Covered by sky is a collection of installations and performances centered on the relationships between landscape and art, experience and poetic discourse with the goal of developing a collaboration platform with other artists for a future interactive live exhibition. Conceived by the choreographer and artist Gustavo Ciríaco, the project is driven by curiosity to discuss how space creation and landscape experience intersect in the poetic signature of singular artists from Portugal, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the United Kingdom and Germany in the areas of music , dance, photography, sculpture, painting and performance.

In Thomas Moore’s Utopia, a very experienced sailorman in his discovery of the world tells about a distant territory he has come to know, called Utopia. There was where civilization had apparently reached its most optimal and fair state. Though this work has become a reference to think about ideals of social contract and ways of living together, utopia is still a word marked by a fantasy-like character. Utopia is thought of as imaginary, nonexistent, an unreachable place, a cliché of a territory that will never be real.

Refreshing the concept of utopia seems to me to be linked to the capacity of fantasizing and manipulating poetically the notion of real. It is in our imagination that lays its strength and its power. Just like in Grandes Sertões Vereda of Brazilian writer Guimarães Rosa, in which the landscape becomes a sensorial experience through the language invented by the author which divines the wild, the relief, the shape and the singularity of the Brazilian and remote interior landscape.

Covered by sky is meant to be a journey meeting artists and places, collecting their different perspectives on landscape and sharing their ways of being mirrors of the world, between sensing and perceiving. I am attracted in this project by the possibility of acting as a kind of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods (that ambiguous figure that translates worlds) in this dialogue between artists and their reference habitats. A phony Hermes that is, aware of the precariousness of his translations, but full in his bets. I’m interested in building up convivial places, imagined spaces and update them every time they are experienced and completed by the visitor-spectator-participant. In an immersive installation exhibition, the audience is invited to perform the place, in which, they’ll be both witness and actor. In the same way we take someone for a walk, experiencing the path, the obstacles of the ground, these kinetic dioramas of fruition shall make the experience of the visitors get assembled with the invited artists’ sensibilia and, hopefully, rendered anew and re-appropriated creating an ongoing mise-en-abîme.

With this project I reconnect with two points of my career: the social scientist and the artist. It is the beginning of a response in two powers. It is the continuation of an understanding, but at the same time a step beyond. And beyond is beyond is beyond. Or in the words of the sailor portrayed by Thomas Morus, the unburied dead, they are covered by sky.

Historic

Fábrica de Idéias/23 Milhas. Creative residency. Gafanha de Nazaré, Portugal. April 6-18, 2021.

Galeria ZDB. Creative residency. Lisbon, Portugal. March 1-20, 2021.

Pico do Refúgio & Arquipélago – Centro de Artes Contemporáneas. Creative residency. Ribeira Grande, Azores, Portugal. January, 11-17, 2021.

DEVIR/CAPA – Centro de Artes Performativas do Algarve. Residência de criação. Faro, Portugal. November, 16-26, 2020.

DAS THIRD cycle Forum, DAS Theatre. Presentation of prototypes Sticky Fingers and Glory!, based on the experiences of visual artist Rosie Heinrich and performance maker Siegmar Zacharias. DAS Theatre, Amsterdam, Holland. December 2019.

Conception and artistic direction  Gustavo Ciríaco

Guest artists  Ana Laura Lozza (Ar), Barbara Hang (Ar), Cláudia Dias (Pt), Luciana Lara (Br), Javiera Peón-Veiga (Cl), Jonathan Ulliel Saldanha (Pt), João Saldanha (Br), João Gabriel Oliveira (Pt), Michelle Moura (Br), Miguel Palma (Pt) and Tito Mouraz (Pt)

Guest artists – DAS THIRD cycle Forum Rosie Heinrich (Uk) and Siegmar Zacharias (De)

Performers- Lisbon 

Alina Folini (Ar), Filipe Caldeira (Pt), Gabriela Dória (Br),  Luis Guerra (Pt), Sara Zita Correia (Pt) and Tiago Barbosa (Pt)

Performers – Rio de Janeiro 

Laura Samy (Br), Leo Nabuco (Br), Milene Codeço (Br) and Priscila Maia (Br)

Performers – Santiago

Rodrigo Brown

Performers – Brasília

Carolina Hofs, Clara Salles, Déborah Alessandro, João Gabriel and Raoni Carricondo (Br)

Light design Tomás Ribas

Set design – initial stage Mayra Sérgio

Set design and architectonic project Gonçalo Lopes

Technical direction Santiago Tricot

Photos Gustavo Ciríaco, Mariana Lopes, Mayra Sérgio, Tomás Ribas and Thomas Lenden

Administration Missanga Antunes

Production direction Sinara Suzin

Realization Efémera Colecção – Associação Cultural

Co-production NAVE and Fundição Progresso

Support República Portuguesa – Cultura | DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes
The project counts with Ibero-American fund IBERESCENA – Co-production Support for Spectacles 2020-2021 (Apoio à Co-produção de Espetáculo 2020-2021 /IBERESCENA).

Festival Temps d´Images. Presentation. Lisbon, Portugal. October/November, 2021.

Fundição Progresso. Presentation. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. September, 2021. (tbc)

GNRation. Creative residency + presentation.  Braga, Portugal. September, 2021. (tbc).

NAVE. Creative residency + presentation. Santiago, Chile. August 1-15, 2021.

Festival Walk & Talk.  Première. Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal. July 14th-21st, 2021. Première.

Cia Instável & Museu Serralves. Creative residency. Porto, Portugal. May 10th-14th, 2021.

 

 

 

Photos Gustavo Ciríaco, João Grama, Mariana Lopes, Mayra Sérgio, Tomás Ribas and Thomas Lenden