MOVING [M]OTHERS

moving [m]others is a layered, cumulative and unpredictable performative installation, like the earth that attracts, sustains, vibrates, creates, nourishes us and opens up. A map of desires, a game where you discover the rules and follow your own needs. A journey guided by questions.

Who is a good mother? Who is a bad mother? If I hug you really hard, does your soul come out? What do you do when you stick out your tongue? Have you ever seen your mother cry? What do you want to be when you grow up? How were you born?

In 3 words, the installation would be called Tennis, Easter and Deleuze. Gilles knew a lot about the transformation of sensations, about representing the body in the complexity of its becoming, through a sculptural painting that moved him from within. Only a mother can construct a show based on Deleuze’s texts at the same time she is cooking and watching over each child’s activities. One day she cries so hard that she collapses on the floor with the vacuum cleaner. A mother cries and laughs at the same time.

Here it’s ok to embody all the parts you’ve been dispossessed of and discover maternal bodies in all their complexity: educated, sophisticated, unskilled. Taken exactly as we are: pulled, pushed, hit, supportive, wild or touching. It is ok to give birth and be born at the same time. We mothers, dilated, heavy, light, we lose our boundaries, we are moved by organs, we crave contradictions and feed on them. We collide, we love the paradox, the unpredictable, the logic of another being. We are relearning a primary communication, between us, women, and between us and our children, where the ancestor guides us, where the landmarks are body-to-body communication, language, biting, keeping territory, tactility, sexuality.

If we cannot accept these layers of ourselves, if we do not let our face and body roam with emotions, the tongue will lose the ability to communicate, the lips to accept life, the teeth to protect themselves from the unpredictable, the skin to protect us from what what we are not.

This production was born in 2021 as part of an artistic residency project in which 7 artist-mothers and one artist-daughter collectively explored motherhood through the lens of their own practices and grew organically in 2022 as part of a new production project. The Choreographic research, the Feldenkrais method, the dance-therapy, the tactile-kinesthetic workshops, improvisation in music and movement, film, modeling, drawing and creative writing, were explored in a work-play continuum, integrating children’s creative energy, their needs to care and attention, artistic interests and mothers’ needs. Grandparents, mothers, children, guild colleagues and fathers took part in the multiple laboratories organized at AREAL, representing a continuous source of inspiration and confirmation of some needs to embrace the chaos of motherhood.

Project curator: Alexandra Bălășoiu
Concept and art direction: Valentina De Piante

Created and performed by: Alexandra Bălașoiu, Oana Băluță, Mădălina Dan, Valentina De Piante, Loredana Larionescu, Teodora Morosanu, Ada Anghel, Diana Spiridon
Co-created together with: Laura Murariu, Silvia Niculae

Composition, sound design and live vocals: Teodora Moroșanu
Dramaturgical support: Ivana Ivkovic
Scenography: Silvia Niculae
Scenography assistant: Eliza Voiculescu, Irina Ursea
Light design: Alexandros Raptis
Graphics: Oana Baluta
Video: Silvia Niculae
Production: Cristina Ispas

An Indie Box project.
Supported by: ARCUB – Arts Culture Bucharest and Bucharest City Hall

Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.