Portraits
Susana Chiocca
September
2021
Tue
14
About BITCHO — às escâncaras
Can we look at your performance as an autobiographical work? In which way? What do you think this piece may reveal about you as a creator?
In this piece, there are various experiences and explorations reunited, which I've been having in the past few years — in reality, more than two decades —, between plastic arts, video, photography, movement, performance art, spoken word, installation, and sound. (...) Some years ago, a friend asked me a question: until where is Susana Chiocca BITCHO or is BITCHO more Susana Chiocca? I think they complement and learn with each other. I see BITCHO as an alter ego to which, somehow, everything is allowed, a character that reveals a lot from Chiocca and that extrapolates her. I speak about what matters to me, what surrounds me, but are universal questions, cosmic screams, pains, and global pleasures. Perceiving ourselves with and through the others, and that's why I'm interested in knowing what someone who comes to experience my work thinks, because it opens me up to other perspectives - it's like someone reading a book, no two experiences are alike.
During your creative process, did you based or were you inspired by any autobiographical work, self-portrait, or any other reference?
The references that I have and have been absorbing throughout my life come from different areas and plenty of them are not evident or explicit. Twenty years ago, I was influenced by Dance - Alain Platel, Vera Mantero, João Fiadeiro, Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Miguel Pereira, Jan Fabre, among many others - and, of course, Pina Bausch. Besides this background, the Futurists and Dadaists, artists such as Bill Viola or Caravaggio, Chris Cunningham, Bosch, or Bruegel. in the cinema, another thousand: Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Derek Jarman, Edgar Pêra, David Lynch, Jodorowsky, Sergei Parajanov, or the Soviet School — Eisenstein, Tarkovsky and Sokurov — not forgetting Almodóvar, because BITCHO can also be a little kitsch. It is easier to mention the creators in the field of music, although there will also lack a multitude of them, but to mention who is more BITCHO, more nonsense and voice, António Variações — I still remember seeing him on television; Ney Matogrosso, specially with the group Secos & Molhado; Adolfo Luxúria Canibal; Tom Zé, Lola Flores; Fátima Miranda; Elza Soares; Ana Deus; António Olaio; and Amália! The concert of Amon Tobin’s album, ISAM, changed my perspective on mapping that, until then, I didn’t think it was relevant. It gave me some ideas for BITCHO which, at that time in Portugal, were not feasible, at least with the means at my disposal. A fundamental festivity for BITCHO is the Carnival, which is an event that has been imprinted on me for as long as I remember, this multiple possibility of other beings or, as I usually say, of being more ourselves. Maybe BITCHO is more Susana Chiocca than herself.
The caretos — especially those from Lazarim — are fabulous, all different with equally unique costumes. I remember the year I discovered a careto with a small part of his costume made of the same fabric that I was going to wear at my next concert, and I thought it was no coincidence — I was delirious! And not forget Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, and the sweetiest drag queens, such as Lorelay Fox and Rita von Hunty. Finally, how not to mention the creative connection with António Lago’s vision and criticism, as well as with many other peers, with whom I grew up. I highlight Ana Ulisses with whom I started the project prior to BITCHO, Bella Prop. This work is a life from which a small glow is glimpsed, not as a leftover, but as something that is inherited, is detached from this submerged amalgamation of the path, the knowledge and the encounters.
Is there any portrait or self-portrait which inspires you?
One of the last self-portraits I remember is that of Aurélia de Sousa, represented as Santo António, and the detail of having access to the photo of it. When I saw it, I immediately wanted to do a performance, but it hasn't happened yet. I've already talked about Bill Viola, but seeing live, works like Tristan's Ascension or Inverted Birth, among others, is something that stays in our memory, on our skin, forever, because of the density, immensity and immersion achieved, it's a bigger work, which makes us ascend beyond the terrestrial. Something closer to the grotesque, like Goya's black paintings, which I never get tired of revisiting when I can, and James Ensor's intriguing masks. But as I said before, these inspirations are not transparent, we have the figure of the faun or the god Pan, half man and half goat, that hybrid character that is inherent to BITCHO. For example, the first therianthropic figure that we are aware of – “The Sorcerer” - and that, having human characteristics, integrates a series of animals — for me, it is a symbol and a premonition, it is almost as if all these later bitchos of the various creators were contained there and what we do is simply unroll the skein and discover our specific anthropomorphism. Inside and outside everything is the centre that is nature and its poetic regenerating, muscular and inspiring capacity!
