A badly ended party, traces of intimacy through space and fragments of a musical gangbang fill the room. Macaquinhos’ latest work is a performative installation that enlighten human zoos held in colonizing countries in Europe during the 20th century. The collective continues its research rubbing body, politics and the limits of contemporary aesthetic expressions against each other and provokes asking “What is North in each of us?”. Invited to devise the work by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and the I*mpossible Bodies Festival in Germany, the group brings a colonial hangover experience shared between performers and audience. It is a sensory environment filled with smells and sounds, a place for expectations that questions what is domestic and what is spectacular.

Since 2011 Macaquinhos group has operated as an even and collaborative creation space. It is formed by a rotation of transdisciplinary artists who have São Paulo as a convergence spot. The group’s research base is the tension between body, politics, dance and performance. In 2014, the show Macaquinhoswent viral on social networks and caused a series of debates about the role of art after the performers examined the anus as the body’s south metaphor. Their new work, ZOO, continues the research, now aimed at relations with the North. The collective has participated in festivals in Brazil, Germany, Austria and Belgium.

CRITICS

Macaquinhos collective has a unique availability, creating fragile and constructive possibilities, for new circumstances in the present and future. Using the Brazilian context, these artists devise urgent questions of our time, blend collaborative creations and new expressions in a sterling way, moving in an impressive way between theory and practice, which they forge together. In a violent world, Macaquinhos manage to provoke using tenderness methods. All of its radical vulnerability erupts in choreographed body poetry. Thus, the collective denies hegemony and produces a diversity that starts from down below!

ELISA LIEPSCH, German playwright

TECHNICAL SHEET

CONCEPT, DIRECTION AND PERFORMANCE: Andrez Lean Ghizze, Caio, Danib.ar.ra, Feliz, Kupalua, Luiz Gustavo, Marine Sigautand Rosangela Sulidade
LIGHTING: Helô Duran and Lucas Brandão
ARTISTIC COLLABORATION: Carol Mendonça, Elisa Liepsch and Kontouriotis
EXECUTIVE PRODUCTION: Corpo Rastreado
CO-PRODUCTION: Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt
SUPPORTED BY: Programa de Residência Artística Obras em Construção, Casa das Caldeiras, Residência Artística Instituto Terra Luminous, Centro de Referência da Dança da Cidade de São Paulo and Frankfurt LAB
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Alessandra Domingues , Guilherme Godoy, François Pisapia, José Fernando Peixoto, Marcelo Evelin, Teresa Moura Neves, Yuri Tripodi and all of the participants of Experimento Milgrau