THE FOUNTAIN
I found we need this creative collective force today as a public spirit. Adaptive, Imaginative, Collaborative. With this “fountain’ I want to liberate our patterns and ideas on social perspective side. We see too much ourselves as social human beings from a very anthropocentric perspective. By embodying the fountain, I want to explore and shift to other aspects of empowerment that as perhaps forgotten from modern life such as intuition, creative power, environmental relation, the relation to the other, essence, commonality. Intrigued by social sculpture I want to bring movement to the level of liberation mixed with the intensification of modern ideologies.
THE FOUNTAIN is a choreographic installation as part of a social sculpture series. The concept of social sculpture, introduced by Joseph Beuys stated that art has the potential to transform social structures through human activity.
THE FOUNTAIN has been a nomadic and collaborative project and has taken the public space, working with local groups in a performance installation. It aims to reorient the body towards radical spaces, collective formations, trigrams, crystals symmetry, structures of support, sensuality, saliva and sweat build a powerful bodily narrative with the construction of environments and its affects and responses.
Intrigued by the symbology of water and the attention to its importance, mysteries, fluidity, the property to dissolve and to connect, to emotions and to the bodies’ energies, the work takes form as a ritualistic journey into human conditions and the beauty of overcoming borders.
THE FOUNTAIN is a critic allegory realness that mixes questions on public. Dripping narrative about the ‘plastic on water’ chain of problematic, the shortage of resources, waste and the conservative politics based on consuming that leads to our environmental problems that wash with mud cities away and threatening communities within their living place.
Efforts to keep the ‘other’,
the different, the strange and the foreign at a distance,
the decision to preclude the need for communication,
negotiation,
mutual commitment,
is not the only conceivable,
but the expectable response to the existential uncertainty rooted in the new fragility
or fluidity
of social bonds.
That decision,
to be sure,
fits well with our contemporary
obsessive concern with
pollution and purification
with our tendency to identify
danger
to personal safety with the invasion of
‘foreign bodies’
and to identify safety unthreatened
and secure with purity.
The acutely apprehensive attention to the substances entering the body through mouth or nostrils,
and to the foreigners leaking surreptitiously into the neighbourhood of the body,
is accommodated side by side in the same cognitive frame.
Both prompt a similar wish to
‘get it (them) out of my (our) system’. from LIQUID MODERNITY Zygmunt Bauman
THE FOUNTAIN is a choreographic installation live performances as part of a social sculpture trilogy using allegories concerning issues about the real world that will culminate in a third proposition. The project has an interdisciplinary approach of the theatrical space, evoke new social imaginaries, and a vivid relationship with the public. It proposes a journey connected to being inserted into an experiential environment where space is taken care of and the public is embracing at space of the action as in installation.The FOUNTAIN has been a nomadic and collaborative project with choreographers such as Dani Lima (BR), Christine Bouvier (FR), Valentina Parlato (IT) and has taken as a starting point in public spaces with local groups as a performance installation. In April, in residence at Espaço do Tempo, Portugal, Belfiore experiments and collaborates with the choreographer Rita Vilhena (PT) thinking about a format for an intimate, visual and theatrical space. The work was presented during Come Together #4 at Frascati in Amsterdam and It will premiere at Julidans International Dance Festival in Amsterdam.
The Role of the Artist
A fountain brings its meaning from the Latin “fons”, it is a source or spring. When Nauman’s work Self Portrait as a Fountain was made, Naumann was at the beginning of his research into his role as an artist. Shortly before he made a work entitled “The True Artist is an Amazing Luminous Fountain”. With the image of the artist as a fountain figure, Nauman plays in a traditional myth around the artist figure, being an almost prophetic way figure of inexhaustible vibrant creativity. As a choreographer, I am fascinated to bring people in the studio to experience collectiveness, support, and togetherness. To create a performance I always set to myself the importance to take time to observe, to watch people move and mostly opening the gate of how to be moved by one’s performance, one’s action. I want to draw attention to our values to human interaction, affection and continue to investigate our body capacities to transform the space and develop with understanding our times. Bringing Naumans’ statement The True Artist is an Amazing Luminous Fountain I want to investigate the potentialities of the performers to endure and labor a single physical action. The performer as a fountain, as a source of creativity. Art as a potential change. The artist as a collective force.
