dopo (after) INHABITED SENSORIAL INSTALLATION GABRIELLA SALVATERRA

What are we able to repair?

The kid takes the toy

he has just been given for a present and,

inexplicably, smashes it onto the floor.

He repeats the action until he is certain

That the toy breaks apart.

Its pieces, scattered around the room.

Its gear, exposed.

The mother is astonished.

Only now does the kid feel

that the toy belongs to him.

And then, he cries.

Break-ups. Loss. Injuries. That which we inflict upon each other or that which is broken inside of us. We are also made of all that. We live in a society which strongly fosters and supports the importance of producing. We are getting further and further from the ability to repair. The action of repairing itself is gradually becoming invisible. To keep and incorporate a broken object into one´s life, creates a deep connection with our own wounds and that which is also broken around us. We live fragmented lives which do not allow us to spend any time paying attention to fractures. Fractures which change us, which leave a mark on us, which transform us. Sometimes it is simply not possible to repair. Sometimes it is. But what is certain is that the pieces will no longer be the same after the break.

There are three ways to repair something: to make the object seem like new, to improve its functioning, or to change it completely, However, it all depends of the initial idea, Whether that which is broken can be adjusted. Richard Sennet

This is a sensorial installation which aims at researching the relationship between break and repair, with the audience´s intimate experiences as a starting point so that each person can find a meaningful connection with their own biography.

For this reason, it aims to acknowledge the fractures which compose our lives, observing the material and symbolic fragments which make us who we are. The research invites the audience members to become “travellers” and live a poetic experience, exploring a labyrinthine space made of remnant, pieces and bits which have been reassembled by “mending”, “patching” or “glueing” This is a space where “continuity” prevails, where an apparently seamless union is forged. But upon close inspection, one can see the detail of that which has been broken, and also the attempt to repair it.

We go through a door and under the dim light of a crystal chandelier, we see a big table laid with old-time elegance. A woman is presiding the table. As the guests come in, she invites them to sit around. In the middle, there is a soup tureen. The aroma of the freshly cooked broth is floating in the air. The travellers take their seats. Before them: porcelain plates, silver cutlery, embroidered napkins, crystal glassware and bottles of the finest wine. Although the scenario is cosy, a slight tension can be perceived. Guests look at each other in the eye but no one dares to speak. And that´s when they realize that their plates are shattered and have been reassembled with all the “scars” clearly visible. As have the glasses, the bottles, the soup tureen and even the chandelier. Almost everything on the table has been broken and put back together.

Suddenly, a drop of water falls on to the table. Everyone looks up. It´s leaking from a crack on the ceiling. The dripping echoes in the silence. The woman tells a story with low, calm voice. The story is about something which was broken inside her. She then asks a question to each of them but no answer is needed. The question will simply travel with the guests along their journey. It will confront them with that which was broken in each of their lives. The dripping sound expands and sound landscape appears. More and more water starts leaking through the ceiling on different spots. Water drips on top multiple objects scattered around the space: metal buckets, pots, old cups, containers of all sorts... The persistent rhythm of the water drops creates an eerie harmony. The dim lighting emphasizes the constant splashing. It´s a labyrinth of water dripping through the cracks of a broken ceiling. Travellers walk silently through it in dim lightning.

It´s a lonely space. Humid and worn out. So fragile that it´s nostalgic and unsettling at the same time. Like an attempt to fix something, to prevent something from being flooded any moment. A door ajar is in a different part of the house. Beyond it, a bedroom and a sitting room. Heavy, constant rain is pouring in them (travellers will find raincoats at their disposal). The dim light of a bed-side lamp. The water is washing away an empty room. There’s only a bed and a table with an open book on it. It rains on that which is left behind. From this moment on, a series of spaces will be found which are connected in puzzling ways, which expose their own relation to fracture and the attempt to repair it. Each traveller makes a unique journey, living an experience which is both intimate and collective.

Small broken things, the shadows of spinning and rolling objects, heaps of clothes scattered around. The bodies of the travellers must find their way through. Until they get to a room where a seamstress is sewing tears and rips, finding forgotten objects in neglected pockets. She will reveal an inevitable truth:

“There are things that cannot be repaired, Of which only the bits remain. They linger stubbornly in time, keeping alive the presence of that which we have lost We´re nothing but the accumulation of moments which no longer exit.”

With this truth at hand, the travellers continue their journey, now coming to an end.

They find a key which gives access to the last installation. It’s a storage room where forty boxes lay dormant. All different in shape and style. Each key opens only one. Inside, they will find a miniature world made of fragments, of all that which was impossible to repair. Of all that has remained “after”.

