When sense of collectivity is numbed, one of its remaining surrogates is the dinner. In such format lay our expectations for belonging and an antidote to boredom: yet its exasperate repetition over time, as well as its precise mise-en-scène (a very sharp post-work pre-curfew timespan) cyclically failed in bringing satisfaction. Yet the atrophy derived from it taught us that even the most banal daily ritual can be altered, and its outcome renegotiated: to what extent can we bring forward such a process, and what other scenarios can possibly emerge from such repetition and atrophy?
Roles, time of the script and served feelings are parameters of the play one can distort: when any of them is undefined, the whole script is compromised: roles fade, as well as any possibility for appropriation and belonging. The dinner turns into an await, for a host to appear, for something to happen. It is exactly when we stretch excessively an await that other realities can take place.
Our role becomes the one of the performers of such possibilities, distorting the stiff dinner-setting to fit our boredom, our exasperation, or simply our desire of entertaining an impatient audience, orchestrating their emotions. In this new spectrum of actions, we shall still look for intimacy: in the alternating of isolation and confrontation, in the confusion, in the empathy, in the frustration, in the awkwardness, we shall meticulously look for consciousness of the other and of ourselves. The question we raise here is whether what we would find in return can still help to define collectivity: for this reason, we invited you all here.
WELCOME; (a) ceremony took place in Brussels on 26th and 27 of June 2021. The project was inititated and designed by collective every island (Alessandro Cugola, Caterina Malavolti, Damir Draganic, Juliane Seehawer and Martina Genovesi) and performed by Victor Dumont. Graphich design by Alice Zani, photography by Maxime Pranato, video by Lisa Lapierre.
When sense of collectivity is numbed, one of its remaining surrogates is the dinner. In such format lay our expectations for belonging and an antidote to boredom: yet its exasperate repetition over time, as well as its precise mise-en-scène (a very sharp post-work pre-curfew timespan) cyclically failed in bringing satisfaction. Yet the atrophy derived from it taught us that even the most banal daily ritual can be altered, and its outcome renegotiated: to what extent can we bring forward such a process, and what other scenarios can possibly emerge from such repetition and atrophy?
Roles, time of the script and served feelings are parameters of the play one can distort: when any of them is undefined, the whole script is compromised: roles fade, as well as any possibility for appropriation and belonging. The dinner turns into an await, for a host to appear, for something to happen. It is exactly when we stretch excessively an await that other realities can take place.
WELCOME; (a) ceremony took place in Brussels on 26th and 27 of June 2021. The project was inititated and designed by collective every island (Alessandro Cugola, Caterina Malavolti, Damir Draganic, Juliane Seehawer and Martina Genovesi) and performed by Victor Dumont. Graphich design by Alice Zani, photography by Maxime Pranato, video by Lisa Lapierre.