Molecular Love: Act 2

Molecular Love is a long-term project by Argentinian artist Mercedes Azpilicueta which began in 2016 at the Rijksakademie van Beelden Kunsten in Amsterdam. It traces a score written by the artist and materialised into a performative installation. Since the beginning, the score has been fed by collaborations and rehearsals with dancers and singers. The second act of Molecular Love continues to define and shape this multiple body of work now including designers and textile alchemists that feed the research from their own perspective. Through a collective thinking and working process, Molecular Love: Act 2 takes the form of an evolving exhibition for Lundskonstahall opening in June, 2020.

A small living cell, here conceived as the exhibition space, hosts a group of molecules in constant interaction: moving bodies, costumes, décors, video and sounds, visual scores, drawings and wall texts. Happily lost sometime in the future, these molecules are made out of polyamorous atoms shaping reciprocal affective relationships, yolking and conjugating together across scale, speed, synchronicities and complexities.

One molecule performs and shares knowledge and experience on female desire, sexuality freed from reproduction, intimacy and estrangement. The bodies are no longer singular self-defined agents but erratic compositions of multiple elements expanding and contracting. A loose methodology brings to the performance contingency and makes room for improvisation, association and more playfulness starting from sensing and understanding the other through non-rational relations.

The work seeks new encounters, forms alliances and creates assemblages while considering the micropolitics of corresponding affect and curiosity. It is a rehearsal of remembrance and commemoration; an attempt to actively reprise, revive and recuperate within an unstable landscape of contagion rather than filiation. Molecular Love: Act 2 moves with “intimacy without proximity”. The combination of several cadenced and playful deconstructed scores, rhythmic soundscapes, mother-root-coloured spineless costumes, stained drawings, moulded archival ghosts and tie dyed décors, allows to enter a tactile landscape of open-ended gatherings.

Credits:
Concept: Mercedes Azpilicueta
Research and production assistance: Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Choreographic assistance: Maria Naidu
Costumes: Lucile Sauzet
Natural Dyeing: Lucila Kenny
Graphic Design: Vanina Scolavino
Sound editing: Tiago Worm Tirone
Performers: Sarah Nikiito, Ingrid Rosborg, Jossette Reilly, Maria Naidu, Rani Nair.

Molecular Love: Act 2 is part of the exhibition Performance/Documentation/Presentation, a group exhibition with Mercedes Azpilicueta, Donna Kukama, Hwayeon Nam and Alexandra Pirici at Lundskonsthall, Lund, Sweden. June 13 – August 23, 2020.