INDEPENDENT PROJECT / ARTISTIC DIRECTOR + CURATOR
CENA#3: INTERSECTIONS is the third stage of the project CENA# (DESENHOS de CENA#) – an artistic and curatorial research on exploring possibilities to create and exhibiting design for performance. Based on a collaborative and shared space and/or signature between artists from different areas of Visual Arts, Theatre and Performance- scenography, costumes, light, sound, object, space, multimedia, VR, and body – in the construction of non-textual narratives.
CENA#3, aims to promote creative processes, inviting to experimentation, to perform and to exhibit. Exploring contemporary approaches of diverse expressions of art and its space, in which makes clear the strength of the collaborative working and the collective as a loud voice of expression. The project unfolds in two phases, starting as an artistic residence on a specific site and subsequently transposed as a performance in a neutral space. It was presented at Prague Quadrennial 2019, as part of the curator’s proposal, in order to encourage the collaborative process and promote the creation of unreleased performances of shared signatures, exploring the power of non-textual narratives as instrument to face censorship and redrawing borders. Cena #3 INTERSECTIONS has been already delivered to 4 distinct locations reuniting 4 artists collectives and circa. of 60 artists from 9 different countries and regions.
CENA #3 RESISTANCE MAR -MAY 2018, Memorial of Resistance in Sao Paulo, Brazil /22 artists participants
Taking place as part of the International Theatre Festival – MiTSP, CENA#3: INTERSECTIONS Project reunited 21 participants, selected from about 60 applications, from all Brazil ‘regions. The process taken place from March to June 2018 and the first stage was hosted by the Memorial of Resistance, where the participants shared the signature of installations and performances that were transposed, on a second stage, at the Theatre Centro da Terra, when 4 more artists joined the project as collaborators. The Memorial of Resistance, as a starting point site-specific chosen for the artistic residency, was extremely symbolic at this moment with all on going in the country, as it is a Museum dedicated to the memory, in an historical building, exhibiting about the political resistance and repression that mark the past of the city in the period of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
The INTERSECTIONS established between the artists and the space, explored the dialogue between the architecture, the locality, the audience, the surrounding areas and its inhabitants, most homeless, also included the inside areas of the museum: the gallery of contemporary art and the remaining cells from the dictatorship times. The process evolved into themes about identity, disappearance, pain, repression and the ability to resist against the return of those methods of control and censorship. Transposing these intersections to a neutral location was a major challenge, though, the resulting scenes and performance powerfully portray the themes emerged, allowing to be presented independently or sequentially at PQ2019.
Alicio Silva – Ana Carolina Guedes Vianna – Dalmir Rogério Pereira – Daniel Ducato – Daniele Geammal – Debora Lutz – Erika Schwarz – Fabricio Lins – Fany Magalhães – Ivon Mendes – Julia Armentano – Juliana Luiza Choma – Keity de Oliveira Valença – Lucas de Oliveira – Marcelo Girotti Callas – Maria Celina Gil – Nadia Moroz Luciani – Renata Castillo – Roderick Steel- Silvana Marcondes – Vanessa Dias
Other Collaborators Carolina Maciel – Luciana Aguiar – Luna Venarussso – Lui Cobra – Paula Hemsi – Vinicius Souza
CENA #3 TRASHES AUG 2018, Wenvoe Tunnel + Bute Theatre RWCMD Cardiff, Wales/10 artists participants
The second INTERSECTION took place in Cardiff – Wales / United Kingdom, in August 2018, as part of the event to celebrates OISTAT’s 50 years. It counted with the participation of 10 artists from 07 countries and regions (France, Belgium, India, Korea and, from the United Kingdom: Scotland, England, and Wales). The participants developed their scene-installation work inspired on a deactivated tunnel in Wenvoe, Cardiff, 1.6m (approximately 2.5km) long, used in the past to transport coal, what collaborated to the grown of Cardiff. Participants were asked to answer what they would like to bury (hide) or dig up (reveal, fetch). The results moved towards to look at the discarded, exiled, isolated human being; on issues related to prejudice and exclusion.
It was a big challenge, as the whole process took only 5 full days and the final result was presented in 4 sessions for an audience of 90 professional theatre makers from around 30 countries attending to the event.
Delphine du Barry – Edward Soulsby – Faiz Zahir – Jessica Ramm – Rachel Meritt – Sandra Gustafsson – Shiori Yamamoto – Suwoo Son – Valentine Gigandet – Zoe Brennan
CENA #3 BORDERS NOV 2018 – Jan 2019, Fortress da Barra, Port of Santos Brazil/ 12 artists participants
Part of the extended program of the MIRADA 2018 International Theatre Festival, CENA#3: INTERSECTIONS Project reunites 12 participants; artists from theatre groups from coast cities of Santos and Rio de Janeiro, and from Sao Paulo. The first stage was carried out during November and December 2018 at Fortaleza de Barra, a Fortress at the Brazilian main Port city of Santos; the second stage – transposition and synthesis, taken place at the basements of the Theatre SESC Santos, in January 2019. 
The Fortress was erected in 1584 to defend the entrance of the largest Brazilian port from French and English pirates. Its construction is atypical on the Brazilian coast, designed by Spaniards. Throughout its history, this Fortress was used as political prison. The development of the artistic residency process and performing at the Fortress demanded daily boat trips, individual journeys and the encounters between people living in the surrounding areas of Santos e from other localities up to 500km afar, establishing affective relationships among the group during this immersive existence. The materiality of the construction added to the immateriality of the journeys resulted in intersections that, among others and recurrent themes, discuss about objectification of the body.
Alexandre Maradei – Dalmir Rogério Pereira – Dani Paulino – Erika Schwarz – Fernando Henrique Gois – Keity de Oliveira Valença – Larissa Miyashiro – Leonardo Bacarini Queiroz – Luciana Aguiar – Pedro Cobra – Mauricio Garcia – Roderick Steel.
Other Collaborators Lucas de Oliveira – Marcelo Girotti Callas
CENA #3 MS-FIT SEP – NOV 2019, Glasgow Women’s Library, in Glasgow, Scotland / 5 artists participants HERLAND INTERSECTIONS EVENT 14 Nov 2019, Glasgow / UK
CENA#3 Intersections @Glasgow Women Library, after previous editions in Brazil and Wales, reunited artists based in Glasgow to meet and combining their skills for developing a multidisciplinary project to create a performance of shared signature. Inspired by the GWL collection, the artists pursue for a dialogue with the today`s local and global issues, creating narratives through scenes and installations, that highlight the themes related to the women`s right, voice, presence and power in the structure of the current society –macro and micro sphere – from its daily life to its participation in expanded shares in the struggle for its space and independence. In this edition participated only women artists, in the relationship with the material and immaterial collection of the Museum, with the emphasis on the collection about the Suffragettes (members of militant organisation formed by women, in the early twentieth century, who fought for the right to vote in public elections in United Kingdom).
Ashley Wilson – Jessica Ramm – Julia Napoleon – Melody Fu – Sarah Rose Graber
photos by Roderick Steel and Calen Dawkins
Aby Cohen 