All eyes on performance artist Teresa Vittucci

ALL EYES ON is a provocative performance piece by Zurich-based dancer Teresa Vittucci that interrogates the blurred boundaries between private and public, intimacy and voyeurism, and power and subjectification.

Digital changes are redefining what we consider private and public. As a performer on stage, a camgirl online and a hostess in both spaces, Teresa invites us into her private space.

Home used to be our most private space. But the Internet has opened a door into this sanctum and virtuality has infiltrated our everyday being; from our friendships, to our work, to our sexuality – in fact, having sexual contact online has become the norm for many. Platforms like CAM4 allows anyone with access to the Internet to watch, consume and offer encounters. In her performance ALL EYES ON Teresa explores the borders of those publicly private or privately public spaces we call HOME and INTERNET by bringing them both into a third space, the space of the THEATRE.

In an online interview Teresa explains:

“In no other place will seeing and being seen become as ritualized and made tangible as in the theater. Who wants to be seen depends on the one who sees. Who wants to see, is in need of an object. Who has the power over whom? In the theater, this question of dependence becomes denser – does performance exist if there is no eye to witness it? In ALL EYES ON I open another room in the theater room: the chat room. The chat room is online and accessible to anyone who has access to the Internet. The audience in the chat room does not pay anything to see something, is anonymous and yet again deliberately exposes the gaze of the theater audience. The chat audience is visible in the form of comments in the theater space, it is aware that it is seen. Thus, a space designed for observation becomes a pointing room.”

Born in Vienna, Teresa is a young associate artist at Tanzhaus Zurich. Her trans-disciplinary work is grounded in critical feminist practice and interrogates gender and body politics in the contemporary context.

TOUR OVERVIEW

Teresa will begin her tour in Port Louis, Mauritius, facilitating a workshop with Malagasy and local dancers to develop solo works that they will present during the Sagam Festival in November 2019. Teresa then travels to Cape Town for two performances of ALL EYES ON during Infecting the City and to facilitate a workshop with participants at the Institute for Creative Arts. At Kinani in Maputo, Teresa will perform ALL EYES ON as well as a site-specific work in the one-day Quatro Andar programme within the festival.

In February 2019 ALL EYES ON was selected for the Swiss Dance Days (where Teresa was also awarded a recognition prize for outstanding performer by the city of Zurich.) Selected by a jury, the programme offers a snapshot of the trends inspiring Swiss choreographers and dancers. Together with Pro Helvetia Zurich, we supported contemporary dance professionals to attend the showcase in Lausanne. Festival directors Quito Tembe of Kinani Dance Platform in Maputo and Jay Pather of the Institute for Creative Arts in Cape Town were two of the three regional professionals in attendance, who now host Teresa to perform ALL EYES ON at their respective festivals. In parallel, Quito introduces Teresa into the ‘3M’ touring network between dance festivals in Maputo, Mauritius and Madagascar that is in the process of being formalised.

The compositional workshops that Teresa will be hosting at various points during her Southern Africa tour is a format called You, For Instance – on making a solo and the art of failure, and which she adapts for local contexts. In the workshop, Teresa shares different compositional tools that she has learned, collected and devised through her own practice. With the aim of developing coherent solo performances, participants explore writing their own dramaturgy, dealing with questions of space, form, objects, contexts and sharing feedback to develop strategies to understand and fruitfully utilise the potential of failure.