Perpendicular Biennial
Collaboration with Abi Tariq
Group project curated by Wagner Rossi Campos
31 Bienal De Arte De São Paulo, Brazil.
Pavillion Foyer
October 9-12, 2014
In October 2014, Ryan and Tariq participated in a curated performance intervention into the 31st Biennial of Art in Saõ Paulo. They performed two pieces: Notes on Not Knowing; and Act of Being; active reading:writing. They also co-created performances in the Bienal Pavilion with the Perpendicular Performance group, a group of performance artists mainly working in South America.
Notes on Not Knowing is a performance in silence and telepathy. Stemming from the first collaboration between Ryan and Tariq in 2014, it is an encounter in stillness, where eye contact is maintained for a minimum of 15 minutes and up to one hour. During this time, if a thought becomes clear in the mind, it is written on a note card and placed in the centre. The notes pile up in sequence as they were written, and reveal the unspoken connection between two people.
Act of Being; active reading:writing was a performance in which the artists visited the São Paulo Bienale exhibition with critical theory texts, and chose random sections to read aloud in front of works, arbitrarily relating the text to the meaning of the artwork. Pastiche poetry was then created from these cut-up scripts. The poems were based on notes taken by one of the artists while performing the piece.
