QUARTO – ropeSpace

The last phase of the ROPE series is being created during 2018-2021 and is part of a ten-year-long project involving a 1000 m long rope.

ropeSpace explores the relations between the rope, choreography and architecture. Here, in a seemingly functional procedure, two bodies are mutually involved with threading a three-dimensional pathway toward and away from one another inside a shared spatial frame. As the density of the rope material increases, the apparent functionality of the work dissolves into the sequence of increasingly intimate gestures that amplify relation rather than function, the fragility of mutual commitment rather than the determination of shared labour.  This process that starts as almost abstract mapping of coordinates will end up as the weaving of a shared habitat. The passage from one to another exhibits a paradoxical dysfunctionality. The pragmatic act of creating the installation is what initially moves the bodies, but once the object is created what’s left behind are the material traces of the movements, now renouncing its objective functionality and opening the possibility for a renewed subjective engagement.

Can the interconnection of bodies, a long black rope and aluminium tubes affect the experience in time and space? How can we build something that can affect our relationship with each other and our context? How do we meet the political complexities we are facing today through our artistry?

ROPE series 2011-2021
Since 2011 QUARTO has developed bodies of work that are emerging in a series of long-term interdisciplinary research. Each part of the ROPE series deals with the 1000 meter long black rope in three distinct ways. The first part explored the rope’s flux and continuous movement. This research resulted in Beauty of Accident (premiered at MDT Stockholm 2012), Durational Rope (premiered at Moderna Museet Stockholm 2014) and ROPE#1 (video piece 2013). The second part of the ROPE series focuses on the rope as a knot/mass/body. The stage performance Knot Body (premiered at MDT Stockholm 2016) unfolded into ROPE#2 (video piece 2017) and THISENTANGLEMENT (premiered at Moderna Museet Stockholm 2017). The last part of the ROPE series is being created during 2018-2020 and the first stage performance is ropeSpace. Here QUARTO will explore the relations between the rope, choreography and architecture. 2019-2020 ropeSpace will migrate to a museum/gallery context and will become an installation performance and a video piece ROPE#3.

The performance-duo QUARTO consists of Anna af Sillén de Mesquita and Leandro Zappala.