FARO ARTISTIC RESIDENCE: 13 > 19 MAY 2018 OPEN TALK: 17 MAY 2018 Teatro das Figuras LOULÉ ARTISTIC RESIDENCE: 7 > 12 OCT 2018 OPEN TALK: 11 OCT 2018, 18h30 Auditório do Convento do Espírito Santo
Collection of Artists is Raquel André‘s new piece, the third movement of the project Collection of People. This research, which starts in 2018 with several national and international residencies, premieres in September 2019 at D. Maria II National Theatre, and it will be presented soon after at the Verão Azul Festival.
Her proposal is to meet with performance arts artists and to ask if they are willing to let themselves be collected. Raquel uses her own body as an archive, learning and keeping other people’s arts to tell their stories. She creates a collection that is concerned with each artist and their different practices, disciplines, conceptual perspectives and work tools.
Amongst the collection we also find personal desires and thoughts regarding ways of being and biographies. By collecting artists, Raquel navigates on the limits of real and fiction, fantasy and possibility, everyday and artistic life, looking to assemble what is ephemeral – and transforming it into something concrete and palpable, by means of an artistic and / or poetic device.
Raquel holds two residencies in the Algarve, one in Faro in collaboration with Teatro das Figuras, another in Loulé, in collaboration with Cine-Teatro Louletano. In each residency, Raquel will collect two artists from the Algarve, and will include both the region and its artistic practices in her next piece.
What influence does the territory hold over the work and which type of artists will Raquel find? Is it possible to access the artist by accessing a moment in his creative process? To access his history?
The question remains and an invitation to accompany the process is made, as well as to watch her piece on the festival’s next edition.
At the end of each residency, Raquel and her team will talk about the experience and the way they worked with the local artists in an open-to-the-public conversation.
Creation: António Pedro Lopes, Bernardo de Almeida, Raquel André
Co-production: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Festival Verão Azul – casaBranca / Teatro das Figuras / Cine-Teatro Louletano, BIT Teatergarasjen, O Espaço do Tempo, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cialou / Mysl, Tanzfabrik, FITEI
Support: República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes; SZENE, CDN Orléans
Premiere: 2019
Raquel André took a cardboard box full of handwritten letters, correspondence of a family in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and created her first performance work in 2009. Since then she’s been interested in Collecting in the Performing Arts, her Master’s thesis at Univ. Federal of Rio de Janeiro, under the direction of Eleonora Fabião, with a scholarship from Calouste Gulbenkian.
In 2015, she begins the tetralogy of Collection of People, with the premiere of Collection of Lovers, at D. Maria II National Theater. In 2016 she premiered Collection of Collectors at the Rivoli Theater. In 2017 she launched the book Collection of Lovers – Vol. 1 and created a version of the project for national tv channel RTP2. In 2019, she will premiere Collection of Artists. She is an APAP artist (Advancing Performing Arts Project – Performing Europe 2020) with the support of D. Maria II National Theater.