Map 01 (Vale Tudo): Notes on the creative process and performance documentation

Map 01 (Vale Tudo) integrates Erika Schwarz’s currently research about costume as performance and appropriation of objects, in relation to the main supplier of scenographic materials from Rio de Janeiro: the S.A.A.R.A. – Society of Friends Adjacent to Alfandega Street commercial shopping district. Articulating personal experiences, cultural traditions and questions about Brazilian artistic productions in contemporaneity, this four hours performance uses the performativity and the theatricality of the real to problematize not only the relationship between production and creation within a project of costume or scenery, but its own use of materials, ready-made pieces and everyday objects as a metalinguistic issue. The performatic action begins with the performer/designer arriving at S.A.A.R.A. equipped with a large map of the region. In this map, a route has been traced out, the fruit of prior research, which it is permeated by, leading the performer to find different shapes and colours. Along this path, multiple purchases are made, initiating the accumulation process of materials and the composition of costumes in situ. It culminates in the creation of a theatrical figure/body and also in the radical (and surrealistic) transformation of objects – at first banal – in the eyes of another (attentive observer or mere passer-by).