About
Tania Alice (1976, France) is a performance artist. Artistic director of the performance collective Everyday Heroes (2009 – 2014), based no Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she is actually working at creating the structure “Performers Without Borders”. She uses the interfaces between visual and scenic arts and the language of relational aesthetics in a critical way, working in the streets with “non-artists”. By creating collective and participative performances, her works increases the affectivity between human beings and human beings and animals, creating, at the same time, poetic disruptions in urban and not-urban spaces. Her work is an interface between artistic, therapeutic and spiritual project, creating Performances of Relational Art as Healing (PARC), working with Somatic Experiencing (SE). She has also realized a research during the last years about the teaching of Performance Art, working in innovative pedagogical ways with groups of interested persons, art students (Undergraduate and Graduate Students), curators, critics and works also as a coach with individual or collective art/life projects.
Tania Alice holds a MFA and a PhD in Arts from the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I, France (2003) and a postdoctoral degree in theatrical creation and contemporary performance from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She has performed and presented her work nationally in venues such as the Museu of Contemporary Art MAC/Niterói, Oi Futuro Rio de Janeiro, Mostra de Artes do SESC São Paulo, Centro Cultural Vergueiro and internationally at the Museu de la Ciudad de México, CalArts, Side Street Project or The Art Walk (Los Angeles), the International Miami Performance Festival (USA), the Festival International Festival de Arte Acción y Intervenciones (Dominican Republic), Gruntaler9 in Berlin, La Friche Belle de Mai/Asile 404 in France, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Tarasloft, Zsenne ArtLab and Wolcke (Brussels), in Colombia, Portugal (Espaço Mira) among others.
She has received important awards, like the Performance Staging Award of the Secretary of Culture of the State of Ceará (2007), the Young Artists Award of the Ministry of Culture and Education (2008), the Performance Art in the Street Award 2010, the State Circulation Award 2011 or the Special Popular Jury Award at the Washington DC Film Festival 2012 for video performance. Currently, she is working as Professor in the Acting School of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), where she teaches Performance Art to undergraduates and graduates, does counseling for Master and PhD Projects and works as researching artist at NEPAA (Study Center for Afro-Amerindian Performances).
She has been granted by a CAPES/Fulbright scholarship in 2013 for visiting professor/researcher/artist at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Author of 8 books (poetry, children books and art theory). She has also obtained the title of Somatic Experiencing Therapist. She has been occupying the Chair for International Cooperation in Arts of the Université Libre of Brussels, where she has been giving a Performance Art Workshop and performing in contemporary art spaces.
Actually, she is creating and working in the structure “Performers Without Borders”, a platform of performers who create participatory performances in zones of war, natural catastrophes or situations that generate any kind of trauma, creating artistic interventions that help to construct processes of peace.
She is working in 2017 for one year at AMU (Université d’Aix-Marseille I, Franc) for her post-doctoral research, who consists in realizing and investigating artistic projects in the platform Performers Without Borders. She also complete the course of Yoga Laughter by the International Laughter Yoga University and is actually a Soul Motion Teacher trainee.
Personal statement
“Within my performances, be it alone or in partnership with other artists, what interests me is thinking about the political side of performance when this is not expressed through expressly activist actions with an explicit political imprint, but by means of participatory projects and interactive micro-actions that call for and stimulate creativity, affectivity and the poetic imagination of the participants. I am interested in the concept of relational aesthetics developed by Bourriaud, and Claire Bishop’s critical responses to this, within the perspective of developing relational art projects in the streets, in the nature and also in domestic places.
The affective dynamics, which involve a real social transformation by way of an affective revolution, in my view need us to go beyond the relational standardization of feelings we are experiencing at present. What seems essential to me in performance is to generate relations which can be differentiated, where the audience does not become a mere executor of an act or a passive consumer of an artistic act but is a co-creator within the scope of a process that recreates relations, not only between the proponent of the act and the participants involved but between the participants themselves, relations which can take the form of ephemeral utopias that expand beyond the period of time established for the performative act.
I am also interested by the city as a work in progress and not as a backdrop, the tension between the functional and poetic use of space, the relation established between internal and external ecology, the valorization of the “useless”, the energetical transformation of space and people, and, above all, promoting what Japanese martial arts define as “ma”: the relational space. In performance, the ability to affect and to be affected, to be transported, transformed and overwhelmed by others, to lose oneself in them by nourishing them and being nourished in turn is for me a fundamental characteristic that I am looking for in this art/life process.
