zyxt!  submissions . video installations  . editorial  about us
prose . poetry . photogallery . review . interview

Soledad Rodriquez

Monologue excerpt from AsM Siempre hasta que hacia el impensable fin si esta noci?n se mantiene
Thus Always until towards the unthinkable end if this notion is kept


BIO:
FILUMENA, directed by Florencia Cima, originates as an independent theater company in the year 2000.
FILUMENA is mainly question and action about theatrical language. That is why the company practices a sustained interdisciplinary methodology, both in the field of production and in the field of teaching and training.
This approach allows for a constantly changing perspective of the investigation processes, and it encourages the incorporation of new and richer focuses on this type of work.
It is not so simple to explain with words the type of work we do in the company, but I find the following text describing Paul Klee’s creation process very close to Filumena’s process of work.

In his classes Klee used to talk about the need of a “precise orientation on the formal plane”. The simplest element would become an active being. He would begin by the dot, and would show all the things that could be obtained as from this simple element: from its movement, the line is born – with its recurring expressiveness and its polyphony- and Klee would show how the line can close in itself and thus form a flat figure. Then he would show the elements of distribution and movement on that surface: structure, rhythm and proportion. After that he would make a simple rhythmic element grow into a stunning plenitude of structural possibilities; he would then extend the surface into the space and there he’d search for equilibrium conditions, showing how each plastic procedure implies a disturbance of equilibrium and needs to be reestablished on a different plane, in a complex game that offers the artist the most dramatic possibilities of expression. From the line he goes to the chiaroscuro plane, and finally gets to the color. (...) Trasposition in the art of visual language occurs only thanks to the evocative power of abstract devices. Klee always begins without a concern for content; he only pays attention to constructing. But within the interwinement of the different pictorical elements, an image slowly grows. At the time of creation, that image conveys a pictoric parallel and therefore, it needs a name. (...) The title is only the last and poetic closing metaphor.

Maria Fossi Todorow. Klee. Editorial Atlántida, Buenos Aires.

Improvisation by Filumena Theater Company during an interdisciplinary festival organised by the Di Tella University in Buenos Aires in May 2007.

It is the dust what makes her cry. It is the dust what makes everybody cry. The dust coming from a blue constellation that makes the air surrounding us mortiferous. The air corrupted in its very substance. Dust is annoying but necessary. Consequences of this climate on the skin: it becomes parchment-like; the bodies rub against each other producing a noise of dry leaves; the very mucous membranes become dull. The effect of this climate on the soul should not be underestimated. However, the soul certainly suffers less than the skin, whose defense systems -from perspiration to goose bumps- often find themselves disturbed. Being pure and clear by nature, the air only gets rotten or corrupted when malign vapors mingle in it due to random causes. The only way to avoid these dreadful consequences on the skin is to protect it with some kind of make-up base, volatile powder or Indian Earth. It should be spread all over the face and neck, and removed with a hydrating cream or astringent lotion.
So far, a first glance at this bizarre belief and at this notion and its consequences, if they are kept...
Health is a state because it's a particular disposition. In this sense, the limbs' strength or weakness is a state of the limbs. State is action and movement. Because between the subject that performs and the subject that endures, there is always action. The worst of the states is the state of the skin: corrupted, greenish gray, spotted with purple tumors and eczemas, bruised with bloody ulcers. One to three days of agony are observed, during which the wretched subject becomes delirious, spits blood and gets covered with blisters: a young body but a frozen soul.

A moment of fraternity.

After death, the human body suffers modifications that are general for age and race. Heart: rigidity begins in the heart; it starts in the left ventricle, which gets almost totally empty, whereas the right ventricle gets half empty; during the first hour and a half after death the blood in the heart stays liquid. Coagulation follows. If this notion is kept, the blood coagulates in the vessels; then the intestinal bacteria emigrate into the blood, where they multiply.
There remains the state of the brain: the postmortal disintegration processes evolve very fast in the brain; they are recognized for the appearance of a greenish gray color in gassed cavities. These processes can be observed much better by taking a close look at the brain. That is why, if there were a solidary soul here, I'd like to ask that person to donate their brain. Of course, in no way would we induce death upon that person. On the contrary, we'd kindly wait until - may God forbid it - he or she had a fatal accident, and only then, we'd extract the brain by cut opening it with a sharp pointed element, and with the brain in our hands we'd be able to observe this beautiful perfect line that divides it. We'd be able to observe this perfect division between the right and left hemispheres, and only then we'd understand how the left hemisphere is the more literal, analytical and calculating fragment; and how the right hemisphere handles the sensitivity, the literariness, the artistry, the creativity. A person whose right hemisphere is more developed, is the typical creative person... It must be my left hemisphere that is more developed, since I am not a creative person. And you know what? that produces me a state of anguish. Because if there is something I'd love to be is creative...

Monologue excerpt from Así Siempre hasta que hacia el impensable fin si esta noción se mantiene (Thus Always until towards the unthinkable end if this notion is kept), 2002 - 2003. Filumena Theater Company, directed by Florencia Cima. Buenos Aires, Argentina.



contact:
 name:  e-mail:  message:
front page