Navegando la marea / Sailing the Tide

Mariano Pensotti will be in Brussels to present his last production at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in May. It will also be the opportunity to lead a workshop in which he proposes to revisit "La Marea", his first production made for KFDA 11 years ago.

La marea

Eleven years ago, Mariano Pensotti was invited for the very first time at Kunstenfestivaldesarts with the urban intervention “La Marea”. In that piece nine scenes which looked like ordinary life situations were performed by actors in different spots of Rue de Flandre while projected subtitles revealed hidden stories of the characters. Through the projected texts the audience had access to the thoughts of the characters but also to their past, present circumstances and even their future. It was a sort of movie made live, the audience being the eye of the camera.

The audience was placed in a voyeuristic position, as it they were spying inside someone else’s houses.

The key point of the piece was capturing a moment of the here and now while also opening to a wider dimension of stories. As if all the stories contained within a specific segment of the city and its inhabitants could be simultaneously narrated. To make visible the invisible stories of a city and to turn the private into a public exhibition.

As the fictional scenes were placed in a real context, the borderline between fiction and reality started to vanish allowing the audience to see their own street and regular places from a different perspective.

The workshop

Mariano Pensotti proposes to revisit his piece "La marea" in the frame of a workshop. Same place, 11 years later.

The participants will be invited to develop their own new scenes taking the concept of “La Marea” as a starting point. Working as playwriters, directors and performers at the same time, the participants will create a collective piece where scenes will intertwine with one another.

The following questions will be raised:
     Which stories can be told today about a specific street and its inhabitants?
     What about the real stories of the people living/working there?
     Which fictions can we create using an urban space as a white canvas?
     Is there any traces left of the artistic intervention done eleven years ago?     
     What does it mean today to spy into your neighbour’s house?
     How much the city has change over the last ten years?

The workshop will also be the opportunity to explore how much a specific place, a city and a work of art can change through time.

Workshop organised in collaboration with kunstenfestivaldesarts and La Bellone.

Mariano Pensotti

Mariano Pensotti (Buenos Aires, 1973) is an Argentinian author and theater director based in Buenos Aires. He studied cinema, visual arts and theater in Argentina, Spain and Italy.
His work goes into two directions: on one side he makes stage performances with his own texts in which the play is strongly based on the work with the actors, on the other side, he makes site specific performances and installations where the main intention is to create a particular contrast between fiction and reality in public places.

His pieces where presented in the main International Festivals, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Festival d’Avignon, Under the Radar in New York, Festival d’Automne Paris, Zürcher Theater Spektakle, PuSh Festival Vancouver, Santiago a Mil, Temporada Alta Girona, HAU in Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Yokohama Festival and Wiener Festwochen.
Mariano Pensotti has received several awards worldwide. His texts have been published and translated into more than twenty languages.

Illustration

The Cifas asks contemporary artists to illustrate its communication. Marion Sellenet illustrated the workshop led by Mariano Pensotti.

Trained in applied arts, fine arts and illustration, Marion Sellenet comes from the South of France though she now lives in Brussels. She collects papers and photos of a bygone world as well as small abandoned or lost objects. She handles glue, mouse and brush. In parallel with a work of exhibition and creation of assemblages, she designs images for the newspapers and publishers.