Cyclops

In his directorial debut at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Zé de Paiva brings together his experiences as an actor, dancer, photographer and video artist.

In an intermedia performance, he – together with the dancer Nasheeka Nedsreal – seeks to distort the postcolonial visual order.

Images settle upon bodies. They glide across walls, people and objects. The images weigh down, overlay and transform bodies. What we call reality is a collage of image and matter. Who produces the images? For whom? For what purpose?

In *Cyclops*, the performer Zé de Paiva places the camera at the centre as an omnipresent, all-powerful producer of images – as an adversary, as an instrument of domination and empowerment. Who wields the camera, determines the frame, who presses the shutter button?

Cameras make things visible; they give form. Whoever controls the apparatus decides how one sees and is seen. Photographic practice creates a hierarchy between the observer and the observed. It is part of late colonialism: an instrument of surveillance, categorisation, administration, and the objectification of bodies and people. Admittedly, we speak of the ‘protagonist’ when referring to the person in front of the camera. But isn’t the real protagonist the person with the camera, this artificial cyclops? Is a role reversal possible? What do you see? Who are you, my counterpart with this view of the world? How do you see me? Is the world tuned to your perspective? And when I see you on my screen, who are you then? Who directs the gaze, who seduces?

*Cyclops* is a dance with cables and eyes; a struggle for possibilities of movement. In the performance, Zé de Paiva and Nasheeka Nedsreal seek appropriation, the refraction of light in the service of their perspectives as Black protagonists.