This Place

At the beginning of the two weeks of residency, Manente & Simoes, together with the couple consult a Tarot reader to find out the bond of the artistic couple and answers to their questions such as – how will the two weeks be? Which problems will we be facing, how will we take certain decisions, how will the performance end?

As a starting point, Manente and Simoes propose to each couple the same kit of practices created out of experiences of ESP (extra sensorial perceptions) in the form of a manual of instructions for performance.These practices -inspired by telepathy, remote viewing and other psychic skills- were previously developed and filmed by Manente and Simoes as alternative methods for collaboration and improvisation.

These practices constitutes the raw material that will be displaced and reshaped by each couple into a unique “performative object” presented to the public at the end of the two weeks of residency in the same space. The project aims to shape -on each location- a different performative situation or even a different format (a.o. lecture performance, movie, skype chat, dance performance) and show it not as a work in progress but as a temporal object.

According to Simoes & Manente, an ‘artistic couple’ are two people that have worked together for some time under the same artistic project and they are bond by a more personal relation (close friends, brothers/sisters or lovers). This relation is considered as a topography.
“This place” is in different moments: the virtual space between the partners in an “artistic couple”, their mutual understanding and misunderstanding, a place where even paranormal communication can exist, the space of transference and the constellation of the encounter between all the people involved (between the couple and Manente & Simoes and the audience). This Place is a very intuitive and concrete mechanism to build layers of reading and make evident that a “thing” can always be.

This Movie is the performative object in film format that resulted from the two weeks of residency with the artistic couple Jorge Dutor & Guillem Mont de Palol, in the holiday home of the family of Guillem.