Open Space: Amparo González Sola – La Conspiración de las Formas (2023)
As part of our Open Space residency program, choreographer Amparo González Sola deepened and explored her artistic practice in the face of an audience. Open Space is a residency program that shows the artistic process as an ongoing exhibition.
Sola’s residency focused on her work La Conspiración de las Formas (The Conspiracy of Forms). In this long-term project, she investigates the changing relationship between human and matter. It addresses the question how we relate to the world we built.
During the residency, we made an artist portrait of Amparo González Sola, presenting her artistic project and creative process.
Amparo Gonzalez Sola (Argentina, 1984) is a choreographer, performer, teacher and researcher. Her work interweaves proprioception (the ability of an organism to perceive the position of its own body and body parts) with politics and philosophy. She draws on her experience of activism in Buenos Aires and her status as a migrant. Sola works both inside and outside the walls of the theater, with people from different backgrounds, generations and disciplines. With her work she breaks through fixed relationships and transforms experiences into a creative process.
The Grey Space selected Sola because of her specific way of adopting choreography as a relational practice. She is able to reduce a subject to its essence, then explore it from different perspectives in different collaborations. We expect Sola to engage the audience at The Grey Space in a new way, utilizing encounters and interaction as an artistic medium.
La Conspiración de las Formas is a work that started in 2018. The performance invites the audience to a journey, in which everything –matter, images, sound, sensations, ideas– is exposed to erosion, degradation and transformation.
Three women and a block of concrete. They hold the block, they hammer it, knead it, rub it, swallow it, transform it into something else. It is a ritual, a process of metamorphosis, alchemy and recycling that the audience is invited to witness closely. In the initial sketches of this work, a block of concrete transformed from solid matter to substance and eventually to liquid.
The block of concrete is used by Sola as a metaphor for the prevailing (patriarchal, colonial and capitalist) systems and structures. Sola then applies the principle of the human cycle (growth, flowering, decay) to reflect on the transformation of stuck (harmful) systems patterns. In a previous version of the performance, the concrete block came out of the performers’ mouths as liquid.
During her residency at The Grey Space, Sola seeked to explore how this liquid can become a voice – coming from humans, animals and nature – and then also sing a song, one that gives space to new and underrepresented voices, besides wanting to discover how a performance can transform to an installation.
During Amparo González Sola’s Open Space residency, a variety of engaging events occurred. These events offered an opportunity for attendees to delve further into her artistic exploration. The lineup of events featured a social gathering with the artist on April 29th, a Try-Out performance on May 17th, and a closing event consisting of a dinner and symposium on June 8th.
Together with makers and the audience, we approach our own programs in a relational way: as communication and ongoing interaction. New technologies ensure that communication is ever-changing. At The Grey Space, we explore the impact these ever-changing information and communication technologies have on the interaction between people, between people and more-than-people and between people and things. The Grey Space looks at these ever-changing relationships at the most elementary level. Together with makers, thinkers and the public, we reinvent communication.
How can an artistic practice act as a conversation piece? During a three-month working period, a maker is invited to appropriate (a part of) The Grey Space. In addition to space, resources and tools, we make our network available, provide feedback and organize public events. The Grey Space is a facilitating and contributing co-producer and sparring partner. A network of experts will engage in informal discussions with the maker about the work in development throughout the residency. In addition, these experts will play a more public role during events in different configurations and settings.
Concept and direction: Amparo González Sola
Performers: Carolina Stegmayer, Claudia Ganquín, Amparo González Sola.
Light designer: Vinny Jones
Collaboration in rehearsals: Isabel Aimé González Sola
Co-production: The Grey Space in the Middle (NL), workspacebrussels (BE), SPRING Performing Arts (NL).
Support: Goethe-Institut Nederland (DE), Dansateliers (NL), Residenties in Utrecht (NL)
Residencies: Kaaistudio’s (BE), Het Huis Utrecht (NL), Dansateliers (NL).
Amparo González Sola’s Open Space residency is made possible by the Creative Industries Fund NL, the City of The Hague and Stroom Den Haag.
Other partners of the project include:
