KVS

SOMETHING IS APPROACHING

CAROLINA MENDONÇA
WORK IN PROGRESS
Sat 23.11.2024 18:00
Beursschouwburg
23.11.2024
18:00
Tickets

Carolina Mendonça explores the concept of violence through writing practices and muscular reflections. 

What stories are imprinted in our muscles that a bullet could unleash? Can our muscles dream of less violent narratives in a collapsing world? After her previous creation Zones of Resplendence (2023) – in which she imagined what an army fighting against sexual oppression might look like – some questions became inevitable. Certain practices demanded more time. In this new project, Carolina and her team continue speculating on how choreography and bodily practices can serve as a form of self-defense, this time focusing on violence embedded in the social structure of a family.

 

 

CAROLINA MENDONÇA earned a master's degree in Choreography and Performance from Giessen University in Germany and graduated in Performing Arts from ECA-USP in Brazil. Her latest projects include Zones of Resplendence (2023), which plays with feminist perspectives on violence (shown at Beursschouwburg and during Open Studios at Kaai Studios for the It Takes a City festival). In 2021, she created Sirens, an attempt to listen to the siren song as a collective practice (presented in Belluard). In 2018, she created Pulp-History as a Warm Wet Place at Mousonturm, exploring intuitive archeology to digest the remains of the 18th and 19th centuries; Useless Land, where she, along with Catalina Insignares, invited the audience to sleep while they read aloud throughout the night (presented in various contexts such as Maerzmusik in Berlin, Femme de Buisson in Paris, Beursschouwburg in Brussels, and Sesta in Prague).

Carolina has also curated NIDO (2022) with Suely Rolnik and Victoria Perez Royo; the Performing Arts Festival VERBO (2017) at Galeria Vermelho, Temporada de Dança (2017), and Videobrasil in São Paulo. She has developed practical-theoretical research on topics such as telepathy, levitation, and deep listening, sharing this knowledge in workshops (e.g., at Exerce in Montpellier, Tabakalera in Donostia, NIDO in Rivera, HfmdK in Frankfurt, and Teerā National Theater in Tehran). Carolina always creates her work in close collaboration with other artists like Catalina Insignares, Marcelo Evelin, Marcela Santander, Dudu Quintanilha, and Carolina Bianchi.


LARA FERRARI is based in Brussels. She earned a master's degree in Visual, Spatial, and Urban Arts with distinction at ISAC in Belgium. In Argentina, she obtained her degree in Choreographic Composition at UNA. From 2015 to 2018, she was part of the Dance and Performance Studies group led by Juan Ignacio Vallejos.

Her practice focuses on performance and writing as starting points for exploring states of empathy, vulnerability, and fragility within the body. She approaches affective and sensory practices as political tools, enabling different modes of perception and fostering alternative ways of relating to each other and our environment. Her methodology relies on imagination, which she uses to propose practices that involve a profound engagement with fiction. For Ferrari, imagination is a way to approach reality and to envision new possibilities. It drives her thoughts, practices, and creations towards new places and horizons, offering a mobile horizon rather than a fixed utopia.

She creates works that suggest different ways of paying attention to the present, opening up a dialogue with the potential that already exists within it. Her pieces reside at the intersection of choreography, dance, performance, and writing. Since 2017, Ferrari has been part of the Métodos de supervivencia collective with Josefina Imfeld. Together, they investigate how sensory experiences can be shared and scaled, building choreographies of attention that alter and expand the perceptive field, even if only temporarily, creating spaces for dialogue and connection with audiences.

 

 

Credits

Concept, Choreography, and Text Carolina Mendonça Performance and Co-creation Lara Ferrari Dramaturgy Carolina Bianchi Outside Eye Catalina Insignares Light Design Leticia Skrycky and Laura Salerno Production HIROS Costume Design and Space Steff Assandri and Miguel Olmeda WIPCOOP & KVS/ PROXIMAMENTE festival residency 2024 WITH THE SUPPORT OF Flemish Community; workspacebrussels; Beursschouwburg; Viernulvier; Proximamente & BUDA