Renata Lamenza Epifanio – Corpo-gambiarra: dance, costume and politics of the body

This PhD research investigates the relation between performer and costume and acts on approximating both crafts, mediating the relation of body with matter. Approaching costume as a sensorial-relational entity with an agency, could the entanglement of costume and body propose new ways of perceiving matter through a sensorial-relational method? Moreover, if this experience displaces the body into a provisional state, how could it create a political body? This project will pre-define this political body as corpo-gambiarra, inspired in the Brazilian concept of Gambiarra, that in everyday use refers to “improvised solutions to problems”[1], and in Tupi-Guarani language, names a provisional camp in an unknown territory”[2].

Corpo-gambiarra will be the fuel of the research, embodied in different outcomes: starting from the educational practice by disseminating my costume-led methodology in a workshop for dancers (RCA, Performact); following to the theoretical rooting where Brazilian authors and artists take a central place in the investigation; performative readings will ground the concepts and an essay will elaborate the first skeleton of the corpo-gambiarra method. As performer, I will create an installation-performance followed by the publication of a book. Supported by an international and transdisciplinary sounding board, this research aims to expand the notions of dance and costume and the territories they are installed from a critical-sustainable practice, using corpo-gambiarra as a (political) tool to achieve it.

[1] Sedlmayer, 2017.

[2] Xico Sá in Sedlmayer, 2017.