THE ATHLETES
In the ancient tennis area of the Serralves Foundation in Porto, took place a strange event this week end of mid september. The artist Nadia Lauro, scenographer, stage director and sculptor, organized a contest. The fighters are hop plants which are growing since july and will remain until end of october. Their pots are the ten starting stairs of a slow motion run. Each stair is numbered and linked by a wire thread to a white and red post with different patterns. Blue contacts are posted on the lines, every metter.
Two arbitrators seems quite asleep and tired under the sun, a bunch of empty water bottles thrown under their chairs. The public is arriving, following park agents through the garden paths, and after the rosery, discovers the up described scene.
An old juke box is playing, and we are invited to choose some musics on a list given at the entrance. The leaflet mentioned that doing this, we support the plants: each music program is related to a plant number. It is a large pannel selection of musics, from well known movies.
As the people hang around, drinking champaign and eating grapes, we start wondering “What is going on? What is the event? What is to be looked at?Where is the scene?”
And then, slighlty between the branches and approaching nearby the tennis court, a dog , two boars and a bear, seems to observe us. At this turning point, the situation is reversed and we start to realize that potentialy everything car be the event. Then , a plane crosses the sky, tracing a line just in between the two arbritors who wake up and follow its way with and exaggerated head movement. The scene is not anymore the central focus point, but the periphery becomes the potential performative territory. Then a series of small events, “tableaux”, can be noticed, but it requires our complete and flotting attention. A group of pregnant women, a girl passing her hand in her hair…and suddenly a football team who was there watching starts a strange game, without a ball. Later on, some couples make the “Beetle Juice” dance before lying on the floor, in kind of statues position and saying excerpts of well knowm movies. It’s like if a the things that we see and hear actives actually our memory in way that it becomes real. This balance between illusion and reality, uncanny and game strategies goes beyond the simple inversion between viewer and actor. Nadia Lauro’s proposal goes further and explores the limits of time and peripherical perception, in this , she is one of the most interesting artist of her generation.

Marie de brugerolles. Flash Art novembre-décembre 2003