The performance plays with the power relations between locals and migrants of a fictional land, where the identity cards determine where and how players can move in the room. The reading of the rules already brings the mechanisms of privilege of the imagined game, dividing the players who have the privilege to read aloud from the ones who are not authorised. The transit between speculation and reality is provoked by the niggling description of each possible situation of the game and its outcomes, which parallel with all the protocols of the reading itself, imposed by the text.
The power relations addressed in the text are eventually reproduced by the choreography that happens during the reading, both collectively and individually. Ultimately, it is an eye’s choreography that is being collectively built.
Welcome was developed in the frame of A.PASS program and was presented at Zsenne Art Lab in September 2016, in the event Under-Mining.
Zsenne ArtLab September 29th, 2016
Excerpts:
How things work over here
I am a silent voice. I am trustworthy. You are sitting on a chair, or on something, in a room. It is a kind of circle of chairs. There is a carpet on the floor. In the centre. Exactly in the centre. A door. Two windows. Maybe a few more. Objects hard to name. Labels. Two facilitators. I command then you obey. Read this text from top to bottom and from left to right. Do what is asked from you the best you can. Obey the facilitators. Enjoy.
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[1] You are not supposed to read the footnotes.
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A short break
We are almost there. Let’s drink. You Number 3 or 5 should find wine on the table and then serve it to the other players. There are some glasses next to the bottle/box. Do not worry about what I am writing in the next paragraphs. Go serve, and when you are back, just cross your left leg over the right and turn the page. Go, go.
thiago antunes 