Programmatic pillar Creation — Imagined territories

Curated by Ana Rocha

Walk oriented by Dori Nigro

From the portuguese, Vigia

1. The act or effect of keeping watch. 

2. The state of one who keeps watch = Vigil 

3. Sentinel. 

4. Insomnia. 

5. A sentry box or structure, usually tall, from which a sentinel keeps watch; watchtower. 

6. A hole through which one peeks. 

In the classic Discipline and Punish (1975), Michel Foucault examines the power of surveillance and how it shapes our behaviors and movements based on the experience of the Western world. We come to act as if we were always being watched, even when we are not certain of it. We live in an eternal Big Brother where the other comes to witness and choreograph our existence. 

It is as if we were living in a crumbling architecture that still survives. A sort of panopticon, where the observer can watch everyone, yet is not exempt from being seen, nor from losing control. Permanent surveillance takes hold in space-time. Faced with the speculation of the gaze, we are constantly watched and, often, judged, punished. Erased. Our “emergence as observers” lies in the idea of expanding the ways of seeing. Of seeing beyond the eye. Seeing with our whole bodies to lose control. Decolonizing the gaze. 

In this walking performance, Dori Nigro will be our guide/watchman. He proposes the simple gesture of observing, recognizing that, in this act, while we observe, we are also being observed.