sarma

Connexive#1: Vera Mantero

item

From 17 January until 4 February the Belgian arts venue Vooruit presents an elaborate program around the Portuguese choreographer Vera Mantero. Since it is not solely her work, but also the many connections and affinities that spring from it that are the focus, the program came to be called: Connexive #1: Vera Mantero.

Sarma, too, is connected to this event and not coincidentally so. In Connexive #1 discourse is not just an obligatory element that is tolerated as long as it stays at the margins of the 'real stuff'. In the work of Mantero as well as of the invited artists the development of a critical artistic practice has a strong discursive dimension.

Sarma is integrated in various ways in Connexive #1: Sarma presents in its database a selection of texts on the work of Vera Mantero. Sarma presents the Anthology André Lepecki - Essays, one of the invited theoreticians and a close collaborator of Vera Mantero. * Sarma-editor Jeroen Peeters reports daily on the events that occur during Connexive #1. See: Materials, dialogues and observations on proximity, walking about Connexive #1: Vera Mantero

What is Connexive #1: Vera Mantero?

Connexive #1: Vera Mantero is a cluster of events around Vera Mantero. With this Portuguese choreographer and her affinities as a read thread the curators Myriam Van Imschoot and Barbara Raes composed a program, or rather, a landscape of connections and relationships. During two weeks and a half performances will concur in the Vooruit in Ghent with concerts, installations, seminar sessions, a talk, publications, collective improvisation evenings and film screenings featuring no fewer than thirty like-minded souls.

Connexive #1: Vera Mantero is not a retrospective around Vera Mantero. A retrospective presupposes a visually based model of interpretation, according to which the past accomplishments reveal themselves to a detached eye. Throughout her work Vera Mantero has taken a firm stance against this kind of fixating and rating view taken from a higher plane. Using a term borrowed from the Situationists in the 1960s, she opts for a 'dérive', in which one drops down into the terrain itself - in order to wander and constantly interact with the attractions and numerous encounters which arise within that environment.

Connexive #1: Vera Mantero aspires in that vein to be an environment in which every part exists independently whilst simultaneously linking with the other parts. Dérives, but no derivatives: nothing is derived although there is always a reason for a detour. It is the poetry of the circuitous. Together with the audience the following artists are up for a walkabout: Jean-Paul Dessy, Eavesdropper, Astrid Endruweit, Christian Fennesz, Dominique Fourcade, Sabina Holzer, Stef Kamil Karlens, Benoît Lachambre, Nadia Lauro, André Lepecki, Antonija Livingstone, Lilia Mestre, the late João César Monteiro, Lisa Nelson, Obatala, DJ Olive, Steve Paxton, Jeroen Peeters, Carlos Pez Gonzales, Pedro Pinto, Frans Poelstra, Barbara Raes, Nuno Rebelo, Pierre Rubio, Isabelle Schad, Meg Stuart, Mark Tompkins, Myriam Van Imschoot, Alex Waterman and, of course, Vera Mantero herself!