The profound subversive capacity of performance resides in the fact that it can take the form of an affective revolution, that does not take place on a large scale but in the areas reserved for sensibility, intelligence and desire, healing performer and participants. In the wider spectrum, this movement falls within the scope of the construction of a revolutionary “ecosophy”, professed by Guattari and which includes the three ecological degrees of the natural environment, social relations and human subjectivity. The emotional experiences in the artistic context act in the field of the production of subjectivity, in the sense of producing an individual and collective resingularization, instead of falling in the context of construction and maintenance of valid structures, justified by the media.
In my work, I intend to establish a different logic, a logic of intensity, percepts and feelings, an “eco-logic” that offers new practices and ways of acting in the world, trying to contribute to producing a new system of values and the emergence of new poles of valorization, making myself available to build imaginary collectives, to develop independent zones governed by other feelings than these, lacking in poetry and love, proposed by structures of power.
By establishing bonds. By resisting. By reinventing the performance space day after day. Performance, for me, is the most absolute state of total dedication to the world. Thus, each performance is a hand extended for a joint offering – so that we can discover together innocence and the pleasure of flying.”
Participation as researching artist (2009-2015)
DANCING TOWERS - UE project in 7 cities, participative performance , Bel Horizon, Marseille, 2018 (invited artist). DANS MA MAISON - UE project europeu with Les Têtes de l’Art, Les Dimanches de la Canebiere, Marseille, 2018 (invited artist). TEACH ME HOW TO DO ART - opening of the Biennale des Ecritures du Réel, Marseille, 2018 and Festivale de São José dos Campos, São Paulo, 2018. THE KISS - durational performance, MUCEM, Marseille, 2018. BAL DELURE – Théâtre des Bernardines, Marseille, 2018. THE BATH PROJECT, Marseille, Les Têtes de l’Art / Cinéma Le Gyptis, 2017. “Ensine-me a fazer arte”, India, 2017. ”The Animal Project” / Girafas, “The Animal Project / Orango-tangos”, Université Libre de Bruxelles / Pairi Daiza, 2017. ““Ensine-me a fazer arte”, Espaço Mira, Porto, curadoria de Hugo Cruz e José Maia / “Performers sem Fronteiras”, Universidade de Lisboa e Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema de Lisboa / HOKAHEY, performance no RITCS (Royal Conservatory of Brussels) / palestra na Universidade Livre de Bruxelas .”Jogo da Memória”, Casa França/Brasil, 2016. “Jogo da Memória”, Casa França/Brasil, 2016. ”I am an animal”, palestra/performance realizada curso ministrado no Centro de Artes Hélio Oiticica, 2016.“Como acabar com a cultura do estupro?”, USP e TUSP, Sao Paulo, 2016. ”Ilhas na Maré”, Oi Futuro, Redes da Maré, 2016. “The Bed Project #02″, Plexus Noir, Marseille, 2016. Creative performance project, Bernheim Foundation, Teatro Nacional de Bruxelas / Royal Court / ULB, Bruxelas, 2016. Feverestival, LUME, Campinas, 2016. ”Primeiro Laboratório de Arte Socialmente Engajada”, Quilicura, Chile, 2016. Dança livre para todos, Festival de Teatro de Fortaleza, 2015. ”Correio de abraços Brasil / Nepal”, Rio de Janeiro, Festival de Performance ATOSEMACAO, Limeiro, Campinas e Rio Claro e Nepal, 2015 / Nepal. “O Banquete”, SESC Petrópolis, 2015. “Todo sonho bem sonhado pode um dia virar realidade”, X Seminário de Pesquisa do Instituto de Medicina Social, Rio de Janeiro.“Danse libre pour tous”, Tarasloft, Brussels (2015). “Ulysses – live art after breakup” - Zsenne ArtLab, Brussels (2015). ”The Bed Project- Berlin”, Gruntaler9 Performance Art Space, Berlin.”Somniculos – The Bed Project”, Marseille, França - Asile404 et REDPLEXUS – La Friche, Belle de Mai (2015). The Bed Project 12 hours – Glasshouse LifeArtLab (09/2014). “UlYsSeS – live art after breakup” – Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NYC (09/2014). Mostra de repertório Heróis do Cotidiano SESC Campinas, 2014. “O Banquete” – Festival de Inverno do SESC - Petrópolis e Nova Friburgo (-7/2014). “Dança Livre para todos” – Festival Internacional 100 em 1, Rio de Janeiro (04/2014). Seminário Internacional de Filosofia POP – palestra/performance “Corporeidades Liminares” (05/2014).