A SENSORIAL, INHABITED LABYRINTH

This installation makes the space the protagonist. It is conceived

as an organism in which the necessary conditions to facilitate a

poetic experience are developed

The design of the space aims at emphasizing the creative

potential in the very action of getting lost. Its visitors can

actively walk through it, discover every spot, angle and side

corner, led by their own curiosity

Dopo (After) is a living space inhabited by a few people which

host and guide the audience allowing them to perform an

intimate journey as the actual makers of their own experience.

The inhabitants will work within an open dramaturgy, open to

fully listening each audience member and adapting their

behaviour accordingly. Action and guidance at the service of the

audience’s intimate and singular experience. The aim is to

subvert the dynamics of a “show”. The actor becomes then an

inhabitant of the space, and the audience travellers walking

through it. It is this active and necessary relationship that will

give meaning to the experience.

This installation aims at putting limits to visual perception,

prioritizing the existence of that which cannot be fully seen or

cathegorized. The research will focus on that which lives in

blurry territory for our western visual-based perception: smells,

touch, sound landscapes and the images which compose a

poetic experience.

Weaving space, body, perception and imagination, we create a

fabric which allows an intimate encounter with ourselves,

creating new ways to see and listen to that of which we are

made.

SYNTHESIS OF A RESEARCH

This sensorial installation is the crystallization of a long and

deep research. Over 16 years exploring how to develop

imaginary environments to can create a synergic

relationship between space, body and memory.

Along these years I have experimented in major artistic

events the negotiations between shape and memory and

the evocative power of an object.

In my work I have always longed to make things somewhat

blurry, somewhat impalpable, its edges vanishing into thin

air, blending and melting with it, engulfed by darkness. I

firmly believe that it is in that limit where they achieve their

utmost beauty. When they cannot be seen anymore and

they blend with ourselves and become feelings

“Dopo” (“After”) is a synthesis of this long research with a

special emphasis on some aspects of our life which we

tend to render invisible.

Gabriella Salvaterra

TECH RIDER The final tech rider can only be provided after a tech visit to the chosen venue. The Company will be provided with a groundplan and pictures of the space to develop a final, binding rider. Basic space requirements are: Clear, unobstracted space. Several floors is OK Dark and silent. Complete (100%) darkness even during daytime is essential Access to water and electricity (domestic power needed only)

SET-UP/TIMING

4-6 days. Depending on the venue

AUDIENCE/DYNAMICS

Audiences enter in groups of 8 people every 20min.

Duration of the experience for each group is aprox. 40min

Total performance time per day is 4 hours

Total audience per day is 96 people

GABRIELLA SALVATERRA

Is an Italian artist based in Barcelona and South America with an extensive career in dance, space design and sensorial theater. In addition to her training as a dancer, she learned the craft of upholstering, carpentry and decoration with traditional Italian masters. She later moved into costume making and worked with ERT (Emilia Romagna Teatro) creating sets and costumes for numerous productions. She has been a member of Teatro de los Sentidos for over 16 years, working as an assistant director and project coordinator of all the main productions of the company working side by side with director and anthropologist Enrique Vargas. She has worked in many different aspects of the company´s creative processes over the years, but she soon specialized on the link between dramaturgy and space. She has been the designer of all the installations, labyrinths and sensorial spaces of the company in the productions of the last 14 years. In all projects she has been in charge of every step in the making of the site-specific richly detailed sensorial sets of the productions. From the conceptual design to the hand-

crafted details which have come to be one of the company´s visual trademarks. Amongst her most important Works for Teatro de los Sentidos are “Oracles”, “The Memory of the Wine”, “The Echo of the Shadow”, “The Upside Down World”, “The Cellar of the Senses”, “Short Exercises on Dying Well”, “Fermentation”, “Renáixer” and “Heart of Darkness” which have toured the main international theatre festivals in the world. In South America, she has developed a lab for artists training, as well as co-directed a piece with Enrique Vargas presented in the 2011 edition of the Santiago a Mil festival under the tittle “Cuando el Río Suena”. She also an instructor at the “Sensorial Language and Poetics of Play” postgraduate course organized by Fundació Universitat Girona and Teatro de los Sentidos where she teaches classes about the poetics of space and body in relation to architecture. Additionally, she teaches classes at the numerous workshops the company offers around the world. In addition to her creative work in Europe, in the last years she has been researching on poetic experience through sensorial language outdoors, developing sensorial art installations in the wilderness and working with artists and rural communities in the south of Chile.

Used to departing.

To knowing that it is all finite

That the lights will fade out.

That people have fallen asleep.

That there was no one.

That there is only you.

ENQUIRIES

(NORTHERN EUROPE)

Carlos Calvo

carloscalvo.dopo@gmail.com

+45 25687156