interaction that can happen in an intimate encounter, rather than in a staged intimacy, in the representation of intimacy or in visceral practices - in the sense of a direct sexual understanding of intimacy, as in the aftermath of extreme body art performance). I am not interested in intimacy as a spectacle - something to be looked at - but in performance practice as an intimate encounter. The essence of these encounters has been explored in performance and performative works by contemporary artists since late 1960s. One-to-one practices involve, in many cases, a degree of complicity, mutual trust, privacy, secrecy and generosity between both participants. In many ways these practices question and address situations where intimacy arises in everyday life: telling a story, meeting someone, asking a question, sharing a secret. But all of them require presence: artist and participant are together in that situation. This requirement is a catalyst for the dissolution or the erasure of the figure of the passive viewer or of the spectator, as they engage the public in a participatory and authentic demand. In some of these performances there is no recording of the event. Or rather there can't be, because it wouldn’t make sense and would destroy the intimate dynamics of the performance. There can be some images or descriptions of what occurred, but there is no access to what really happened between the performer and the participant. Therefore, one main question - an ethical one - is precisely the one about the documentation of these practices, as they mostly rely on an implied agreement of secrecy about what is happening or happened between the participants. Throughout the written element there are image and sound files with documentation about art projects and other sources that together with the text constitute the thesis. In this sense they are not considered as additional material but a fundamental part of my research. |
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| Subject: | Práticas performativas Prática artística Encontro íntimo Performance (arte) Artes Plásticas Intimidade |
| Year: | 2016 |
| Country: | Portugal |
| Document type: | doctoral thesis |
| Access type: | Open |
| Associated institution: | Repositório Científico da Universidade de Évora, Estudo Geral - Universidade de Coimbra |
| Language: | Portuguese |
| Origin: | Repositório Científico da Universidade de Évora |
| Summary: | This thesis intrinsically departs from my performance practice, and I devised it as a mode for archiving, researching and understanding my work; in order to contextualize it among other artistic experiences in the same field. Since 2002, I have experimented and developed some performance projects that are conceived as a one-to-one encounter - or to a very small and intimate group - family related, friends, lovers. Because of their intimate nature, these performances oppose the concept of audience - as an heterogeneous group of people attending an event. Because of their private nature, these performances allow only very sparse forms of documentation. In my research, I have explored what intimacy is as a general concept. Intimacy seems to encompass an intense human desire for closeness. As an artist, I am interested, in the authentic intimacy interaction that can happen in an intimate encounter, rather than in a staged intimacy, in the representation of intimacy or in visceral practices - in the sense of a direct sexual understanding of intimacy, as in the aftermath of extreme body art performance). I am not interested in intimacy as a spectacle - something to be looked at - but in performance practice as an intimate encounter. The essence of these encounters has been explored in performance and performative works by contemporary artists since late 1960s. One-to-one practices involve, in many cases, a degree of complicity, mutual trust, privacy, secrecy and generosity between both participants. In many ways these practices question and address situations where intimacy arises in everyday life: telling a story, meeting someone, asking a question, sharing a secret. But all of them require presence: artist and participant are together in that situation. This requirement is a catalyst for the dissolution or the erasure of the figure of the passive viewer or of the spectator, as they engage the public in a participatory and authentic demand. In some of these performances there is no recording of the event. Or rather there can't be, because it wouldn’t make sense and would destroy the intimate dynamics of the performance. There can be some images or descriptions of what occurred, but there is no access to what really happened between the performer and the participant. Therefore, one main question - an ethical one - is precisely the one about the documentation of these practices, as they mostly rely on an implied agreement of secrecy about what is happening or happened between the participants. Throughout the written element there are image and sound files with documentation about art projects and other sources that together with the text constitute the thesis. In this sense they are not considered as additional material but a fundamental part of my research. |
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