Performer: Rosani Gomes
Local: UCS building
Duration: Phase 1: 20 min.
Phase 2: 22 min.
Total performance: 42 min.
For the first phase, Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” performance, and Helio Oiticica inspired me to this work. In the Ono’s “Cut Piece”, she used herself body as an object of violence when the audience was invited to cut her clothes. And Oiticica’s “Parangolés, gave me the idea of carnival samba, the joy of people using the colourful capes.
From there I started to develop creating my performance involving the transformation of women in society.
Phase 1:
I bought a few pieces of clothing worn in Charity shop to join the performance.
This performance was experimentation and has been in the UCS dependencies, more accurately in the white room.
I invited my classmates, and my teacher David Baldry placed an advertisement in My UCS email for all to participate.
The piece took place with the audience of Teacher and some students . Then the audience was invited to take an active part in dressing me with pieces of clothes I had provided.
To my surprise, the participants just piled the clothes on my body, giving more meaning to the theme of the performance. Then I invited them to accompany me, walking the halls of the building up to the library.
For this first phase, my intention was to show how women still have double workday; with their responsibility to be mother, wife, housewife and working outside the home to help provide the costs of the family. The use of clothes was in the figurative sense.
Phases 2:
In this second phase, I worked with the joy and people’s freedom, showing the contrast between both performances. However, this does not mean that people have to feel free only at the carnival; it was only a figurative idea from the carnival.
In short, this performance was an awareness of the importance and freedom of women in society, as a form of knowledge of the role of women in civil and cultural society.
Soon after, I invited the audience to participate in the sequence of this performance. Then, in the dark room, I started to take off clothes that the audience have been deposited on my body. I went to another room and wore a clothes, which was inspired by the Brazilian carnival, and then I went back to the dark room. After that, I invited the audience to participate and dancing together on the rhythm samba of the carnival. I proposed to them to become loose and feel free through the dance.
