TERRA NULLIUS is a site-specific performance that happens while walking.
Together we create an ephemeral community.
Below I leave some instructions to experiment the audio-walk on your own wherever you are.
GUIDELINES:
Feel free to share your experience with me: arabstrab@gmail.com
TERRA NULLIUS is a performative audio walk that tries to capture the experience of a distant place. For a year, Paula Diogo was in Reykjavik developing a project that combined personal and collective narratives. Her process was founded on two simple actions: walking and writing.
TERRA NULLIUS is a performance that strives to overflow the space of the theatre, occupying the city’s geography and the virtual space of discussion and thought. The final version of the project was presented at the end of 2020 at the D. Maria II Theatre.
For each location a path is drawn in the city to create an overlap with a predefined audio track. The public is then invited to walk through the city in a group experience. This experience concludes with the solitary reading of the book TERRA NULLIUS, which each audience member can take home.
Performer and stage director with an artistic background based on collaborative processes. Meandering through art-making and producing, she holds a BA in Theater by the ESTC in Lisbon, and a MA in Performing Arts by the Icelandic Academy of Arts. A co-founder of several collectives, such as Teatro Praga, TRUTA and O Pato Profissional, she has also worked with several artists and companies both in Portugal and abroad.
Recently, she founded Má-Criação, a platform that brings together creators from different backgrounds and geographies and a member of the collective Celestial Bodies, a new project dedicated to opening up spaces that integrate practices of solidarity, care, empathy and wonder. Paula Diogo is one of the the artists supported by apap – FEMINIST FUTURES a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union. She lives in Lisbon.
Credits
Project direction, creation and performance Paula Diogo
Audiowalk
Text and voice Paula Diogo
Sound creation João Bento
Light design Daniel Worm
Dramaturgical support Alex Cassal
Creative support Alfredo Martins, Estelle Franco, Renato Linhares
Scenic space Frame Colectivo (Agapi Dimitriadou and Gabriela Salazar) and Elsa Mencagli (Erasmus + intern)
Graphic design Masako Hattori
Stage photography João Tuna
Proofreading Ana Macedo
Executive production Vanda Cerejo
Communication support Carlos Alves
Co-production Má-Criação and TNDMII
Co-production residencies Arquipélago – Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, Citemor and O Espaço do Tempo
Creative partners Alkantara, Galeria Zé dos Bois
Artistic residency support Companhia Olga Roriz
Support CML – Pólo Cultural Gaivotas | Boavista
Work developed with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the
GDA Foundation’s Cultural Fund in 2018/19.
Project financed by the Portuguese Republic – Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts.
It is necessary to listen carefully. If we do not become deeply involved in listening, it is useless to be here. This warning, which should already be a banality and that could serve us simply to live every day, is particularly necessary to enter Paula Diogo’s “Terra Nullius”. It may seem like a mere proposal of a theatrical format in an audio-guided device, but it is much more than that. “Terra Nuliius” is a living, sensitive, formless organism, which exists through a dramaturgical text recorded in audio, which is also a place – the place that invites us to walk while listening and, in that listening, to amplify all the senses to learn better and connect more intensely with everything and everyone around us. In the version in which it debuted, in the programming of Teatro D. Maria II (Lisbon), people were all at first to start the walk together, in a kind of silent disco transformed into silent live art or silent performance. The story that Paula Diogo tells us is about the awareness that we participate in a common body, and the many wounds and violence inflicted on this communion, where the other is often assaulted, discriminated against or simply ignored. In these pandemic times, in the impossibility of sharing the same journey made together, each immersed in their listening, “Terra Nullius” allows an exceptional experience that we must value: we can be physically and geographically distant, but we continue to be part of the same common body . Who knows, we may even meet at the same time, in a place with different coordinates, but in the same extra place: this place that, in its immateriality and in each one’s imagination, is built on the attentive and sensitive listening of Terra Nullius. Paula Diogo gives just a simple instruction: walk towards a water line or a high point.
Cláudia Galhós
Maria João Machado
Email: machado.mariajoao@gmail.com
Website
www.ma-criacao.com
Mickael de Oliveira was born in France, in 1984, and has lived in Portugal since 1999. In 2013, he got his Ph.D. in contemporary Portuguese and European dramaturgy from the School of Humanities – University of Lisbon, where he is post-doctoral fellow researching the presence of literature in contemporary theatre and dance. In 2008, Mickael founded Colectivo 84, the theatre company for which he develops playwriting and directing projects. His work O que é teu entregou aos mortais was distinguished with the Maria Matos New Playwriting Award (Maria Matos Municipal Theatre, 2007), and Clytemnestra received an Honorable Mention – António José da Silva Prize (D. Maria II National Theatre, Lisbon / FUNARTE, Brazil, 2012). Some of his most recent productions include Oslo–Fuck Them All and Everything Will Be Wonderful (co-created with Nuno M Cardoso, Gil Vicente Academic Theatre, São Luiz Municipal Theatre), The Constitution (2016, Dona Maria National Theatre), and the diptych Socrates Must Die (Socrates’ Death / The Life of John Smith, 2017/2018, Vila Flor Cultural Centre, São Luiz Municipal Theatre, Viriato Theatre, Gil Vicente Academic Theatre. Mickael has served as the artistic director of END – New Dramaturgy Encounters, a project that aims to foster new Portuguese and international playwriting (1st edition at the São Luiz Municipal Theatre, Lisbon, Nov. 2010; 2nd and 3rd editions at the Gil Vicente Academic Theatre, March, Coimbra, 2015/2019). He was Assistant Professor of Arts Administration and Artistic Studies at the School of Education and Humanities (Leiria), guest Lecturer at the School of Theatre and Film Studies (Lisbon), and guest Assistant Professor at the School of Humanities – University of Coimbra. From September 2011 to August 2015, Mickael was Assistant Artistic Director of the Gil Vicente Academic Theatre (Coimbra).
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974, living between Belgium and Portugal. She has a BA in set and costume design by the high school of theatre and cinema of Lisbon, a Masters of Arts in scenography and dramaturgy of space from the University of Utrecht and Saint Martins college of art in Antwerp, a post-graduation in theatricality and performativity from APT in Antwerp, a film stage at the European film school in Ebeltoft, Denmark, and a Masters in Philosophy of the University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 2003 she has worked on her own performances and installations in collaboration with international artists. She has achieved national and international recognition for her unusual work and is considered one of the most daring artists and innovative writers of her generation. She won the Revelation Prize in 1994 for her creative work in performance and cinema, the Prize Teatro na Década for T5 in 1999, the Gulbenkian Foundation Prize Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão for the performance Flatland I in 2004 and was one of the 5 finalists of the Sonae Media Art Prize 2015 with her installation Parasomnia, amongst other prizes. She has been invited to participate in the prestigious International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in 2013 and to be the first Outreach Fellow. She was the first literary resident in Berlin in 2016, sponsored by the Portuguese Embassy in Germany/Instituto Camões. She lectures “dramaturgy and space” and “image” regularly at Universities and cultural centers in Portugal (such as University of Minho or University of Lisbon) and abroad (University of Antwerp, Escola de Escrita in Curitiba, etc). She is the author of several novels, short stories and performances, such as Dias úteis (2016, considered one of the books of the year by several reviewers) or Banquet (finalist at the Novel Prize of APE 2012). She is a chronicle writer for the prestigious Jornal de Letras since 2017 and for the National Radio Antena 1.
Rui Horta was one of the most influencial choreographers of his generation, his work being presented all over the world such as the Theatre de la Ville, that co-produced it for over a decade. He directed S.O.A.P. at the Mousonturm, and created for many companies such as NDT, Cullberg, Geneva, Gotemburg, etc. 