The Role of Public
Fountains were originally purely functional, connected to springs or aqueducts and used to provide drinking water and water for bathing and washing to the residents of cities, towns, and villages. Until the late 19th century most fountains operated by gravity. Ancient civilizations built stone basins to capture and hold precious drinking water. Roman fountains were decorated with bronze or stone masks of animals or heroes. In the Middle Ages, Moorish and Muslim garden designers used fountains to create miniature versions of the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France used fountains in the Gardens of Versailles to illustrate his power over nature. The meaning and the functions of a fountain has changed over time as it is the role in public space. The project will take research exploring other formats in the relation of audience-performers. Some of the research as in Rio during the HOBRA residence will be done in public space. I want to learn with that more about the borders of space, what is common, shared and proximity. And to bring ideas of the role of the public into the theater, as well, new modes of spectating inspired by the installation to create an experience.
Substances+Bodies and Consciousness
Water is one of the most common dream symbols and is usually associated with the emotions and the unconscious. A Fountain is the symbol of joy and peace. For our own bodies at birth is more than 60 percent water, and the percentage of water in our bodies remains high throughout life (depending upon weight and body type). The earth’s surface is more than 60 percent water as well. And now we have seen scientifically that water is far from inanimate, but is actually alive and responsive to our every thought and emotion. Perhaps, having seen this, we can begin to really understand the power that we possess, through choosing our thoughts and intentions, to heal ourselves and the earth. Using high-speed photography, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He undertook extensive research of water around the planet not so only as a scientific researcher, but more from the perspective of an original thinker. At length, he realized that it was in the frozen crystal form that water showed us its true nature through. He has gained worldwide acclaim through his groundbreaking research and discovery that water is deeply connected to our individual and collective consciousness. Mr. Emoto has been visually documenting these molecular changes in water by means of his photographic techniques. He freezes droplets of water and then examines them under a dark field microscope that has photographic capabilities.
THE FOUNTAIN – THE NETHERLANDS
Choreography: Fernando Belfiore in collaboration with creation and performance with Maciej Sado, Rita Vilhena, Rose Akras , Mavi Veloso, Rozemarijn de Neve, Johhan Rosenberg and Fernando Belfiore Light: Wijnand van der Horst with Katinka Marac Sound: Isadora Tomasi Set: Nikola Knežević Dramaturgical Advice: Renée Copraij and Cecile Brommer Production: DANSCO / Marieke van Bueren Co-production and Residencies: O Espaço do Tempo, Dansmakers Amsterdam, RedPlexus Marseille and HOBRA (Panorama/FPK). THE FOUNTAIN is supported by the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Stimuleringsregeling Eigentijdse Dans and Stichting Imperium. With thanks to FLAM. Pictures Thiemi Higashi and Paul McGee
Many thanks to nights talks and collaborators of The Fountain: Dani Lima, Valentina Parlato, Pia Kramer, Matej Kejžar, Vincent Riebeek, Harun Morrison, Clara Saito, Milena Weber and Many thanks to all ever participants collaborators, water spitters, bath takers, colors kissers washing fighters, of the Fountain during researches, workshops, public space version and residencies.
And to master of Spitting, J. Wyllys and Leacking, G. GreenWald.
THE FOUNTAIN JULIDANS
THE FOUNTAIN FRASCATI COMETOGETHER#4
THE FOUNTAIN FRASCATI VONDELPARKOPENLUCHTTHEATER
THE FOUNTAIN PARADIGM FESTIVAL GRONINGEN
A FONTE – BRASIL
The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch, and the works of contemporary visual artist Aernout Mik, both Dutch, served as the inspiration to the choreographers Fernando Belfiore and Dani Lima that collaborated during the residence HOBRA. The performance comes from the allegory of the fountain to walk through the affections of current relations. They also had collaborated with other 21 artists from Rio that had participated thought out 5 days of experimentation.
