«Young Girl I Did Love You Once» – Egle Kolbokaite and Dorota Gawed at Valongo Festival (Brasil)

During their time with the CAPACETE residency program (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the duo of Swiss artists Dorota Gaweda and Egle Kulbokaite presented the performance entitled «Young-Girl, I Did Love You Once», in contribution to the 4th Valongo Festival, which took place between the 8th and 10th of November, 2019, in Santos, the most important port city in the state of São Paulo.

Consolidated as an important platform for the discussion of contemporary visual culture in its various aspects, the festival has strained, since its origin, the traditional definitions of the image through an intense dialogue with the conditions of the region in which it takes place. Investigating the ways in which artistic practices respond, reflect and potentially promote change in the political and social scene, for four years the Valongo Festival has been carrying out an extensive variety of activities such as exhibitions, lectures, artistic residencies, performances, among others, artistically activating the region for a span of three days and allowing the actions to echo indefinitely.

In this edition, with the support of Pro Helvetia, Gaweda and Kulbokaite were able to present to the public part of the «Young-Girl, I Did Love You Once» process, a project founded in 2013 that seeks a horizontal discussion between text and knowledge sharing, by focusing on collaborative creation, media experimentation and speculative environments. Valuing the relationship between form and space, the duo fruitfully  conversed with the content and proposal of the festival, which considers the historical baggage to be a discursive commitment in their activities.

 It was also during their productive experience with CAPACETE Residency that the duo prepared the individual exhibition at Fri Art Kunsthalle and WallRiss, in Friborg, Switzerland. Through intersections between nature and technology in the horror genre, both in literature and cinema, the artists created the script and storyboard of the piece «Mouthless», which, in its process, incorporates scenes recorded from the natural landscapes of Rio de Janeiro.

The Valongo Festival was also supported by Goethe-Institut, Institut Français, SESC Santos, Itaú Cultural and Unimes.