Mariana Viana

Matière grise/Gray matter

Mariana Viana will work for two weeks in MDT on research for her new piece Matière grise/Gray matter.

Gray matter is an area of indefinition, immense but finite. A chromatic field defined by an absence. A desaturation of vision. A microscopic detail. An imminent turning point activated by a minor gesture. I am interested in a catastrophic dimension of the body that does not necessarily have to do with an impact. I am intrigued by the possibility of activating a body with a very specific temporality, but which lives on a kind of border – or a gray area – between the everyday body and fiction, weight and humor, visibility and opacity, surface and abyss.

— Notes to unfold these days at MDT:
1. Geological time, human time.
2. Choreographing attention: minor gestures and inflexion points.
3. Minerals and the brain (the gray matter).
4. Landscapes and their stories: mountains, metals, sandstone.
5. Black and white cinema: still shots, moving shots, detail shots.

Matière grise/Gray matter is the fourth part of the Cinema Catastrophe research project, a series of performative situations around the relationship between the body, matter, time, image, cinema and perception. It counts on the collaboration of Daniel Lühmann, Anat Bosak, Juliette Catelle and Geoffrey Badel. 

This residency is part of Life Long Burning – Futures lost and found project (2023-2026) supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.