Between dogs and wolves
Between dogs and wolves is a performance of building landscapes in the brinks between light and darkness, using as resource a collection of stories and descriptions of landscapes that no longer exist, except in the memories of very elderly people and of the dreamlike landscapes imagined by infants. Between dogs and wolves dwells in the twilight hours and its reduced luminosity in order to investigate visibility conditions and find ways of translating landscape experiences into the dark room of a cinema using shadow theatre techniques and a certain sensorial cinema. It is proposed by the Brazilian performing artist Gustavo Ciríaco, whose contextual and immersive work has been gradually established over themes such as landscape and architecture, experience and immaterial collections, shared presence and fiction. The project is the last chapter of the trilogy Gentleness of a giant on the human relationship with nature through the encompassing concept of landscape.
Entre chien et loup, an old French idiomatic expression, stands for that moment of the day at its threshold with the night realm, the twilight hours, where the shadows advance and a dog becomes a wolf and a wolf becomes a dog in our eyes and very imaginations. Between the light of day that guides us and the mysteries that surround us in the darkness of the night, an iridescent empire seems to mediate two kingdoms, two apprehensions of the reality crossed.
In 1962, alerted by a friend about the deadly effects that the indiscriminate use of pesticides had caused in a bird sanctuary, the American journalist Rachel Carlson began to investigate the subject and to write what would become one of the most influential books of 20th century, Silent Spring. The book soon became a publishing success and provided the basis for a whole range of innovative environmental laws and movements. In it, the danger of a spring without birds, without insects, caused the author to make public the harmful effects of pesticides and its uncontrolled use in the environment. Inspired by this alert, the trilogy Gentleness of a Giant is born, which marks my investigation on the relationship between man and nature through the invented concept of landscape.
The third episode of this trilogy, Between dogs and wolves, takes on the challenge of creating an immersive and experiential context, a sensitive platform where vanished landscapes blend into landscapes that have never seen existence and come to life together in a contemporary shadow theatre.
With the idea of collecting stories of vanished landscapes lived by elderly people with landscapes that have never existed, except in the imagination of children, Between dogs and wolves takes the task of gathering the meeting of the memory of those who depart with the imagination of those who arrive, in a synesthetic dive into the landscape experience of men and women at extreme points of their biographies. Between the beginning and the end, between the prologue and the epilogue, which world has welcomed us, which world do we leave for those coming next? Which worlds were our imaginations able to build? Which worlds do we abandon? Which testimonies fade with the mere disappearance of those who leave? With which world, shall innocence be faced what’s coming next?