Strange Smoke Over My Skin is a multimedia performance that explores the dynamics of power and the silence of bodies in sociopolitical spaces. Body, light and sound sculpt a multisensory space, establishing a dense and immersive atmosphere, where bodies are emancipated between the real and the virtual.

Based on social and musical representations, the conductor is portrayed as a figure of power, whose authority is recognized and commonly accepted. However, while in a traditional context, conductors are the only participants on stage who have the freedom to translate music through embodied movement, they are also the only element whose movement has no immediate sound representation. This performance aims to deconstruct these dynamics of power, exposing the performers to different means to translate into sound and image the different artistic expressions that each individuality on stage possesses, thus creating a new political space – where new dynamics of power emerge, or are completely deconstructed, enhancing individuality and difference. The conductor becomes another interpreter through this process of deconstruction; the performers free themselves from the central figure of power, depolarizing the relations of coexistence. A new singular and creative territory emerges as the figure of the conductor is fragmented into a reality of both control and controlled figure. Social equilibrium, as we know it, is disintegrated and the urgency to find new configurations drags us into a non-existent empty space, in which we hastily search. Invisibility is inevitable.

Credits


Composition, Artistic Direction - Igor C. Silva
Choreography assistance - Bruno Alexandre
Light design - Cárin Geada
Sound design - Suse Ribeiro
Creative technology design - Diogo Carriço
Conductor - Jan Wierzba
Performance - Trash Panda Collective (Tatiana Nunes Rosa, Marc Alberto, Mané Fernandes, André Lourenço, Pau Sola Masafrets, João Miguel Braga Simões)