Centro Casa Laurinda de Cultura – Rio De Janeiro – Brasil – Blog HOBRA
Photo: Elisa Mendes
Participants ❤ Babi Fontana Carolina Repetto Clara Kutner Clara da Costa Dally Schwarz Fenanda Libman Francisca Pinto Joana Silleman João Rafael Schüler João Victor Cavalcante Julia Fernandez Karine Medeiros Barros Laís Castro Luar Maria Luisa Coser Luísa Pitta Maria Carolina Werneck Miguel Teixeira Pillar Rocha Toni Everton ❤
LA FONTAINE – FRANCE
The Festival in Marseille Préavis de Désordre Urbain 2017 offered the space of residence and experimentation of for the French version of the fountain. The experiments took place at the Friche La Belle de Mai and two urban squares in the center of Marseille for the open audience.
Participants ❤ Lin Lin, Sanae Dannoune, Sébastien Mariat, Vale Vietro, Jeroen Maiastrart, Julien Gourdin, Jean Marei Delbart, Alejandro Gonzales da Rocha, Graziella Bouchet, Amaya Lachaize Muller.
©Franck Mnt
Pictures from Rio made by Elisa Mendes bellow \/
Indigenous leader urges EU to impose sa… on Brazil | World news | The Guardian
In fact, what is at stake, above all, is to exceed the design of the borders that neoliberal reason imposes. Other coreopolitics disrupting coreopolices; it is not about expanding, but exploding. Expansion and progress are white images, without which we do not understand modernity and the notion of history that emerges from it. It will not be by chance that Brecht made the interruption a key concept of his poetics.
In the midst of class quarrels and clashes about race and gender, it is about, beyond pacts and their correlates, to imagine new constellations – of ideas, groups, movements, people.
Eu, um criolo, José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo.
the performative calls to be rethought not only as an act that an official language-user, but precisely as social ritual,
as one of the very “modalities of practices [that] are powerful and hard to resist
precisely because they are silent and insidious, insistent and insinuating.”
Performativity’s Social Magic by Judith Butler
We can now say,expanding Rancière’s thought, that choreopolicing imposes a forced ontological fitting between pregiven movements, bodies in conformity, and pre-assigned places for circulation. In contradiction, we can say that choreopolitics requires a redistribution and reinvention of bodies, affects, and senses through which one may learn how to move politically, how to invent, activate, seek, or experiment with a movement whose only sense (meaning and direction) is the experimental exercise of freedom.
Choreopolice and choreopolitics. André Lepecki
The Fountain Of Greed
The great drought decimated the animals,
forcing them to survive on only a few drops of water found here and there,
but one fateful day
a sudden storm
created a huge puddle,
which has become a fountain of life.
An ant is the first to find the fountain
but it has no time to drink
because a monkey orders it to leave.
“Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest.”
And forces it to run away.
The monkey gets ready to drink
when a dog arrives.
“Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest.”
The monkey quickly disappears
but the dog doesn’t manage to get anything to drink either because a wolf approaches.
“Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest.”
The dog flees
but before the wolf can drink,
a lion interrupts it.
“Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest So the wolf flees, too
and when the lion is about to drink,
a rhinoceros shouts:
“Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest.”
Before the rhinoceros can taste the water,
an elephant arrives.
“Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest.” The rhinoceros vanishes
and when the elephant
draws its trunk near to the surface of the water, the ant who first discovered the fountain stops it. “Go away.
This fountain is mine because I’m the strongest.” Elephants
don’t like ants
and so the elephant runs away.
When the ant,
even thirstier than before,
is just about to take a sip,
the monkey suddenly appears
and the story starts all over again
with the same animals,
none of which manages to drink any water
and this goes on
for days and days
until every last one of them
dies of thirst.
Poem by Gianfranco Aurilio
Fernando Belfiore 