In which way the ritual and/or the religious are present in your performance?
A ritual implies a repetition of acts or actions to which are given specific meanings. I can think on the ritual in a lateral way, the necessity of Susana Chiocca to transfigure herself to share the message and the experience, just as the shaman will have a specific costume to access the other world. I can say that sometimes, in this performance, there are moments when the character rises to a kind of transcendence. What I'm looking for with what I present is that the spectator doesn't leave indifferent, nor that he considers shitty what he's just seen, at least, he feels something, he doesn't leave the same way as entered. In this sense, more positively or negatively, there is a transformation even if it is momentary; a ritual will also have this characteristic, the energetic power to penetrate into. In an ideal way, it will be to provoke in those who watch a desire to create, to get home and do things. This is one of the best experiences that can happen to me when I watch, hear, or read something vibrant, the desire to put myself at the centre of an action, to build, to idealize projects, even if it is simply a drawing.
BITCHO — às escâncaras, more than a performance by itself, it is part of a process, of a project created in 2012. Today, in 2021, what is BITCHO? What does it have in distinction to and in common with the first years of the project?
Through the first two years, the project was called, Outra coisa [Another thing]. The name BITCHO came up after — and it is still something else. We never know exactly through where it goes, neither what will come and that is something that drives me to create, to transform it, to rethink it, creating a new whole or a new bitcho. One of the main characteristics is precisely this transmutation. The relation of the character with the audience is thought and changes depending on the space in which it is presented. Through the texts — from today or even older ones — I try to reflect on the present. Both can be intrinsically contemporary — as we know, when an artistic work is good, it is timeless. I make a game of sewing line-up texts, cutting, and fringing, like in a patchwork. And it is from this new nucleus of texts that a new being fluidly emerges, which will express itself in this other costume and environment. For example, I have now reworked two texts from my presentations in 2012, based in the book Pena Capital by Mário Cesariny, that I designated by Pila and Bomba with a new musical arrangement, because they make us think on the present and transport us. Recently, I found a video that I made for the theme, O que te atravessa, in 2014, the only one of my authorship in this performance, and the way of saying it is completely different. I even got scared! It didn't look like the same person. I feel that the text is more mine now, I could see its rhythm. There was a growth in the way of saying it. The project started with the musician and producer, Sílvio Almeida, and we were working on voice and sounds in my house and I was the one who made the videos, costumes and wrote some of the texts. In 2014, I started to collaborate with the poet Luca Argel who created specific texts for the project, but also for other video works, which was a privilege to work with someone who writes beautifully and that is my contemporary. In that same year, the video artist, Maria João Silva, joined us, bringing new possibilities in terms of image and its realization. The various elements came together because I felt an urgency to open the project, to not be left alone with my universe, to receive other inputs, other experiences and, of course, the specific knowledge of each one in their field. The work grew and I somehow abstractly created images of what I wanted in the future for BITCHO. For a long time, BITCHO worked with pre-recorded songs, alone on stage — it started in the room of a friend and artist, André Fonseca, who organized an art exhibition at his house and it was an explosive moment for me; I like this proximity to the public. Therefore, the project adapts to different spaces. Last year, in Salamanca, I performed at the library in the Casa de las Conchas and that secular space has such a particular energy that it seemed that I was inhabiting another time. A big change occurred in 2019 — the musician performing live, sometimes also present on stage. There has been a fundamental collaboration of several artists, and nothing would have been possible without the various creators involved, from the very first moment. BITCHO would not only exist with Susana Chiocca and, at this moment, we have António Lago, Miguel Ângelo Silva, Luís Figueiredo, Maria João Silva and Duarte Amorim. We collaborate to create a cohesive object, personified in BITCHO and that goes far beyond it. This performance is the culmination of a long road, where different ideas are branched and interconnected in a constant search for new bitchos.
