blog_ 7x7
CLARISSA SACCHELLI x ARTHUR MOREAU = bind to weight.
by Arthur Moreau around Sem Título (No Title), by Clarissa Sacchelli.
Clarissa Sacchelli plus 4 other performers, Carolina Callegaro, Júlia Rocha, Marina Massoli and Paula Pi, stand inside Sesc Santos, by the entrance hall, asking by-standers to bind their bodies with red tape to the glass panes that separate the inside from the outside of the building. The performers stay and choose their pose, they remain inert, touching the transparent glass walls. Without a project, people bind them with the red tape drawing lines as they please.
I helped Clarissa herself to get stuck. Her gentle soft voice summoned me to bind her waist better and remove a piece of tape that was bothering her around the neck. By my initiative, I bound her head, put the tape here and there, stretched it far away from her body, stuck a little piece of tape on her cheek and on the outside of the glass where she was leaning I wrote in red tape: “Entertainment is not art”.
After being firmly bound, Clarissa and her accomplices relaxed their muscles. That made the tape yield and stretch. Even though they seemed firmly bound, they are able to free themselves. Their relaxed bodies find rifts and expand them. They trace a small visible path to a certain freedom. It looks like yoga. Maybe it is.
There are forces and impositions that are largely disseminated. An intervention of this order confuses the eyes a little and opens the mind for some thoughts. Relax and unbind. Ask to be bound. Be a piece of wall deco. Make art. These are actions that, as all others, need to distribute tension and relaxations in a coordinated way. However, they have little dialog with the most current powers. The exceptions help the world to bend over itself and to explode possible happenings.
The performers’ wish for immobility is not satisfied within the proposed dramaturgy. However, the opposite occurs both in art and other plateaus of society. Many transformations that have been desired, projected and planned by groups are found wanting even when action is carried out with hard work and determination. Many oppressions and writings imprint and disorganize new intelligences.
No Title is a work that calmly claims to be observed, noticed and reflected upon. If in a space of shared experience there is something that doesn’t belong, there is nothing more democratic than to rethink what the meeting points are for. If the city, the internet, the streets and the urban architecture exist for functions established by people or forces that are not the only ones to get in touch with them, to be affected by them, their signs need to be altered, even if with the addition of elements. However, it is very complex to identify or draw an architectural needs analysis. But there are possible artifices in civil and legal representations for that cause. Cities’ master plans may include these issues.
Anyway, Clarissa summons us to notice the senses of the esthetic weight that if outlined (why? who for? by who?) outline ourselves (how? can we draw with our interference too?) in the places where we are stuck to or supported by. The intervention of those who live and are dissatisfied may inspire us to reorganize cognitive and public agendas. A relaxation that makes intelligence and initiative realize their weight and potential.
Arthur Moreau is an artist, Bachelor in Communication of Body Arts from PUC-SP and a graduate student of Philosophy at USP.
Translation Portuguese-English: writer and poet Chris Ritchie, M.A.