“OrA©CioNEs” (performance) – IV Festival Internacional de Arte Acción y Intervenciones, Puerto Plata/Santo Domingo, República Dominicana (02/2014). “The Secret Life of plants” – Nomad exhibition in a boat and artistic residency in the project Tecnobarca, Amapá (Amazonas), Brazil (january 2014).“Bed Time Talking” (performance multimidia) - CalArts, Side Street Project (Pasadena), Gallery San Ysidro (San Diego/Tijuana), Art Walk, Los Angeles, USA (2013). “Corpo Cênico International” - vídeo-performance, Rio de Janeiro, 2013.“Postales”, Exhibition at the Museu de la Ciudade de México, with Alvaro Villalobos (from 11/2013 to 03/2014). “Bed Time Talking”, performance in partnership with Alvaro Villalobos), Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Niterói, Brazil. “Bogotá em Branco” (White Bogotá, performance in partnership with Alvaro Villalobos, Bogotá, Colombia, 2013). “Bandeiras” [Flags]: Performance in partnership with Alvaro Villalobos. Miami International Performance Festival 2013, USA. Performance “Todo mundo pode ser Brecht!” [Everyone can be Brecht!]. Performance carried out every day during the Palco Giratório Festival in Porto Alegre 2013. Presentation of the film during the closing ceremony of the Symposium of the International Brecht Society. Workshop: “Cuidados de si e da cidade” [Caring for yourself and the city], given together with Marcos Bulhoes, Porto Alegre. Performance and conference: “Estética relacional como revolução dos afetos” [Relational aesthetics as an emotional revolution], Autonomous University of Mexico State, Toluca, Mexico. 8th Meeting of the Hemispheric Institute of Politics and Performance “Corpo, cidade, ação” [Body, city, action], São Paulo, 2011. Conference about the Daily Heroes’ urban interventions and performance entitled “Soltando preocupações” [Liberating concerns]. Second International Conference “Arquitetura, Teatro e Cultura” [Architecture, Theatre and Culture]. Conference: “Por que você é pobre?” [Why are you poor?] A scenic-performatic investigation. 2012. Seminário Profanações [Desecration seminar]. Conference-performance “Dionísio me salvou” [Dionysus saved me]. OI FUTURO Flamengo. 2012. Washington DC International Film Festival, Tricycle with a video-performance. Seminário Cena Contemporânea (seminar)/Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and SESC Palco Giratório. Conference: “Criação em arte: pedagogias profanas” [Creation in art: profane pedagogy] and debater of the event. 2012. “Por que você é pobre?” [Why are you poor?] (direction). Season at the Cultural Center Oduvaldo Vianna ilho 2012. Seminário Cena Contemporânea /Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and SESC Palco Giratório. Debater of the event “O Feio (in process)” [Ugliness in process]. 2012. Seminar: “Artes e Subjetividades” [Art and Subjectivities]. Conference: “Performance and subjectivity”. International seminar: “Scenic corpus: language and pedagogies” (“Non-performance in Latin America”) (with Leandro Romano and Larissa Siqueira) and direction of performances. 2011. 5th National Seminar: Architecture, theatre and culture: studies of space and urban memory. “Constructing an inventive urban memory: the performance collective Daily Heroes”. 2011. Conference: “Eixo Cruzado: O Herói que queremos” [Cross road: the hero that we would like to be] at the Vergueiro Cultural Center, São Paulo, with exhibition on documentary about the performance collective Daily Heroes: (indag)ações [(in)quiry]. 2011. “Practice and reflection for teachers – CCBB Rio de Janeiro”: conference and performance workshop, 2011. 8th week of academic integration of UNIRIO. Organisation of a Performance exhibition 2011. 20th National Meeting of ANPAP (National Association of Research in Plastic Arts: “Subjectivities, utopias and fiction”. Modalities of relational aesthetics on the streets: the performance collective Daily Heroes. 