Can we look at your performance as an autobiographical work? In which way? What do you think this piece may reveal about you as a creator?
In this piece, there are various experiences and explorations reunited, which I've been having in the past few years — in reality, more than two decades —, between plastic arts, video, photography, movement, performance art, spoken word, installation, and sound. (...) Some years ago, a friend asked me a question: until where is Susana Chiocca BITCHO or is BITCHO more Susana Chiocca? I think they complement and learn with each other. I see BITCHO as an alter ego to which, somehow, everything is allowed, a character that reveals a lot from Chiocca and that extrapolates her. I speak about what matters to me, what surrounds me, but are universal questions, cosmic screams, pains, and global pleasures. Perceiving ourselves with and through the others, and that's why I'm interested in knowing what someone who comes to experience my work thinks, because it opens me up to other perspectives - it's like someone reading a book, no two experiences are alike.
During your creative process, did you based or were you inspired by any autobiographical work, self-portrait, or any other reference?
The references that I have and have been absorbing throughout my life come from different areas and plenty of them are not evident or explicit. Twenty years ago, I was influenced by Dance - Alain Platel, Vera Mantero, João Fiadeiro, Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Miguel Pereira, Jan Fabre, among many others - and, of course, Pina Bausch. Besides this background, the Futurists and Dadaists, artists such as Bill Viola or Caravaggio, Chris Cunningham, Bosch, or Bruegel. in the cinema, another thousand: Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Derek Jarman, Edgar Pêra, David Lynch, Jodorowsky, Sergei Parajanov, or the Soviet School — Eisenstein, Tarkovsky and Sokurov — not forgetting Almodóvar, because BITCHO can also be a little kitsch. It is easier to mention the creators in the field of music, although there will also lack a multitude of them, but to mention who is more BITCHO, more nonsense and voice, António Variações — I still remember seeing him on television; Ney Matogrosso, specially with the group Secos & Molhado; Adolfo Luxúria Canibal; Tom Zé, Lola Flores; Fátima Miranda; Elza Soares; Ana Deus; António Olaio; and Amália! The concert of Amon Tobin’s album, ISAM, changed my perspective on mapping that, until then, I didn’t think it was relevant. It gave me some ideas for BITCHO which, at that time in Portugal, were not feasible, at least with the means at my disposal. A fundamental festivity for BITCHO is the Carnival, which is an event that has been imprinted on me for as long as I remember, this multiple possibility of other beings or, as I usually say, of being more ourselves. Maybe BITCHO is more Susana Chiocca than herself.
The caretos — especially those from Lazarim — are fabulous, all different with equally unique costumes. I remember the year I discovered a careto with a small part of his costume made of the same fabric that I was going to wear at my next concert, and I thought it was no coincidence — I was delirious! And not forget Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, and the sweetiest drag queens, such as Lorelay Fox and Rita von Hunty. Finally, how not to mention the creative connection with António Lago’s vision and criticism, as well as with many other peers, with whom I grew up. I highlight Ana Ulisses with whom I started the project prior to BITCHO, Bella Prop. This work is a life from which a small glow is glimpsed, not as a leftover, but as something that is inherited, is detached from this submerged amalgamation of the path, the knowledge and the encounters.
Is there any portrait or self-portrait which inspires you?
One of the last self-portraits I remember is that of Aurélia de Sousa, represented as Santo António, and the detail of having access to the photo of it. When I saw it, I immediately wanted to do a performance, but it hasn't happened yet. I've already talked about Bill Viola, but seeing live, works like Tristan's Ascension or Inverted Birth, among others, is something that stays in our memory, on our skin, forever, because of the density, immensity and immersion achieved, it's a bigger work, which makes us ascend beyond the terrestrial. Something closer to the grotesque, like Goya's black paintings, which I never get tired of revisiting when I can, and James Ensor's intriguing masks. But as I said before, these inspirations are not transparent, we have the figure of the faun or the god Pan, half man and half goat, that hybrid character that is inherent to BITCHO. For example, the first therianthropic figure that we are aware of – “The Sorcerer” - and that, having human characteristics, integrates a series of animals — for me, it is a symbol and a premonition, it is almost as if all these later bitchos of the various creators were contained there and what we do is simply unroll the skein and discover our specific anthropomorphism. Inside and outside everything is the centre that is nature and its poetic regenerating, muscular and inspiring capacity!
