LandScaping 0.3 / Knoten
In LandScaping 0.3 / Knot, two places, materialities, realities intertwine with each other, which at first glance stand in the relation of a politically charged tension: the landscape and shamanistically informed cult and craft practices of various communities in the Amazon region and architetonical central European made of concrete.
Together with three dancers, who each in their own way connect memories and experiences with the vegetation and culture of the Brazilian region, dancer and choreographer Bianca Mendonça performatively engages with the traditional practices related to the work of processing the leaves and fibers of the tucumã palm tree producing cultic and utilitarian objects.
The motif of interweaving runs through the entire performance installation: visitors are invited to find their own paths through an exhibition landscape of texts, drawings and videos, while at the same time being part of a live performance. In the process, they encounter human and non-human bodies, remembered and imagined movements, voices and gestures from conversations in the artisan community Coroca, and soundscapes that emerge from the dancers' encounters with traditional instruments.
LandScaping 0.3 / Knot is the third part of Bianca Mendonça's exploration of her impressions, experiences and memories during an artist residency in the Amazon last winter. LandScaping began with a curiosity for cartography and mapping and their possibility to influence, shape and change movements. Under the conditions of the pandemic, the project series also became a preoccupation with how the imagined and projected always overlaps with actual sensory access in our experience of place: in the lecture performance LandScaping 0.1, Mendonça reflected on her shifting relationship to the concrete place that seemed almost inaccessible to her in its dense landscape when arriving. LandScaping 0.2 emerged from a dialogue conducted between her and three performers who remained in Cologne, experimenting with physical and emotional relationships and relations between humans and plants based on films, scores, drawings, and texts.
LandScaping 0.3 / Knot now processes and shares materials from the entire research as a choreographic installation to create a third place: a space between landscape and archive, cartography and mysticism, where identities becomes mobile and negotiable between European and South American cultural traditions in dialogue with indigenous influences and practices.
The choreographic installation embodies forms, adapting itself to the space it is performed. The installation is built in dialog with the space and the choreographic material is reshaped according to the space.
Foto Documentation of LandScaping 0.3/Knoten - 24., 25., 26. of September 2021 - St. Gertraud Kirche - Cologne
Installation, choreography and performance: Bianca Mendonça / Performance and co-choreography: Marília Silva, Maria Carolina Vieira, Sara Escribano Maenza / Music composition: Bruna Cabral / Sound direction: Vasko Damjanov, Lukas Tobiassen / Light design and technical direction: Roman Sroka / Technic: Vincent Loth/ Photo and video documentation: Alessandro De Matteis / Dramaturgical collaboration: Constanze Schellow and Valerie Wehrens / Choreographic assistance: Renato Sbardelotto / Production and direction assistance: Gabriel Carneiro/ Management, PR: Winfried Hoffmann.
Foto Documentation of LandScaping 0.3/Knoten - 14th to 17th of July 2022 - Kulturbunker Mülheim - Cologne
