"CONUNDRUM" + "Let The Rhythm Pull You Towards Your Edges"

CONUNDRUM, by Teatro Praga

CONUNDRUM is a spoken loop built from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Jussi Parikka, Grada Kilomba and computer manuals, that proposes fun and desire as an open-source structure, fundamental to get out of the frame.

CONUNDRUM is an intricate problem that is difficult to deal with; it is a question that has only a conjectural answer; it’s a riddle. In this performance, the dark path of loneliness evidences the daily in-between experience of being and living both as a ghost and a monster. A performer, metamorphosing fandoms, sings a song to a cute cat. The cat may be the political activist, an aggregated extension of the raw materials of earth that is able to melt itself with meatspace, disrupting the legitimacy of the preponderant. Space and sound become pleasure principle capsules for an affect that’s transforming itself.

Teatro Praga is an artistic collective founded in 1995 and based in Lisbon. It has received multiple prizes and has presented performances in the most prestigious contemporary cultural institutions in Portugal, from the National Theatre to Serralves and Maat Museum. The group has also performed at several festivals and events in Europe, Turkey, China, Israel and Brazil. It has published books and runs a cultural venue in Lisbon, Rua das Gaivotas 6. Teatro Praga is currently working on two theatre performances: XtraOrdinary, a musical, and Timon of Athens, a rereading of Shakespeare’s homonymous play, the last part of a trilogy on power. The group’s latest work, Jângal, will be shown in March at Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris, and the theatre performance Before will be presented at Sala Hiroshima in Barcelona in February.

Let The Rhythm Pull You Towards Your Edges, by Evan Ifekoya

A hybrid performance lecture DJ set and now forms part of my ongoing project 'A Score, A Groove, A Phantom' which investigates archives of blackness, sociality and inheritance as they diffract through queer nightlife and trauma in the present moment. This work was originally presented with video and live tweeting at David Roberts Art Foundation in July 2015. Later I presented versions of this performance at CCA Glasgow, in September 2016 and London College of Communication in 2017. For this iteration in Madrid, the work will draw on my current interests in the ocean as archive, meditation and the echo as affective encounter.

Evan Ifekoya’s current work investigates the possibility of an erotic and poetic occupation using film, performative writing and sound. Ifekoya’s recent work has been presented at: Gasworks London and Camden Arts Centre (2018) Contemporary Arts Centre New Orleans as part of Prospect 4; Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, KW institute, Berlin; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; Plymouth Arts Centre; ICA and Serpentine Galleries, London; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire; (2017); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; and Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2016). In 2017, Ifekoya was an Art Foundation Fellow in Live Art. Forthcoming includes a solo exhibition at De Appel opening in January 2019 moving image commission with Tyneside Cinema to launch early 2019.