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HERE WHILST WE TALK - Brasilian dancer performs at the Chelsea Theatre

What are the links between the people who perform in this act and the flaneur?

The poet Baudelaire saw the flaneur as that special character of modernity that would stroll aimlessly through the city experiencing it in all its changing and unpredictable environment, feeling at home everywhere he went. The streets being at the same time the panorama he walks through and the walls that enclose him. At the same time at home and elsewhere. Private and public spheres intertwined. As we walk surrounded by an elastic, a sort temporary territory is collectively established not only by the people inside the elastic, but also by the passers-by. It might sound a bit absurd, but the elastic makes us feel a bit invisible, as one might feel looking through the lens of a filming camera. But we’re not visible! Imagine. A group surrounded by this huge elastic! But, nevertheless, I think as we progress in this situation this ambiguous feeling of visibility and anonymity accompanies us, like the flaneur: at the same time witnesses and actors of the city.

In what sense does your performance connects to Helio Oiticica's Penetráveis?

Hélio’s Penetráveis were installation works that provided a place for people to experience, a kind of work that existed through participation, by inhabiting it. It’s connected to his idea of parangolé, a sort of cap that only exists through the movement of the person who wears that formless piece of cloth. By inhabiting the space proposed by Hélio’s installations, invisible temporary aspects and individual uses of the space would come to life. I remember visiting his masterwork Tropicália at Tate Modern last summer. There is one entrance and one exit and only a certain number of people are allowed in each time. I was the first in the queue waiting my turn. I was about to enter and wander over the sands of the installation, which included some tropical plants, a small hut and a big cage with a couple of beautiful macaws, when happened what seemed a shift of the guards of the gallery. The woman who was regulating the entrance seemed happy, even relieved by the shift, maybe because she wanted to go to the toilet or home. But actually, that was not the reason. She stood up, entered the room, rushed to the cage with the macaws, took off her glasses and started talking with the birds. Totally happy with it. She had been there all day waiting for this moment, it seemed. It couldn’t be more in the spirit of the work of Hélio. I found it great. With our performance, we wanted to provide a situation where people themselves would establish and create their own experience of the city. We would be only providing the frame.

Do you think you art has any relation to the fields of urban art?

I don’t know what that might mean exactly. But I would say yes, once the urban sphere is totally at the centre of our performance. It wouldn’t be possible to do it outside the city. It has to do with what the structure of the city produces in sensible terms in the individuals that inhabit its space. Our work, though, is not an urban manifestation or intervention as graffiti or street dance. It’s rather a privileged instance of observation and witnessing the city, of unveiling to our senses in a unpredicted way what we experience daily in our urban life. In this sense it aligns itself more with the artistic interventions of the situationists.

In what capacity does your performance enable people to a better understanding of the city itself?

It’s hard to speak in terms of enabling people to do something. It may sound arrogant on our part. What our performance proposes is a situation which each one of the group has to deal with. Each one is the main actor of this performance, though always in dialogue with the other temporary members of this collectivity. It’s a continuous agreement between them and the administration of their experience. Our performance doesn’t enable anyone to do anything that he or she hasn’t been doing already in their lives. What it does is to provide this situation of being part of a group with a common experience and yet staying all by him/herself immersed in silence and his/her own thoughts.