Veza Fernández
Chantal, the body is a text longing for perspective
Veza Fernández sets her performance Chantal, the body is a text longing for perspective in an anatomical theatre. The choreographer invites the audience to experience text, body and embodied text beyond the borders of the skin.
Chantal, the body is a text longing for perspective is an intimate anatomical spectacle that reveals the body as an exuberant text. The eponymous Chantal is a multi-layered figure created out of the performers’ individual voices. She attempts to unveil the body-forming processes that are on the line when we love, think, look and hurt. Chantal is a live anatomical doll as found in medical auditoriums who invites the audience to collectively study how to experience a theatre beyond the borders of the skin. She scintillates between eyes and ears and utters deep sighs to listen. She is a lesbian Venus arising from the songs of broken hearts and metaphysical poems who encourages us to open up to the way we order the parts that our identities are made of. A restless poet, a sensual actor, a famous wax figure, an enamoured sculptor, a hoarse dancer and a strolling teacher – all hatch out of her guts. Chantal opens and dissects her body out of many bodies, reciting text from one body into the next, from one language into the next, from one register to the next. Chantal, the body is a text longing for perspective is a moving choreographic essay that redesigns the dispositive of anatomical theatre and examines what a staging of the inwards thinks, mobilises and imagines beyond patriarchal norms and dominant regimes of attention.
Each orifice sucking each other becomes a membrane holding each other accountable.
Uhm So stuck to my bones you are…
My bones made into drums.
Es spannt. It pulls. I cry.
And I keep asking: what should we examine here today?
You only answer
for that we shall move towards the extremes, the infinite, the very moment of perceiving
Veza Fernández is a dance, voice and performance artist based in Vienna. Her work travels between the poles of poetry and politics of vocal forms of expression as places of affiliation, imagination and transformation. She combines song, writing, dance and speech practices as physical forms of study, experimentation and performance. Her sensitive and intense pieces unfold a polyphonous range of voices and presence, eager to move and be moved. Her background involves philology, education, theatre, music and contemporary dance – fields that influence her artistic research and way of working. Her work has a strong local anchor and is found both in the underground scene and larger dance and theatre institutions. Veza Fernández holds a master’s degree in choreography from DAS Graduate School (Amsterdam Academy for Theatre and Dance). Her pieces have been presented, among others, at brut Wien, Tanzquartier Wien, Sophiensæle Berlin, Gessnerallee in Zurich, de Singel in Antwerp and La Casa Encendida in Madrid.
Weitere Beteiligte
Zosia Hołubowska, born in Olsztyn, Poland, in 1988, is a Vienna-based sound artist, queer music activist and producer. Their work explores the queering of archives, curing and interspecific intimacy through performance, sound installations and compositions. As a member of the feminist Oramics collective and founder of Sounds Queer?, they combine electronic music with queer activism. Their solo project Mala Herba mixes Slavic traditions, magic and demonic disco music with EBM. In 2023, they published Singing Warmia, an album melodising personal locations in and around Olsztyn. Zosia Hołubowska performed at locations such as the mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and the Guggenheim Bilbao. Their project Community of Grieving was presented at festivals such as Unsound, Elevate and Dark Mofo.
Luis Javier Murillo Zuñiga is a performance and drag artist as well as a student at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art. Originally born in Costa Rica, they now live in Vienna. Their artistic practice tackles migration, theatre and performance and is heavily coined by their background in opera singing. Apart from creating their own pieces, Luis Javier Murillo Zuñiga has collaborated with Mario Barrantes, Veza Fernández and Myassa Kraitt. Their own performances combine physical presence, vocal expression and drag as an artistic instrument for negotiating questions of identity, belonging and transformation.
Mariya Vasilyeva, born in Kyiv in 1993, is a video and performance artist and a resident of Austria and Germany. She studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and at the Vienna University of Applied Art. Her work ranges from live performances to digital collages to video installations and tackles power structures, feminism and body politics. As an immigrant from Ukraine, Mariya Vasilyeva deals with topics of identity and the vulnerability of the female body. She uses digital manipulations to interrogate power structures in society, in particular with regard to sexuality and religion. Her pieces have been exhibited internationally and are also part of the Republic of Austria's state collection.
