Laura Lima | Balé Literal

ACT 01 - BEFORE / Invention and tangent concretion

‘The experimental can not be defined. It is in the very concretion of the invention’, said Hélio Oiticica to Ivan Cardoso in 1979.

2019. It is known - from rehearsals, conversations, messages - that Literal Ballet, under construction, is a living organism, resulting from research and interactions between architectures and living beings. For its operation, urgencies are outlined in the development of an imagetic-textual lexicon. Words emerge: defenestrate; ritornello; balaclava; mockery or sarcasm?; instauration; absurd; contraption; cliché - in (dis) connection to the literal / figurative (a double); the chaosmos = chaos + cosmos; shit/poop. Loose anchors are cast on historical references: Bosch; Busby Berkeley; Hilst; Tatlin; Marquis de Sade; Pasolini; Georgi Ligeti; Maya Deren; the Exorcist; Powers of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames); Judith & Holofernes; David Kopenawa; Fitzcarraldo; Cocteau; Sokurov; Beckett; Robert Musil; the red light bandit. And other anchors in more contextual references: Ana Maria Maiolino; Cildo Meireles; Angela Davis; The Pasquim; the 7 deadly sins; plagues of Egypt (rain of frogs); comics from the French Revolution; posters of marches and political demonstrations (from 2013 to 2019). Added to this is the genealogy of the artist's previous work: dopada (doped), baile (ball), cinema shadow, mágico nu (nude magician), notas de rodapé (footnotes), vaca na praia (beach cow), fuga (escape), ouro flexível (flexible gold). A mixed salad of everything properly annotated, notes (various formats, on the wall of the exhibition space - literal, inclusive). Eloquence and vertigo of the force of now.

Invited to dance the ballet, in an agreement of presence to actively contemplate the delirium, in the production of the madness and lucidity of the staging of which we are a part, the vanishing point lies in the collective explosion of the instant-event. The turning point - the moment - is an invitation to a journey in a state of mind to shape languages.

ACT 02 - DURING / Infinite Present

Gentil Carioca gallery, June 29, 7pm and a few minutes. Beginning. An analogous contraption structures the ritornello. The two buildings are connected - from the gallery to the crossroads - for the execution of three gestures: the descent / defenestration (of works); a pause at front stage where the street is the stage; the rise / return. The exhibition space is bare (everything is in sight): it is an aisle. On the one side there is a list of works and also works in a descending line (it is not known if they are in literal order); on the other, works in progress, live. On the list of works, written on the wall, in brief incomplete notes, we read: hammer, squawker, still life, black malevich, fish (white clothing), red malewitch, (...), 'we saw no evil on second thoughts', reverend beast, anonymous rag, (...), cut Bosch, vini’s joint, dark side of the moon (...). In the street, the crossroads are inhabited (the bodies are mostly ergonomically seated), a point of visuality (which can be plural) is chosen in face of the invitation to circulate through spaces (free movement). Scenes are lit, the nonsense lynchian sound of Ana Frango Eléctrico is heard (announcement of the apocalypse?).

The great dress rehearsal is the act itself: poop comes down - concrete emoji; words descend - logger (single?), parthenogenesis (check google, the virtual dictionary of today); an illuminated garbage bag comes down (sublime). The rhythmic-regular-stable ritornello guides the tempo: 1. descent; 2. pause; 3. rise. Time joins the architecture of light with each new cycle, expanding the perception scales of the works, between the monumental and the banal (where is the real reference in absurd time?). Light gives light - the enlightenment of defenestration - to the production and projection of shadows, simultaneously, in the quiet-frantic cathartic experimentation of Laura Lima's literal (absurd) ballet.

In the list of references and things, an encyclopedia of visualities is configured and ingested (a cachaça chandelier - to drink; a coxinha chandelier - to eat). A Free Lula flag descends, an ovationary reaction to the latent muffled shout, an inevitable integral part of the political moment and - among many other objects - an established connection that configures a certain state of a fraternal confraternization, of the camaraderie that inhabits the crossroads (literal and metaphorical). All driven by artistic force in the guerrilla activism action.

In this ballet we dance together: we, the delighted drunks, attest to the liveliness - and death - of the irreproachable instant. Orfeu’s Testament (by Cocteau, by Laura Lima), return (or revisit, also a ritornello) to the representativeness of the artist's work in live and alive orchestration. Someone contests: 'It's not ballet, it's cinema!'. Cabelo sings ‘Exu é número 1’ (‘Exu is number 1’), in a spontaneous special participation: an offer of coexistence, a footnote in the hallucinating trance of the collective. And then: a pause, silence.

The donkey comes down, Magnolia Gilberta, feminine noun. “O jumento é nosso irmão, quer queira, quer não. O jumento sempre foi o maior “desenvolvimentista” do sertão” (“The donkey is our brother, whether you like it or not. The donkey has always been the greatest “developmentalist” in the sertão”), sang Luiz Gonzaga (not there), in apology to the animal, this sterile hybrid. Is it an ethical unkindness throwing the animal out the window? Animal? A high degree of reality prospecting is achieved with synthetic taxidermy that establishes doubt as an (intentional) desiring element between the real and the figurative. Hanging from her feet and with her head dragging on the floor, the existential anguish of civilization in the infinite present hangs in a (hopefully brief) state of suspension. Of the donkey remains the memory of tenderness, that rises.

Grave tempo of the gravity of things. In gravitational attraction (again, literal), it descends toward the ground: weight and fall. End Times: there is no turning back. To say that something is over is to take a critical stand for a fact: nothing will be as it was before, nothing will be as it was after. 'Everything has a flaw and that's where the light comes in', echoes the writing on the flag, descending at some point, which remains active in the edited memory (already in the direction of a ‘post’, a ‘to come’).

ACT 03 - AFTER / Incomplete Shadows

Post-rise, in the exhibition space (literal), the floating works are in montage at alternating heights. ‘The works are incomplete shadows,' says the artist, afterwards. Defenestrated, they become something else: everything is sectioned. And they inhabit this (metaphorical) closet of senses, lie under a veil, and although confined between wall-ceiling-floor, they remain open, with no expectation of answers. How metaphorical is the literal (and vice versa)?

In the post-immediate virtuality (to the event), # emerge (plurals) : #irreversible; #scandalous. Other lexicons struggle - in continuum - residue, trail, trace, shadow-leftovers and: goodbye to language!

The dog remains, the German Shepherd Astor, on guard: faithful, docile, trained, domesticated, in a domesticating space (immediate reference: O Sermão da Montanha: Fiat Lux, 1979/ The Sermon on the Mount: Let There Be Light, by Cildo Meireles). Watchful watching (or not), the dog sleeps, oblivious to the surrounding events. In the time after, the time of the edited memories ('Memory is an editing island… memory is an editing island', said Waly Salomão), the possibilities of a perception that sees the unseen is renewed (state of perception of Astor the dog). Laura Lima's 'Literal Ballet' is a fast-paced breath of the (in) auspicious infinite present of the now.

Michelle Sommer, 2019