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• Monday 18th March, 15:00–16:30
• Monday 18th March, 17:45–19:15
• Tuesday 19th March, 16:00–17:30
• Tuesday 19th March, 20:00–21:30

Something significant was unfolding before my eyes from that encounter.

I looked closer and saw it:
her clothes, her face, the smoke coming out of her pipe.

Her position was strategic. Small.
“Printed” like a painting on a 5-by-7-cm cotton fabric.

I remembered that I had just put a lot of clothes in the washing machine.

I returned and checked.
ECO wash mode: ON.
Duration: 3 hours.

Not a trace of it will survive.

This show will last approximately half an ECO wash cycle.


It begins like this
by Carolina Nóbrega and Tetembua Dandara

If you are here, it's because you couldn't be anywhere else, and I need you to write a visionary fiction. I borrowed this term from Wallidah Imarisha, who uses it to describe how fantasy literature is fundamental for us to have a repertoire to design other worlds. I hope it hasn't been confusing for you, after all this is my invitation: can we design other worlds together? It might sound megalomaniacal. But that's not so different from waking up, having breakfast, and dressing up to face an ordinary day.

I thought I could do it alone, but this did not work out so well, so I need you. I already know a thing or two about failure, so maybe that will help us. When I first tried, I started in the middle, because I knew that the beginning is a question mark and that the end could be a catastrophe or a big nothing. The middle was simply this: an object, a body (mine, in this case) and the space: the essential triad for any narrative.

And then something happened. The object came to life and began to hold a long, noisy monologue, telling me where it had come from and how much of its life had been ignored over the last few thousand years and that it refused to continue to be described as an inanimate object.

My body was torn into so many pieces that I didn't know if I could call that mess a body anymore. And the space, previously delimited by the walls, the ceiling, and a solid surface on which I could walk, melted into a kind of omnipresent substance. The extirpated parts of my body were submerged in this thick liquid, like little letters of noodles in a bowl of soup.

I ran (I quit?). That wasn't the world I wanted, that wasn't the middle, that had to be the end. But I didn’t want that end, at least not at that moment. Something was missing... something was missing! It couldn't be over before I had a chance to get to the beginning! My object, in the first moments of its animation, didn't stop talking for a second, because finally there was something listening to it, and that something was me. It turned to me as something that had provoked it for years: it had finally earned its right of reply!

As I listened to it, I gathered my body, piece by piece, trying to separate it from the gooey space. I'm not sure if I've glued the parts together correctly, because this new fragmented body didn't come with a "do-it-yourself" style assembly instruction manual – as should happen in these situations (I have the impression that I've glued a piece of wall – or maybe a part of the ceiling, there might be a light bulb – between my liver and my stomach).

This new body wanted to talk. I thought about getting it off my chest by talking to the object. But at that moment, I thought it would be unfair to ask it to listen, after all, its verbose urgency was the result of millennia of silencing – apart from the fact that it was a great joke teller, I didn't want to interrupt its flow and risk losing a good laugh…

Now that I'm getting used to this patched-up body, I suspect that it was precisely this part of the space (sandwiched between the liver and the stomach) that led me here to talk to you directly. So that I can get out of the middle of this world, and so this isn't the end of this world. I need your help. I need you to help me find its beginning. It may seem like too big of a request, given that we've only known each other for a short time, but according to my object, all the things have always been going around, so we're all old acquaintances after all (the problem is that we're kind of dumb and we forget everything). I have a clue. Check if I'm right... I think this world might start like this:
.
.
.
THE END

Credits

Conception and Direction: Aline Olmos; Dramaturgical Advices: Carolina Nóbrega and Tetembua Dandara; Playwright: Aline Olmos and Carolina Nóbrega; Music composition and performances: Paula Mirhan; Performances: Aline Olmos Steler, Billy Mullaney, Laíza Dantas, Paula Mirhan, Tetembua Dandara; Set Design: Tetembua Dandara; Light Design: Gabriele Souza; Exhibition video (rubber tree): Douglas Lambert; Video Design: Laíza Dantas; Translations: Carolina Nóbrega; Research: Aline Olmos Steler, Billy Mullaney, Carolina Nóbrega, Laiza Dantas, Paula Mirhan, and Tetembua Dandara; Film Excerpt: "D'Amore si Vive" (We Live on Love), directed by Silvano Agosti, 1983; External advisor: Carolina Nóbrega, Marta Keil, and Tetembua Dandara; DAS tutor: Marjorie Boston; External eye and close advisor: Leandro Souza