"Lunatic" directed by Dudu Quintanilha

Lunatic is a work performed by Visual AIDS Artist Member Dudu Quintanilha and Rickey Bellot with the collaboration of musician and performer Tomás de Souza and the dramaturge Carolina Mendonça, who all got together to develop a performative procession. The wrong party is performed to a techno and house playlist. Dancing, singing on top of lyrics and announcing repeatedly to each other the wrong party, the performers deal delicately and humorously with the idea of following and directing each other. Lunatic’s composition reveals activity in the performers’ bodies and in the space around, thinking and feeling through motion. This constant motion used to develop the work is also the basis to think of appropriation, masculinity and care, in an attempt to sidestep theory.

The performers wet their bodies from a refilled can, help each other to do so, and try to contain water with their hands becoming a pot. It feels like a childish blessing. Empty cans are displayed and rearranged into a landscape where they gather around to listen to the sound of a far away place. Cans become objects that transition not only in space but also in use and meaning. A camera moving around creates tension to what is seen. The microphone and their voices exhaust the word sorry, imitate machines and sing a melancholic fisherman song.

Lunatic performs ideas in the most complicated way that is actually through the other.

“We came to the wrong party

The party is wrong

We are celebrating wrong

The celebration is wrong

We have to be with the wrong

Everybody knows is wrong”

Direction by Dudu Quintanilha. Performance by Dudu Quintanilha, Ricky Bellot and Tomás de Souza. Music and Trumpet Tomás de Souza. Dramaturgy Carolina Mendonça. The performance features an excerpt of a DJ set by Roman Fluegel b2b Oliver Hafenbauer live recorded at Rashomon club in Rome, 2014.

Field recording by Alessandro Lins dos Anjos
Special thanks to José Segebre in text.

Watch "Lunatic" performance video here.