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IFIGENIA
IFIGENIA
Ifigenia is a survey. By Flora Barros, Andrea Vilas Boas, Antonio Farina and Pedro Montagnana
SYNOPSIS
Imprisoned in a plastic-film installation, performer and dancer Flora Barros will carry out an update on the myth of Ifigenia, daughter of Agamemnon sacrificed by him in exchange for victory in the Trojan war. Conceived as an almost hermetic tank, the installation will be filled little by little. little with water, requiring the artist to constantly adapt her movements, derived from a progressive flooding of her space. With subtle and almost everyday movements, necessarily oppressed by the pressure of water, the dancer will question, in a symbolic act, the female sacrifices promoted by the incessant search for power and domination of a phallocentric logic.
WISHES
Ifigênia, a still imaginary work, is born, perhaps like all works, from some desires
The first and probably the main of these desires is the proposition of an event that can, in some way, bring about changes in those who participate in it. It is, therefore, to say a political impulse, to act on reality in order to make it distinct. There are, of course, many ways to do this. We chose, in this case, to investigate the potency of an event at the same time impregnated with many affections and many meanings. In this sense, we have a foreground built from a situation and from explicitly material elements: a woman enclosed in a plastic tank and lights gradually filled with water. With this first plan, we seek a more direct affective performance and more specifically linked to dance; in other words, we seek to awaken intense feelings that still lack intelligible meanings. We believe, therefore, in the power of terror, piety and, above all, anguish that, we anticipate, will permeate the performance and all those who follow it.
The second wish, in reality a development of the first, is found in the very possibility of aesthetic research that underlies the work and that constitutes its second plan. After all, we see performance and site specific as privileged fields of practical study of the processes of signification and reframing. Through direct references, both textual and visual, we will couple mythological and other symbols to the material plane, thus inviting participants to reorganize their particular meanings, related to sacrifice, oppression, domination and many other elements belonging to a harsh phallocentric logic.
We don't have the answers, but as artists and researchers, we believe in the power of the questions.
DESCRIPTIVE
At the entrance of the museum, an apparent hermetic and square tank stands out to those who transit through Avenida Europa. Inside its translucent plastic walls, there is a woman: Flora Barros, a dancer who, inside the installation, initially performs subtle movements inspired by everyday and recognizable actions. Facing each of the walls, outside of their space, cold and bluish lamps create a strange contrast with the hot lamps and with the exposed wires that, in the center and on the ceiling, draw a kind of dark and ghostly chandelier. Finally, above all, on the upper surface of the catwalk, a large television shows internal images of this environment that, in addition to work, could be symbolically a sea, a ship or, who knows, a memorial that remains very much alive.
According to Greek mythology, Agamemnon, great king of the Greeks and the greatest leader of the domination of Troy, chose to sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia, to guarantee the good winds that would bring her victory. Ifigenia, then, demonstrating the courage of a warrior, accepts her destiny and takes, also for herself, the fortune of her people. Thousands of years and traditions later, the sacrifice, symbolic and literal, implicit and explicit, of various subjects and minorities persists as a common practice in the unrestrained search for power and its expansion. In this sense, it is believed that the symbolic presentation of this practice, with the updating of a tragic mythological situation, can serve to question contemporary reality, and precisely through catharsis: the association between terror and piety that accompany the anguish of empathize with a character doomed to catastrophe, as in the old tragedies.
When approaching the installation, or even when watching the images on the TV from a distance, those present will notice, not without a certain surprise, the existence of small hoses, which, positioned inside the installation, will gradually flood their entire space. Consequently, those same gifts will be able to observe the oppressive interference of the water in the movements of the dancer, which, little by little, will paradoxically appear to ascend and approach its fictional end. The sound composition, based on noise and daily and contemporary elements related to the theme addressed, will contribute to the potentiation of the event. In addition, clear references to the myth, in the form of text, will be present around the tank, symbolically grounding people's imagination and intensifying the shared experience. Finally, it is important to note, all performance will be studied, structured and tested in order to guarantee the total safety of all involved.
Therefore, it is planned to bring out, in a symbolic and performative way, the memory of a pain that is collective and ancestral. This is desired, however, not because of its appreciation or maintenance, but because of the belief in its possible interruption.