18 pictures and 18 stories
“18 photographs and 18 stories”: first stop of “Performance in Resistance” at hetveem Theater of Amsterdam
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18 photographs and 18 stories is a project of Bulegoa z/b, realized in collaboration with If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution of Amsterdam, that presents and accompanies Performance in Resistance by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina through 18 stories and on a journey to 6 cities.
In Autumn 2010, If I Can’t Dance invited Valcárcel Medina and Bulegoa z/b to take part in Performance in Residence, a program that studies and researches performances from the past from the perspective of current artistic practice, and that includes the participation of Flávio de Carvalho and Inti Guerrero, Guy de Cointet and Marie de Brugerolle, Matt Mullican and Vanessa Desclaux. Valcárcel Medina responded to the invitation with Performance in Resistance, 18 photographs mounted on passe-partout that show as many actions carried out by the artist in different cities between 1965 and 1993. The resulting set of images blurs the limits between the lived moment and the document, between what happened and fiction. Performance in Resistance also shows the guiding principle of Valcárcel Medina’s practice, his refusal to submit to the conventions of any institution or discipline, including the discipline of history. Such performative resistance arises from the artist’s conviction that his only material is his historical time, and that the imagination “hides a wealth which drives the world”.
Starting from a conception of research as an imaginative practice capable of transforming and reactivating its object of study, 18 photographs and 18 stories takes the form of a story-telling device that produces stories in an itinerant way based on each of 18 photographs that form Performance in Resistance, a piece specially produced by Valcárcel Medina. At the first stop of the work in hetveem Theater of Amsterdam, Moosje Goosen (writer), Emilio Moreno (artist) and Esteban Pujals Gesalí (poet and Professor of English literature) will narrate 3 stories that set out from 3 of the 18 photographs that make up the work. Performance in Resistance will travel to a total of 6 places at each of which 3 stories will be told. As well as hetveem Theater of Amsterdam, it will be presented in Bulegoa z/b of Bilbao, CAC of Bretigny and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, amongst other places.
Venue: hetveem Theater, Van Diemenstraat 410, Amsterdam.
Further information: http://www.ificantdance.org
18 pictures and 18 stories is co-produced by BNV Producciones, Seville; CAC Brétigny, Greater Paris; If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam; the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP); Playground Festival in STUK/Museum M, Leuven; Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona; Tate Modern, London; and Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam.
The publication and the performances are realized with the support of Corpus: a network for performance practice financed by the European Union.
