Black Bodies: Event Horizon
Welcome to the Project Page for Black Bodies: Event Horizon, one of four performance project conceived by Bolatito Aderemi-Ibitola for the Palais de Tokyo’s La Manutention.
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La Manutention, the residency for performance artists, invites one artist to develop weekly series of performance arts as part of residency at the Palais de Tokyo. The proposed series of work developed by Bolatito Aderemi-Ibitola was set within the context of the exhibition “Our World is Burning”. As the Performance arts resident for the exhibition, Aderemi-Ibitola set out to examine the complex notions of identity and memory, race and gender, through a reinterpretation of her own cultural symbols utilizing new media, video and live performance.
Curator: Vittoria Matarrese
Project managers : Alice Giudicenti with Léa Derville and Licia Demuro, assisted by Aurore Forray
THE CONCEPT
Dark energy, Black bodies, and Dark matter are theoretical concepts within physics. We seek to marry these ideas, molding their meanings to form new ways of realizing blackness, both socially and as a construct. Delving into the dark we rethink our notions of darkness, of blackness, and propose new ways of being, freed from already established paradigms and open to an entire spectrum of possibility. This series of performances “Black Bodies” is a multi-dimensional extravaganza that involves storytelling through improvisational soundscapes, theatre, and performance art.
This is the third iteration of the Black Bodies series. This iteration, Black Bodies: Event Horizon, is inspired by the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, and the birth of quantum mechanics. In BB: Event Horizon, we seek to discover a new mode of operating, occupying, and relating to space. The performers present as phantasmic beings from another realm, creatures of darkness and mystery, and play on the easy slippage between the spectral and the spectra, the astral and the astronomical, the infinitesimal and the intangible all while examining how these conflations have implications on our understanding of blackness. In this iterations of Black Bodies, we examine the ultimate black body, the Black Hole.
The Black Hole is a stellar entity where the gravity is so strong that nothing can escape its pull, including light and other forms of radiation. The last moment of detection is called the ‘ Event Horizon ‘ or ‘The Point of No Return’, it is theorized that time dilates, and atomic particles collide into themselves right before they are never to be detected again. Extending this idea into the Mystic Realm, we explore this concept of pull as dark spectral creatures that have the capacity to suck the energy, soul, and light from man, the succubus.
Black Bodies: Event Horizon, will utilize audience voice, sound, augmented reality, and dance as vibrational patterns in the development of this immersive performance installation. We invite the audience to move about, explore, and question, the relatedness of these symbols, and how they have come to be associated with blackness.
Artist : Bolatito Aderemi-Ibitola
Performers : Bolatito Aderemi-Ibitola, Janeth Portugal, Eden Collins, Samantha Lavital, and Dana Fiaque
PROJECT FILES
Drafts of the Black Body Augment Reality elements originally designed for the Black Bodies: Event Horizon event.