All Photos&Video ©Raquel Melgue

Ab Absurdo
Performance | 45” | 2023 | Lisboa – Kindred Spirit Projects

Performance by_ Lara Boticário Morais
Artistic Direction_ Lara Boticário Morais & Filipa Brito
Costume Design_ Filipa Brito
Performers_ Lara Boticário Morais & Filipa Brito

This project started with an investigation about a word that has always been part of my lexicon, haemophilia. A word that has its origin in the junction of two Greek words, haima, blood, and philia, love, friendship, it is understood that the neologism was not very successful, love for blood will not be the best word to define a disease that consists of a deficiency in coagulation that can cause fatal haemorrhages. On the one hand, it is understood that they have attributed this name, love for blood, to a disease where the lack of a component can be lethal for those who carry it, and it can be said with some certainty that the haemophilic patient will have some love for the deficient blood that runs through his veins, as well as some disdain for not having a “good blood”. It is ironic, this binomial, love versus disdain for something that is life versus a cause of death and that we take for granted in our daily lives.

It is equally ironic that the word haemophilia has been used in the past to define people who had “an appreciation for cruel spectacles” (Mundo Moral, Núm. 5, 1914, pág.13), defining this appreciation in a somewhat eloquent way as, “This morbid, hysterical, feline predilection of haemophilia, this craving for cruel sensations and sensual disturbances, is still a cause that makes so many ladies flock to the courts, to the anatomical amphitheatres, etc.” (Mundo Moral, Núm. 5, 1914, pág.3)

Ab Absurdo triggers a labyrinth of questions that are raised by every human being during their existence. This performance aims to dissect some of the expressions and emotions that invoke the heart and the feeling that connects us and keeps us alive — love, in the same way, that it aims to deal with the fear that everything will end — death. Considering that life, love, and death are complex themes, but are somehow connected by a certain red liquid — blood — that is essential (in various ways) to all these stages, let us take this liquid to travel throughout a story told and experienced by several actions.

Clarifying the reason for addressing blood and the deficiency associated with it, relating it to life, love, and death, and although this connection is evident, it may only be perceived sporadically, in the same way as blood. Although it is claimed that we are the only animal with consciousness of death, a certainty that we tend to forget, it is an impossibility for someone with haemophilia, as their existence is conducted through a permanent consciousness of death, an impossibility to ignore the end.

In the absurdity that is life, this existence for which we sometimes find no sense, most of the time, the love for something or someone is the engine that moves us towards an end. Approaching life through love and death is to talk about day-to-day life to keep ourselves alive from the ease of disappearing, which we forget and want to forget it exists, in a universe that trivializes one and makes the other invisible. This form of resistance is also a desire to intensify what in us is alert to the complexity of the world. And to what we are capable of creating in it.

Lara Boticário Morais 2023

_{Ab Absurdo was funded by the FCG (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) & KIndred Spirit Projects}