Macaquinhos - (Kunstenfestivaldesarts)

More than a show performed every evening, Macaquinhos is a happening, an event that tries to give substance to a contentious act. It deploys, in space and time, a form of body art in which the body is conceived more than anything as a political force. United around a shared reflection on north/south divisions, a group of Brazilian artists perform a shared practice. They conceive a “dance” in which the body is envisaged as a metaphor for the world: divided, organised in a hierarchy, governed by relationships of top-down power. The dance in Macaquinhos is organised around the lower part of the body, centred on the anus, that most democratic, but perhaps also most taboo of the human body’s orifices. Far from the stereotypes of a liberated and sensual dance, each performance by Macaquinhos is a desire to form a collective, decolonised body. An artistic and political approach that has been severely criticised in Brazil, it seeks to abolish all forms of hierarchy within a practice that (very) literally confronts taboos. A disorientating work...