The inspirational grounds for Monstra are to be found in various indigenous worldviews in which the earth is understood to be alive and is often addressed as motherly, or as a woman whose womb begets life and whose body sustains it. Women’s knowledge and dealings with nature and plants were also highly respected and considered the cornerstone of civilization. Yet, with the dawn of modernity the earth was turned into dead matter, its body good only to be mined and extracted. In the same vein, women’s knowledge and proximity to nature became increasingly feared and loathed, and their bodies too turned into objects of pleasure and a battlefield to be conquered, without the right to exist on their own.
In Monstra, women/plants units form symbiotic assemblies engaging in an overwhelming orgy of interactions that increasingly put into question established dichotomies about nature and culture, modern and primitive, gender and sexuality, as well as arbitrary ideas concerning acceptable female behavior. The work is built in various choreographic blocks that are performed in a different setting, with the public sitting around, quite close to the writhing bodies of women and plants. The safe distance between stage and audience is eliminated and a new, unavoidable proximity has been created. In the words of the work’s creators: “Within each choreographic block there’s a common enunciation, but each plant-person assembly responds distinctively, building a non-totality with every new cut: a collage, a community, an ecosystem, a MONSTER”.
As in a real love relationship, women and plants come together and drift apart; they cuddle and fondle but also push away and hurt each other. From the ascetic minimalist beginning to the chaotic end, the bodies of women and plants become progressively wilder, unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Navigating an almost delirious state, the work oscillates between a shout of protest and a cry of ecstasy.
Monstra is directed by the choreographer Elisabete Finger and the artist Manuela Eichner, and is created in close collaboration with performers Barbara Elias, Mariza Virgolino, Daniellie Mendes, Josefa Pereira, Patricia Bergantin and Mariana Costa.
Elisabete Finger and Manuela Eichner have been working together since 2015 with mixing techniques and principles of choreography and collage.
