Birdie in progress

Don’t they ever stop migrating?
(The birds, Alfred Hitchcock)

Cosmic dust in expansion. Galaxies drifting apart. Nebulae in contraction. Supernovae exploding. Antimatter in suspension. Planets orbiting. Moons in translation. Asteroids on the run. 

A swift born in the Niger Delta holding its annual migration to Europe. A round trip, free and circular. A journey enrolled in its very genetic code. A movement born of evolution and survival. 

A drop of high quality oil extracted from the Niger Delta. A drop of oil crossing two oceans to China. A drop of oil transformed into a synthetic polymer used to make a golf ball. A golf ball exported to a Golf Course in Eindhoven. The CEO of the oil company practicing his swing at the Golf Course. 

A child growing rice in the Niger Delta, near an oil well. A teenager fleeing the Niger Delta into Europe, the Paradise, through a hellish journey. A man arriving in Europe, surviving as a furtive lost golf balls catcher at the Course. 

The money of the CEO ramming against rice futures markets of the emerging countries. 195 billion euros in 1500 operations per second, plowing through all the globe markets. € 60 transferred through Money Transfer from Eindhoven to the post office of Yenagoa, Niger Delta, to withdraw within 15 days. 

With the support of Kaaitheater.
With the support of Cultural Office of Spain's Embassy in Brussels.

Birdie

I like to move it, move it I like to move it, move it I like to move it, move it You like to move it.
(Real 2 Real)

Through its trademark language (video projections, video editing in real time, scale models and willing performers) Agrupación Señor Serrano presents a live session where the screen and the scene are mixed to draw a hyper-media portrait of human migrations, movements of galaxies and golf swings.

What connection can be established between the perennial motion of the celestial bodies, the parabola described by a golf ball, the migration of swifts, a journey through the mega-flux of Internet and human migrations? Probably none. Except that all these elements come together in the unprejudiced and disruptive dramaturgy of Birdie, a fresco about one of the most discordant aspects of our times: the contradiction between the ease of flow of goods and capital, and the difficulty of people movement.

Birdie’s creation process will take place through several international workshops and residencies. The premiere is scheduled for mid-2016.

Scales, dimensions, stage devices

Eppur si muove.
(Galileo Galilei)

Our work in recent years has been based on a dialogue between three scenic scales. A micro scale, where the scale models and video cameras coexist; a human scale, where the performers handle the micro scale, perform actions and build the macro scale; and precisely a macro scale, the projection, where everything else converges and explodes in a thousand directions and meanings.

In Birdie we will expand this horizon adding a fourth dimension to play, the virtual dimension. Internet, the network that has almost wrapped and hidden the “real” world, capable of providing depth to any data, capable of filling any bit with content, but within which it is sometimes difficult to find a sense.

We will add to our usual tools the depth of all kind of electronic gadgets connected to the Net. The projection will no longer be just what our cameras capture and manipulated footage, but also the screen of our computers (or phones or tablets or whatever). All this will be done live, shaping the hyper-media journey of the different movements that structure the dramaturgy of Birdie (planets, swifts, men, capital, oil, etc.).

Agrupación Señor Serrano

Agrupación Señor Serrano is a performing arts company built on innovation and research into the new technologies of live performance. In the company’s works – which range from dance to visual theatre – video is an indispensable medium and instrument of interaction, which merges into a dramaturgy created through experimentation, research and a cross-fertilization of languages. Founded in 2006 by Alex Serrano, and composed of Pau Palacios and Barbara Bloin, the company gathers personalities from many different artistic fields.
  Agrupación Señor Serrano is based in Barcelona, but the company’s productions are featured in the programmes of theatres and festivals around the world.

Illustration

The Cifas asks contemporary artists to illustrate its communication.

Born in 1983 in LIège. Lives and draws everywhere he goes. Benjamin Monti is represented by Gallery Nadja Vilenne. Benjamin Monti, is an astonishing collector of images, printed curiosities, recycler of iconographic corpus that he mixes, recomposes, brings back to life between copies and original images, a deep dive in the reading of endlessly reevaluated representation. Monti is somewhere between text, graphic and visual arts; his path is very singular (Jean-Michel Botquin dans Art Press 2, ABC Art belge contemporain).

http://benjaminmonti.blogspot.be/

http://www.nadjavilenne.com/benjamin-monti.html#.VdOa2WB38sQ