When we sense strangeness in the encounter with the other, something is revealed – beyond treaties, conventions, expectations, and personal conflicts. What is said and what remains unsaid is part of the construction of an image of ourselves for the other. From this arise expectations that move us in a dialectic of illusions, of fiction and reality. The masks that can as easily either serve us or oppress us, are called into question.
This is the moment we choose to keep them or to let them go. Is it in this letting go that we experience something close to a state of consciousness and freedom? In the world of formal language, declarations try to protect us from fear, but they say little about this place and time between ‘I and Thou’, about the matter we are made of and its intelligence beyond rationality. Starting from a research on human rights, Article 19 seeks to reflect on the relationship between the speakable and the unspeakable.
Article 19 will be premiered in Lisbon in June 2017.
Urândia Aragão is a Portuguese intermedia artist. Her research confronts different modes of inscription, such as drawing, writing, photography and video, with body-based work; she explores the interface of performance as a search for new modes of relation and collective experience. Currently she’s researching on human and non-human rights, magical thinking and human ecology. More
Momar K. Ndiaye is a choreographer and dancer from Senegal whose creations are closely connected to his homeland and the conditions for living in Senegal and Africa as a whole. His work is politically engaged, dealing with war, poverty, disease… and directly addressing the audience. He collaborates with a number of internationally-renowned choreographers and participates in dance courses and workshops. He created six choreographic works of his own, and currently works on a new show Taxu (Move On), produced in collaboration of Pamoja from Dakar, Cadanses from Switzerland and Institut Français from Paris.