Carolina Mendonça is investigating the notion of violence through writing and muscular rumination. What type of stories are stuck to our muscles that a bullet can release? Can our muscles dream of less violent narratives in a collapsing world?

After the previous work Zones of Resplendence (presented in 2023), which focused on the imagination of what could be an army that fights against sexual violence, some questions became unavoidable, some practices seemed to require more time. In this new project, Carolina and her team will continue to speculate how choreography and body practices can be a form of self-defense, this time investigating the violence embedded in the family's social structure.

This is a sharing of a work in progress after a residency in collaboration with Próximamente Festival before the performance will be presented at Beursschouwburg in autumn 2025.

After the presentation, art historian and curator Olivia Ardui will enter into dialogue with Carolina.

about

Carolina Mendonça has a Master in Choreography and Performance at Giessen University in Germany and Graduated in Performing Arts at ECA-USP in Brazil. Her latest projects are Zones of Resplendence (2023) which speculates around feminist perspectives on violence, Sirens (2021), an attempt to listen to the sirens chant as a collective practice, Pulp - History as a Warm Wet Place (2018), which deals with intuitive archaeology digesting the leftovers of the XVII-XVIII centuries, useless land (2018) where together with Catalina Insignares they invite de audience to sleep while they read through the night. Carolina was also one of the curators of NIDO (2022) together with Suely Rolnik and Victoria Perez Royo; of the Performing Arts Festival VERBO (2017) at Galeria Vermelho and Temporada de Dança (2017) at Videobrasil both in São Paulo. She develops practical, theoretical research that she shares in the workshops dealing with telepathy, levitation and deep listening, among other practices. Carolina always builds her work in collaboration with artists such as Catalina Insignares, Marcelo Evelin, Marcela Santander, Dudu Quintanilha, and Carolina Bianchi.
www.instagram.com/carolmendonca/

Olivia Ardui is a storyteller working at the intersection of visual and performing arts. In her recent projects, she explores exhibition-making and art history through the lens of fiction and dramaturgy, treating them as potential theatrical scripts that challenge notions of objectivity and neutrality. From around 2013 until 2020 she gained extensive curatorial experience in Brasil, Ecuador and Mexico, working with permenent collections (such as Lina Bo Bardi's famed glass easels), international biennial programmes and itinerant arts residencies alike. Now based in Belgium, she currently teaches in the Art History department at UCLouvain while pursuing independent artistic projects.
www.instagram.com/oliviardui/

Próximamente Festival showcases artists from Latin America and its diasporas in an invitation to spark conversation with Brussels’ artists. This third edition explores the theme of FUTURO ANCESTRAL, to imagine the future through the wisdom of both the past and the present—especially a past that has been marginalised from the official narrative and remains, to a great extent, unknown.
Próximamente is an initiative of KVS and this edition is curated by Gerardo Salinas & Cecilia Kuska.
www.instagram.com/proximamente.festival/