Today, we understand performance beyond entertainment, as something that means and does distinct things, that produces ways for thinking differently - within distinct epistemic systems and geographical locations - about poetic, aesthetic, biological, digital, social, cultural, political or economic phenomena. Since the middle of 60s different performance studies have brought attention into performance and embodied behavior as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge, opposed to academia written formats and its division between thinking and doing, interpreting and making, conceptualizing and creating.
The film While Moving Forward on Time aim to contribute to an ongoing research about performance, beyond the influences of international art markets and the narrow performance history existing today - that give most of the relevance to European and North American works and performative manifestations. For that aim the film will research and capture different forms of performance and performativity, specially but not reduce to the ones coming from art, in distinct contexts, in western and non western countries from five different continents – Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America.
The film While Moving Forward on Time aim to contribute to an ongoing research about performance, beyond the influences of international art markets and the narrow performance history existing today - that give most of the relevance to European and North American works and performative manifestations. For that aim the film will research and capture different forms of performance and performativity, specially but not reduce to the ones coming from art, in distinct contexts, in western and non western countries from five different continents – Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America.
The film While Moving Forward on Time will focus on the relations between performance art and distinct biological and social memory formations. The objective is to understand how performance art and embodied behaviors influenced or can influence the emergence of distinct forms of remembrance and specific cultural formations. On a first chapter, the film is interested in researching about performance and the biological body. This first chapter will be divided in two different approaches: One that is based on collaborations with experts from neuroscience and biological engineering, and another that will research on performance and spirituality, based on body based performances and rituals, in which forms of shamanism and witchcraft will be the objects of focus. The second chapter will deal with performance and the social/political/cultural body with a focus on social groups and their dynamics within distinct sites and contexts. This chapter will build collaborations with different social groups and with distinct professionals from the fields of social psychology, archival and cultural studies.
While Moving Forward on Time will visit 5 continents and approximately 34 countries. All data will be recorded in video, combining live performances, interviews, debates, round tables and historical records. The assemblage of these materials will facilitate the understanding of local phenomena in relation to a global knowledge and vice versa, and how performance art can open doors to the discussion of issues related with what is meant to remember and what is meant to forget.