ANIMAL ANTERIOR

A 70-year-old woman called Silvia and a machine inhabit a space.

Taking the text “Animal en la piedra” (“Animal in the stone”) by Daniela Tarazona as reference, the story retells the physiological changes that Silvia’s body goes through as she leaves behind what makes her human to become an animal, specifically a reptile. The machine is the one who talks to us, its voice distorted and at times mimicking the voice of Silvia, the reptile woman.

But the transformation script is only one of this machine’s functions.

The machine also brings on different states in this woman, leading her through her life story through images, milestones in Silvia’s nomadic life that tie her to mutation.

The machine makes her dance, pesters her. It is the centre of operations, sombre and light, arbitrary and eloquent, around which Silvia orbits.

As this woman goes through the ageing process, her body’s deterioration, the possibility emerges of thinking of herself in other ways. Becoming a reptile through the power of words, but also merging with the machine to become a cyborg.

The machine guides the trance and also begins to undergo its own transformations, becoming sensitive to the environment and emotions. It becomes permeable in light of Silvia’s humanity.

The project tries to investigate the dialogue between human and machine, between animal and human, conceiving of the trance as a luminous state in which we can reinvent ourselves, see our subjectivity in a new light and contaminate our identity.

Previous Animal premiered at ZELAYA in 2023 and was also performed at Nos En Vera that same year.