In which way the ritual and/or the religious are present in your performance?
A ritual implies a repetition of acts or actions to which are given specific meanings. I can think on the ritual in a lateral way, the necessity of Susana Chiocca to transfigure herself to share the message and the experience, just as the shaman will have a specific costume to access the other world. I can say that sometimes, in this performance, there are moments when the character rises to a kind of transcendence. What I'm looking for with what I present is that the spectator doesn't leave indifferent, nor that he considers shitty what he's just seen, at least, he feels something, he doesn't leave the same way as entered. In this sense, more positively or negatively, there is a transformation even if it is momentary; a ritual will also have this characteristic, the energetic power to penetrate into. In an ideal way, it will be to provoke in those who watch a desire to create, to get home and do things. This is one of the best experiences that can happen to me when I watch, hear, or read something vibrant, the desire to put myself at the centre of an action, to build, to idealize projects, even if it is simply a drawing.
BITCHO — às escâncaras, more than a performance by itself, it is part of a process, of a project created in 2012. Today, in 2021, what is BITCHO? What does it have in distinction to and in common with the first years of the project?
Through the first two years, the project was called, Outra coisa [Another thing]. The name BITCHO came up after — and it is still something else. We never know exactly through where it goes, neither what will come and that is something that drives me to create, to transform it, to rethink it, creating a new whole or a new bitcho. One of the main characteristics is precisely this transmutation. The relation of the character with the audience is thought and changes depending on the space in which it is presented. Through the texts — from today or even older ones — I try to reflect on the present. Both can be intrinsically contemporary — as we know, when an artistic work is good, it is timeless. I make a game of sewing line-up texts, cutting, and fringing, like in a patchwork. And it is from this new nucleus of texts that a new being fluidly emerges, which will express itself in this other costume and environment. For example, I have now reworked two texts from my presentations in 2012, based in the book Pena Capital by Mário Cesariny, that I designated by Pila and Bomba with a new musical arrangement, because they make us think on the present and transport us. Recently, I found a video that I made for the theme, O que te atravessa, in 2014, the only one of my authorship in this performance, and the way of saying it is completely different. I even got scared! It didn't look like the same person. I feel that the text is more mine now, I could see its rhythm. There was a growth in the way of saying it. The project started with the musician and producer, Sílvio Almeida, and we were working on voice and sounds in my house and I was the one who made the videos, costumes and wrote some of the texts. In 2014, I started to collaborate with the poet Luca Argel who created specific texts for the project, but also for other video works, which was a privilege to work with someone who writes beautifully and that is my contemporary. In that same year, the video artist, Maria João Silva, joined us, bringing new possibilities in terms of image and its realization. The various elements came together because I felt an urgency to open the project, to not be left alone with my universe, to receive other inputs, other experiences and, of course, the specific knowledge of each one in their field. The work grew and I somehow abstractly created images of what I wanted in the future for BITCHO. For a long time, BITCHO worked with pre-recorded songs, alone on stage — it started in the room of a friend and artist, André Fonseca, who organized an art exhibition at his house and it was an explosive moment for me; I like this proximity to the public. Therefore, the project adapts to different spaces. Last year, in Salamanca, I performed at the library in the Casa de las Conchas and that secular space has such a particular energy that it seemed that I was inhabiting another time. A big change occurred in 2019 — the musician performing live, sometimes also present on stage. There has been a fundamental collaboration of several artists, and nothing would have been possible without the various creators involved, from the very first moment. BITCHO would not only exist with Susana Chiocca and, at this moment, we have António Lago, Miguel Ângelo Silva, Luís Figueiredo, Maria João Silva and Duarte Amorim. We collaborate to create a cohesive object, personified in BITCHO and that goes far beyond it. This performance is the culmination of a long road, where different ideas are branched and interconnected in a constant search for new bitchos.
© José Caldeira / TMP
