«Quartz – Crystal Terrorism Act I (Revisited)» – João Simões and Ivy Monteiro [BR]
Brazil — Events
More information
Time, the central subject of «Quartz – Crystal Terrorism Act I (Revisited)», ended up also shaping the creation process of João Simões and Ivy Monteiro’s performance. In 2020, amidst the restrictions of the pandemic, the duo collaborated from a distance (João in Brazil, Ivy in Switzerland), participating in the Partout festival, Basel. The impasses of this remote creation mode brought more discussions to work, such as the loss of the intimate dimension of time.
A year later, in October 2021, the work returned to the Kaserne cultural centre in Basel, now with the presence of both artists and a revised version of «Quartz».
The performance is inspired by the crystal quartz, abundant in Brazil and widely used in watch technology, to discuss time and productivity. While the analogue technologies of quartz watches provided a revolution in terms of precision and control of chronological time, the digital changes have reconfigured these relations – we lose more time to meet the contemporary demands.
Based on this idea, the show presents a crystalline body, with its own temporality. It looks at itself, its ancestry, discusses its place in the world and raises questions about time. Among them: how it served to erase cultures and sustain privileges.
View this post on Instagram
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ivy Monteiro is an artist from São Paulo, Brazil, based in Switzerland. They are a developer of practices and performative roles in Dance, Music, and Visual Arts. A natural shapeshifter, they reimagine and re-conceptualize femininity, gender, social and race through (dis)identification in a post-colonial perspective. Ancestralism and Spirituality are reshaped and envisioned in queer futuristic pieces where the artist reclaims and questions their space in our apocalyptical future. Ivy also goes by the name Tropikahl Pussy, an alter-gender-bender drag queen-ish ego, producing and headlining inclusive events and parties for trans/non binaries & queers of color. Ivy is since 2017 also active in the international vogue and ballroom scene, where they produce events, teaches workshops and develop movements and social practices around this culture.
João Simões (1979, Brazil) works as an artist, curator, researcher and teacher. With Cláudio Bueno, he founded the platform Explode! Through a cultural and artistic practice that is often perceived as peripheral, he explores ideas of gender, race and class while touching upon areas such as education, town planning and social justice. Simões is a member of the study group Extremidades, which deals with audiovisual networks, film, performance and contemporary art. He is also a collaborator of 01.01, an art platform aiming at a more conscious and sustainable way of acquiring contemporary art, focusing on African and African Diaspora’s production.
