APRIL - A Whatsapp Performance

Nathalie Rozanes & Chloe Chignell use the virtual space of a WhatsApp group as their stage for the performance APRIL

"We wanted to talk about intimacy, friendship and touch in the time of a global pandemic. I guess we don’t really need to explain the situation as we are all living in it, but you know… the reduced contacts, the hesitation of proximity, the decision of who to see and when to see them, who to touch, who to sleep with, who to keep distance from. In order to think about how these social choreographies of the pandemic— that denote the body as the dangerous, leaking, unstable ground for viral war — are changing, for better or worse, the models of friendship that we participate in and perform.

In the beginning, we were naive and kept talking about 'afterward', you know, when things would go back to normal, when things feel easy and fluid and the self-consciousness we now walk around with would start to reside and we would cough at the supermarket, something which now seems heinous.

But of course, 'after' is a fiction, it is a way of narrating the present moment to make it more bearable. We are here, in this intensely banal open stretch of now-time and our relationships are becoming different because of it. Even if there would be maskless faces in public and no limitations on house guests, we have carried these social choreographies in our bodies and they remain, if not 'our' present, memories written into our bodies, a defining history."

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This performance is part of workspacebrussels' Open Studios programme. For this XL edition in April 2021, we have mapped out a museum-like route through the Kaaistudios and workspacebrussels. As you discover both buildings from sides you haven’t seen before, you will be surprised by installations, sculptures and videos set up in unexpected places. But the experience doesn’t end there: we also invite you to a curated walk in the city and interventions in public space.