МАРИ ШУИНАР
Biennale Danza 2018
The programme of the 12th International Festival of Contemporary Dance of the Biennale di Venezia will bring to the stage, in the spaces of the Arsenale in Venice the artists whom I believe today represent the essence of dance as nourishment for the mind and the intellect rather than as a pure aesthetic object.

DEMOCRACY
Compagnie LEDA

“I’ve wanted to work on the drum quartet “Dark Full Ride” by Julia Wolfe for a long time. There is something quite revolutionary in the energy of this piece. Julia Wolfe uses the instrumentation of processions, meetings and political demonstrations. I work on democracy, not democracy reduced its political framework definition […] but ‘insurgent’ democracy that strives for the dissolution of certainty and the claim to equality as civil resistance. Work is nourished by ideas like the test of determination or the idea of a problematizing community, which I call the ‘all-one.’ Also, how does an individual decision open the possibility to collective action? What do we strive for, or against? Who do we give our consent to? Must we disobey democracy? How do we build a controversialist community? Does resistance to power define the democratic experience? What is a savage democracy? … ” Maud Le Pladec

Nomadic Plants
Vegetation and microorganisms live in symbiosis inside the body of the Nomadic Plants robot. Whenever its bacteria require nourishment, the self-sufficient robot will move towards a contaminated river and ‘drink’ water from it. Through a process of microbial fuel cell, the elements contained in the water are decomposed and turned into energy that can feed the brain circuits of the robot. The surplus is then used to create life, enabling plants to complete their own life cycle. As Gilberto wrote in our email conversation, “The nomadic plant is a portray of our own species. It also deals with the alienated transformation of this new hybrid species that fights for its survival in a deteriorated environment.”