Collective Exhibition for a Single Body -The Private Score (Lisbon, 2021)

The original meta-score “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body” was performed for the first time during documenta 14 (2017). “The documenta 14 Score” took place as two separate yet simultaneous and successive events: one in Athens, at the time of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, and the other in Kassel, Germany. The intention was to subsequently decentralize the score’s performance by presenting it in the port of Piraeus, in the outskirts of Athens, thus following a similar spatial shift towards the margins that the international art quinquennial had taken when geopolitically moving to Greece. The Kontakt Collection commissioned “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score” and showed it in Vienna in 2019. A subsequent presentation took place the same year at the Playground festival in Leuven, Belgium.

The score for the “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body” performances draws attention to the works’ place of enunciation, namely the sites for which they are arranged, whether this is in Vienna, Leuven or Lisbon. The individual (the single body) does not count in his or her isolation – whether it be the artist who authors the work, the curator who selects it, the choreographer who sets it in motion, the dancer who embodies it, or finally the visitor who witnesses the work when it is performed. It is in the place where a collective discourse (symmetry between the various participants) and an individual (reversibility of roles) are brought together that a democratic art comes to express itself.

This third presentation of “The Private Score” was originally intended to take place on and around Rua do Poço dos Negros in Lisbon’s Misericórdia neighbourhood. This street name is possibly linked to the existence of a royal letter from “D. Manuel I”, dated 13 November 1515, and addressed to the city of Lisbon. He writes about the necessity to build a well to deposit the bodies of dead slaves, especially during pandemics. This measure, taken at the time of Portugal’s imperial expansion, here was meant to refer to the contemporary crisis of COVID-19, which subjects bodies to a sanitary regime. After having been abandoned in recent years by its inhabitants and traders, Rua do Poço dos Negros has experienced a revival of interest by investors and tourists. The score thus meant to address the colonial history of Lisbon (monuments, urban history) and the development of an Airbnb paradise, in which the residents have felt a push towards the periphery.

Due to regulations in place to contain the current epidemic it was impossible to generate the historical and political links offered by a lively street in downtown Lisbon. The choice was therefore to gather around the modernist Coruchéus complex in Alvalade and in the gardens of Quadrum Gallery, featuring a group of local performers: Luiza da Silva Gabriel, João dos Santos Martins, Adriano Vicente.

The transmission of gestures and the mediation of postures initiated by the artists from the former socialist countries gathered in “The Private Score” require particular attention towards the context in which their movements are replayed. This sensual as well as intellectual participation requires connecting these actions to the social bodies and the cultural environment that receives them.

The performers will be trained to perform the gestures of the works from “The Private Score” by artist and choreographer Manuel Pelmuş and will be joined by performer Jack Hauser who activated the score during its first iteration in Vienna in 2019.
 
“The Private Score” was commissioned by Kontakt Collection and co-produced by Tanzquartier Wien. It was first activated in 2019 in Vienna, Austria.

A guide book designed by Atlas Projectos accompanies “Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The Private Score – (Lisboa, 2021)”.

“The Private Score – Lisboa 2021” is supported by Kontakt Collection, Vienna, Institut Français Portugal, OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Embassy of Austria in Lisbon, Romanian Cultural Institute – Lisbon