Silver Lion 2015
Venice Biennale
Silver Lion 2015
Venice Biennale
On August 3, 2015, Agrupación Señor Serrano’s work was awarded the Silver Lion for innovation in theatre of the Venice Biennale in a ceremony held at the Palazzo Ca’ Giustinian. We are very proud of the prize and we believe that it is not entirely undeserved. However, not everyone thinks the same. It is fair to bring here the voices of dissent:
“The only real disappointment of the festival was Agrupación Señor Serrano to which this year was awarded the Silver Lion for innovation in theatre (we can’t see the possible reason for that): smart asses and malicious they presented a show in which the chase of American Indians, the hunting of Moby Dick and the capture of Bin Laden were put on the same plane. On stage, some platforms, a series of scale models of Bin Laden’s house in Pakistan, plastic action figures and miniature planes: and a camera amplifying all this on a large screen, as we have already seen in many shows. Where was all this going? I don’t know, from an ideological and political point of view, unless they pretended to trivially show the interweaving of fiction and reality. How original!”
Anna Bandettini, La Repubblica (16/08/2015).
Premiered on 21.02.2009 at Festival VEO, Valencia.
Artifact brings up a reflection on the dramatic essence of the connection between the cultural creation –ephemeral, fleeting, fragile– and the action of nature –infinite, perennial, omnipresent–; between the vulnerable and futile quality of the human condition and the ubiquity of nature taken as a whole.
The dramaturgy of Artifact is structurated from a sequence of actions based on the manipulation of objects and props. These actions, carried out by two performers, are captured by a camera, processed by video effects in real time and projected on three large screens sorrounding the space. In Artifact, the usual separation between stage and stalls disappears to create a hybrid space, midway between the art installation and a chill out. The audience is stretched on the floor or sitting on chairs and cushions, watching those actions carried out by the performers and, at the same time, the enlarged projections of these actions on the walls of the space. In this way, they are participants in a double narrative: the one with the performing actions and the one of its filming transcription.Two dramaturgical planes overlapped to articulate a beautician performance of strong conceptual content and intense poetry. Artifact is a fruit of the same creative process than Contra.Natura.
Original idea and development: Àlex Serrano, Martí Sánchez-Fibla and Pau Palacios / Direction: Alex Serrano / Dramaturgy: Pau Palacios and Alex Serrano / Performers and Creation Collaborators: Ester Forment and Diego Anido / Choregraphy: Ester Forment / Assistant Director – Production: Barbara Bloin / Lighting Design – Costumes: Isabel Franco / Interactive Video Application: Martí Sánchez-Fibla / Videos: Josep Maria Marimon / Music: Sebastian García Ferro / Project consultants: Víctor Molina and Roberto Fratini.
Agrupación Señor Serrano.
Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Festival PNRM d’Olot, III Encuentros Magalia, Institut Ramon Llull and L’Estruch de Sabadell.