Deleted Messages es una performance para seis intérpretes y un vigilante. Como en cuarentena, el número de espectadores permitido para entrar varía de acuerdo al tamaño de la sala –una persona por cada tres metros cuadrados de suelo–. A medida que la performance avanza, el espacio se transforma –el suelo se hace trizas, las vallas aparecen tiradas y las sillas movidas por razones de conveniencia. Los intérpretes interactúan con la audiencia multitudinaria siguiendo las reglas de un juego “socio-evolutivo” de intercambio o de supervivencia de los cinco elementos coreográficos que cada intérprete tiene en un momento dado. Una pantalla de vídeo aborda el tema de la epidemia y la cuarentena y otra pantalla transmite en tiempo real el movimiento de la multitud. La audiencia es invitada a participar, no mediante una intervención difícil sino más bien mediante cambios suaves de movimiento y desplazamientos de los puntos de acción y de expresión en el amplio espacio. El espacio de actuación no ofrece reglas estrictas para el público, sino que todas las reglas de conducta son auto-interpretadas: sentarse, caminar, sacar una fotografía con el teléfono móvil, acercarse a uno de los artistas en movimiento o ver las acciones propias reflejadas en los desplazamientos de la performance.
Reseñas
“Is this possible to review at all? With my presence, I constitute a part of Deleted Messages. The Croatian performing collective BADco. from Zagreb loosens the boundaries not only between spectator and dancer, but lets our search for the self-deleting performance become “the performance”. About ourselves in the meeting with others. Deleted Messages reflects on crowd behaviour, system and adaptation, invisible borders and communication both physical and digital/virtual.
[…] The ensemble manages skilfully to balance this sensitive state so that we relax, smile, make eye contact. The strange becomes familiar and just when the process matures, the performance is over.
The room is left full of warmth, but also of thoughts about how we adapt. The basis for BADco.’s work is both theoretical and conceptual; about art and democracy, about borders and the subtle codes we send and receive. But what makes Deleted Messages a somewhat utopian experience is the feeling of living here and now. Take responsibility.»
Anna Ångström, Svenska Dagbladet
An intriguing solution of the director – to involve the audience into the area of performance imperceptibly – became a test not only to the spectators, but also to the authors. The project, its main aim – to delete the limits of narrative or subject theme – finally “deletes” the essence of the performance: abolishes clear positions of separation between actors and viewers. This conscious confusion of the roles reflects the nowadays situation of contemporary performing and visual arts, denying the existence of only one truth.
Goda Giedraityte, Klaipeda
One of the most impressive projects of the “SEAS” – the performance “Deleted Messages” by the Croatian group “BADco.” – has completely changed the attitude towards traditional theatre. The dance performance has deleted not only the subjects or the parts of the speech, but also the limits between the actor and the spectator. There is no stage, no “wall” between the artists and the audience in the performance of the Croatians. In the white space that is always supervised by video camera, the dancers and the spectators have surrendered to each other’s provocations and have all together created a performance
Rima Celiauskaite, Vakaru ekspresas
Artists from Croatia simply stunned with their performance “Deleted Messages” that refused the traditional stage. Instead both the dancers and the spectators acting and provoking each other in a white space became main participants of the performance.
Rima Celiauskaite, Aukse Boguzaite, Vakaru ekspresas