Claire Lefèvre is a femme choreographer, insomniac writer, and reality TV enthusiast currently based in Vienna, Austria. She likes to think of herself as a hostess, welcoming collaborators and audience members into kitsch landscapes where politics and poetics are gently interwoven. Currently she is exploring the archetype and working methods of a performance doula, a role imagined making care work in the context of performance making visible. Her last stage work LOIE (is a fire that cannot be extinguished) dealt with somatic archives and systematic erasures within dance history. Claire Lefèvre's work with text spans from poetry to grant applications, at times flirting with performance criticism, stand-up comedy or queer feminist theory. Occasionally she works as a ghost writer, but mostly because of the spectral appeal of the job title.
Nerea González is an artist and philosopher based in Vienna. They mainly work with sound and performance in examining visceral sensualities, intimacies, excess and the liminality of queer bodies. As a philosopher, Nerea González has, in more recent works, tackled the slimy and the viscous as types of material that, from a queer perspective, challenge hegemonically solid, stable ideas of body, identity and gender. As a musician, they work within the techno punk/emotional rave project Mousse de Pus and are part of the Sounds Queer? Collective.
Sarah Sternat, born in Graz in 1988, is a visual artist, costume and set designer based in Vienna. In 2022/23, she attended a contemporary dance training with teacher Andrea Nagl. Before that, in 2015, she finished her studies in painting, needlepoint and film animation at the Vienna University of Applied Art, with Christian Ludwig Attersee and Judith Eisler as her teachers. Even earlier, in 2014, she founded the CLUB FORTUNA performance collective. She had a teaching position at the Linz Art University in 2020. Her pieces were shown, among others, at brut Wien, Kunsthaus Graz and the Basement Gallery in Olomouc.
Leticia Skrycky is a Uruguayan artist and lighting designer currently based in Lisbon. Her work focuses on the intersection of dance and performance and explores practices of co-creation as well as the relational forces arising on stage between human and non-human elements. She is mostly known for her collaborative projects with a plurality of international artists as well as her research on the hidden possibilities in the opacity of emotions in a performance context.
mollusca productions was founded by Sophie and Eva in 2018 and provides flexible production management support to dance and performance artists. In 2022, Nefeli joined. Together they take care of applications for funding, budgeting, communication, tour management and post-production.
Accessibility
Audience members can choose to sit or lie down.
Credits
Concept, text, choreography, songs & performance Veza Fernández Musical composition & performance Zosia Hołubowska Performance Luis Javier Murillo Zuñiga Costume & set design Sarah Sternat Video art & installation Mariya Vasileyva Lighting design Leticia Skrycky Text dramaturgy & choreographic support Claire Lefèvre Dramaturgical support & research Nerea González Production management mollusca productions
A co-production by Verein für Expressive Angelegenheiten and brut Wien.
With the kind support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs (MA7), the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Art, Cultur, Media and Sport (BMWKMS), SPIT Festival and im_flieger.
Dates & Tickets
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
accessible
Info
On Fri. 07.11., there will be an Aperitivo at 19:30 and an artist talk after the performance.
Content notes
The performance contains nudity as well as depictions of sexual violence and pain. Recommended from the age of 16 years.
Event recommendations
Aperitivo
to "Chantal, the body is a text longing for perspective" by Veza Fernández
Matteo Haitzmann
Im Styx baden
(Bathing in the River Styx)
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brut all over Vienna
brut nordwest
accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern), U4 (Friedensbrücke), U6 (Dresdnerstraße) Tram: 5 (Nordwestbahnstraße) Bus: 5A (Wasnergasse)
accessible
studio brut
not accessible
Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
Subway: U3 (Zieglergasse), Tram: 49 (Westbahnstraße / Zieglergasse)
not accessible
Breitenseer Lichtspiele
not accessible
Breitenseer Straße 21, 1140 Vienna
U-Bahn: U3 (Hütteldorfer Straße) Tram: 10 (Laurentius Platz), 49 (Hütteldorfer Straße)
WUK performing arts
barrierefrei
Währinger Straße 59, 1090 Vienna
Subway: U6 (Währinger Straße / Volksoper), Tram: 40, 41, 42 (Währinger Straße / Volksoper), 5, 33 (Spitalgasse), 37, 38, 40, 41, 42 (Spitalgasse / Währinger Straße)