Contemporary Laboratory: Gallery 17. Casa Daros, October 29, 2014. Photo: Rafa Éis

House 8 – Gallery 17

In October 2014, the Contemporary Laboratory occupied the Casa Daros’ galleries 17 and 18 adjacent to the exhibition Rubens Gerchman: With the Resignation Letter in My Pocket. Closed to the public, the interconnected galleries became a place for encounters, brainstorming, experimentations, and a shelter for the traces of the process. On Wednesday October 29th the Laboratory responded to the proposal Máquina Multimídia (Multimedia Machine) based on an exercise that had been part of the encounter with the Theatre of the Oppressed director Geo Britto and also on our desire to encourage the cross-fertilization of languages. Here are some reflections written by Lab artists on the experience.

When I entered Gallery 17 for the first time after our experimentations, I was moved. I saw in front of me, in the materialization of our process, what it means to create something amongst differences. It was as if arms, legs, eyes, elbows, mouths, genitalia, arms, legs, stomachs, livers, ears, hair, nails, fingers were all reconfigured in a new body. An octopus-body: erotic, united between the concavities of mouth and anus, submerged in the waters of an enormous ocean full of arms, capable of reaching distances that wouldn’t be reached by the mere terrestrial biped individuals.”

Camila Mozzini

Gallery 17 was my first experience working collectively. As I’m not a performer, I decided to choose a place close to my comfort area. I wish I had found it comfortable. The experience was extremely unusual and disconcerting, but at the same time, unique and special.”

Julia Falcão

When I think about the experience in Gallery 17, all I can think about is a fantastic short story by Chuang Tzu (Chinese philosopher from the 3rd century BC) called The Butterfly Dream: Chuang Tzu, dreamnt he was a butterfly […] Suddenly awakened, he didn’t know if he was Tzu that had dreamnt he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that he was Tzu.”

Antônio Amador

I wake up and I lose myself in time. I pretend to repeat an impulse that can lift me from this confusing state. The sleepiness goes away with a breath and curiosity is sharpened. When the senses reveal to me such a space within space, I lose the track of time even more. It’s like I’m seeing half a clock, upside down, but still ticking. There’s a theatre of shadows moved by some enigmatic lamp that doesn’t work at the speed of light. I can’t see very well. I haven’t noticed my balance. I almost let my body fall down. It’s scribbled with blue paint and I don’t know why. My mind flies far away for a few seconds following an orangish drumming. I come back wiser. There are more people in the room – yes, now I am in a room because I see high walls and doors that were built by someone. Perhaps these people want to control the flow. Without control, I feel controlled. I listen with my hands in search for a light outside this room. I noticed the controllers. I start to understand where I am… but I’m tired.”

Michel Schettert

Mutant space, built in an overflowing time. The experience in Gallery 17 was a gradual awakening of the visual, tactile, audio, and olfactory sensations. There multiple bodies lived; some of them occupying this space with wide and rich movements, others with small gestures and others who would take a small space and occupy it as if it were a real home. My occupation happened by watching and feeling, moving around and having small interactions. Always drawing on black paper, with fluorescent pens, everything I was seeing and feeling highlighted within me.”

Luiza Coimbra

Gallery 17 was intense and chaotic. An energetic and experimental turmoil. Only the ones who lived it, know it.”

Gabriel Cavalleiro

It could have been the sequence of small gestures that captured the focus of my attention in Gallery 17. But on my way out, I was contaminated by an energy that permeated the rest of my actions. A retracted energy of how the word – so dear to me – was defeated by the drawing in my first attempt of interacting with another person and another language. When I put myself to write on the same surface with a person who was drawing, the words didn’t remain written on paper as usual. They remained behind the images created by those two hands that filled the surface by my side. After this small gesture, the word came out of me in a thousand different ways: trying to establish a conversation with any and every language different from mine (denied twice and accepted twice), writing while somebody listened to me, fitting myself in the gap of two bodies with a body of words written at another time or occupying the space with my voice, the only spoken voice. Could it have been the only voice heard?”

Raphael Giammattey

I would rather have Gallery 17 stay closed to you.”

Jandir Jr.