húmus

Intermedia project conceived by Paulo Raposo
staged by Paulo Raposo and Carlos Zígaro
w/ Paulo Raposo -Carlos Zingaro -João Saboga
October 18.2003
Lugar Comum, Barcarena, PT

Húmus is a intermedia project - based in the novel of the modernist portuguese writer Raúl Brandão - involves theatre, live- video and music composed in real-time. Departing from fragments of the text, specially those that describe the landscape desagregating movement as metaphor for an inner existence made of stagnation and immobility. The actor inhabits the limits of the visible. His disembodied voice evokes a spectral universe that slowly putrefacts and where nature is nothing but an "analogon", a mirror of the human.

The visuals that I conceived (live) for this piece merges with the rather imagetic writing of Raul Brandão, whithout pretending to be illustrative. I've chosen to use aquose elements, almost fungiforms, that are submitted to video feedback techniques, using max/jitter software as main environment and live tool.

The organization of the video structure and its intrinsecal processing is based in binary opositions - surface/depth, interior/exterior, death/life, quotidian/dream -that articulate through a tensional gravity with the text/voice and the music. Each double movement in the image conflitualizes and questions its own relation at the same time that insuflates new material into it, creating a dynamic cartography.

The live sound was composed by Carlos Zíngaro. A CD version of the piece will be composed by myself using the original live materials as main sources. The final result does not intend to be a a document of the live event but rather radically a new experience.

Project supported by MC/IPAE, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and LugarComum