2011. Promotional operation: for the continuation of working groups in performatic arts in Rio de Janeiro. Conference “Performance and market”. 2011. 1st meeting The Question of the Critic.“A critical relationship with the interdisciplinarity of Scenic Arts: critique and performance”. 2011. Conference on the project entitled “Anti-Corpo: orientate yourself”. “Performance and poetic activism”. 2011. 6th Scientific Meeting of ABRACE – Porto Alegre. “Meditation as a creative possibility for the performer”. 2011. The Heroes’ Banquet (concept and performance). MOSTRA DE ARTES DO SESC São Paulo: Art show at the Sesc Carmo, Sesc Pinheiros, Sesc Ipiranga, 2011. 14th Colloquim of the Graduate Program for Scenic Art. Meditation of the board. 2011. “A clear stratagem” (concept and performance) presented at the 1st International Festival of Living Arts, Rio ao Vivo, 2011. Documentary: “Daily Heroes” (concept and performance): presented at the opening ceremony of the Festival Globale Rio, 2011, at the Film Festival “Mostra do Filme Livre” 2011, at the Glauce Rocha Theatre, at the “Festival de Cinema Cinerock” 2011 Guest artist at the “First International Conference on Architecture, Theatre and Culture”.Essay.Hamlet of the company of authors: an actualization of the classic. 2010. “Le Frigo” by Copi and “The Tightrope Walker” by Genet. Direction of dramatized readings carried out with funding from Aliança Francesa and performed at the Aliança Francesa Theatre of Botafogo, 2010. 6th congress of ABRACE – Art and science: abyss of roses. “Heroes: a performatic investigation”. 2010. Participation and conference, event: “Art in the 21st century: a first inventory” in Marseille, France with the conference “Poetic gaps within reality: performance and re-appropriation of public spaces”, 2010. “Has anybody seen me anywhere?” by Jarbas Albuquerque (direction with Vinicius Arneiro and Renato Livera). Season at the Teatro Planetário and the Teatro Gláucio Gil, Rio de Janeiro, 2010. (des)Necessitados [the (un)needy] – performance, 2010.Local event: PUC, Rio de Janeiro. Urban being seminar – city projectile. Boa Praça seminar. “Daily heroes: performance and urban intervention”. 2010. Participation with performance, exhibition of documentary and conference at the “Being urban seminar: city projectile Cena-Rio, 2010. Conference: “Performance: an intermediate place between scenic art and visual art” at the “Chitchat Art at the CCBB” about the Daily Heroes, 2010. Participation in the event “Livro a Bolonhesa” [“The Bolognese-style Book”] of SESC Rio: exhibition of the film “Daily Heroes” and conference. 2010. 8th week of academic integration of UNIRIO. Open lecture. 2010. Mediation in the communication of the 13th Colloquium of the Graduate Program of UNIRIO. Mediation in the communication of research lines of the program and discussions. 2010. International Displacement of Arts Congress. “Performance and staging: dialogue around Samuel Beckett”. 2009. XI Colóquio do PPGAC [Graduate Program in Performance Arts], “Sarah Kane and Phaedra’s Love”. 2009. 5th National Meeting of ANPAP (National Association of Research in Plastic Arts). “Greek Heroes and contemporaneous Greek Heroes: a performatic investigation”. 2009. 11th International Congress o f ABRALIC: tessitura, interaction, convergences. “Dialogue between staging and performance in the adaptation of plays by Beckett”, 2008. 12th International Congress on Ibero-American and Argentinean Theatre. The classic text as creative material in contemporary Brazilian performances and stagings. 2008. 5th Brazilian Research and Graduate Congress on Scenic Arts. “Dramatic, contemporary aesthetics: performance/staging”, 2008. 2nd National Seminar on the History of Historiography.“Modern and post-modern perspectives on the basis of two stagings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet”, 2008. 2nd II SEPEL – Research Seminar for Literature. “Intellectuals, engagement and power”, 2008. II Seminar on Art and the City. “Performance and urban occupation: the Bartolomeu de Depoimentos Center”, 2008. 4th Arts’ Week, Ouro Preto. “What defines contemporaneity?”, 2008.
