Ai! is a Portuguese interjection and onomatopoeia used to express a wide range of human emotions and reactions such as complaint, pain, relief, surprise, excitement, disapproval and loss. It is also holophrastic, in as much as it consists of a complex idea expressed in a single sound.

Playing with the Ai! as a vocal source of limitation drives the body to search through exaggeration or theatricality towards forms of expressing its own possibilities. When the sound of Ai! takes control of the body, it becomes material, becomes in itself plastic, artificial and theatrical.

Ai! is a call for attention. It is a siren! It frames something that’s happening or is about to happen. The Ai! is like the punch line of a joke, the element that turns things upside down and permits us to find another logic of understanding. The Body that ejects the Ai! is a body affected by an external force (visible or invisible) that cannot be controlled.

In this research project Lilia Mestre and Marcos Simoes want to see if through the Ai! they can discover something else, something strange and yet known: an alien element introduced by a recognizable sound, the Ai! as a familiar tool to create the unfamiliar. Ai! can take on many forms, be many things and become many spaces.

In Ai! Mestre and Simoes develop a physical practice that brings a body charged with a strong sense of catastrophe to the fore. Mestre and Simoes want to observe a body affected by an outside force that gives the impression of being incapable of controlling this force — a body that exists in an illogical space, in paradoxes and incongruities.

The body in a space that is ‘out of tune’.

Residency in Art Lab ZSenne, Brussels - 14 to 25 May 2012

Changing context / The gallery space
The performance as document /the document as an art piece

In May 2012, Lilia Mestre and Marcos Simoes will work for two weeks in the Gallery ZSenne in the center of Brussels.

"We see the gallery space as a place to present oeuvres and documents. We’ll be going from the black box to the white cube questioning the place of performance as a life momentary form to the place of the object as permanent evidence. Our plan is to work with both formats and to develop systems that allow us to translate and relocate performance and document.

How to translate events from a black box to the white cube? How to see the document as performance? And how to see the performance as a document by changing its formats?

The space of the gallery is a permeable space by the constant relation to the outside world. We are not anymore in an excluded environment where the audience is invited to come in at a certain point. The constant visibility of the construction of the artwork will be fundamental on the construction of systems. The circularity of the inside and the outside is an aspect that cannot be denied."

Ai! Dubbing / 1^st week – 14,15, 16 and 19th May 2012

Together with Marcelo Mardones, Mestre and Simoes will be working on the process of making a final document / documentary about the Ai! Dubbing system.

The gallery will be transformed in a cinema studio where the apparatus is apparent and can be shared with the visitors.

The final performance (the making of the documentary) will happen as a vernissage at the end of the week.

Ai! Objects / 2^nd week - 21 until 25th May 2012

'The audience and the streets as part of the context of the performance.'

In the score Ai! Objects for instant improvisation with movement, voice and sound Mestre and Simoes will work with Christophe Albertijn on the development and presentation of the project including the visitors and the street surroundings as co- actors and stage.

Mestre and Simoes want to explicitly work on the temporary community that is formed by this social ritual.

Concept & creation Lilia Mestre & Marcos Simoes

Video partner: Marcelo Mardones

Music partner: Christophe Albertijn

Production: Mokum

Co-production: Bains Connective, Kc Monty, WorkSpaceBrussels

Thanks to Pianofabriek, ZSenne

With the support of the Flemish Community and the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

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