Treaty on the Invention of Things
Daniel Moutinho
Tratado da Invenção das Coisas is the invention of things on my skin through tattoos. When we say things we can be referring to many things. Things are somehow unnamable, indefinable, other than that generic agglomeration of being things (objects, stories, ideas, matter, images, postponed projects, thoughts, etc.). O Tratado da Invenção das Coisas is that accumulation of small narratives tattooed on my body as I went on inventing and understanding myself.
I was interested in the act of inventing, inventing my body, perceiving in it what is the Tattoo History, my autobiography and the nature of things, presupposing that what exists had a nature prior to our invention of them (personal and global).
Strange invention, this one, made of pain.
The invention of myself, made with needles and paint.
This body would not exist if it were not for these wounds that I invented. This body tattooed with my affections and affections, real and fictional.
I thought, while being tattooed, that this inscription on my body was a way of understanding myself and my life, but simultaneously a reading of the world.
I can claim a symbolic meaning for the images on my skin, but I'm not sure it's for me to decide. I wouldn't say I own my tattoos; they are simultaneously in me and beyond me, as images, with stories and connotations that my body cannot entirely define.
Tratado da Invenção das Coisas is a performance that comes from this experience of the body. Tratado da Invenção das Coisas is that invention of a life, as the construction of a scenario, a living encyclopedia of my understanding of things.
Daniel Moutinho
Creation, direction, text and interpretation: Daniel Moutinho
Dramaturgy support: Lara Mesquita
Video: Vera Bibi
Set design: Carla Martinez
Set design assistant: Isabelle Ivone Denken
Sound environment: Nuno Veiga
Light design: Carlos Ramos Costumes: Miu Lapin
Executive production: Cláudia Teixeira
Tattoos by: Binho Onze, Bruna Prazeres, Mirna Garcia, Sofia Nabais, Molin
Creation residency: Trust Collective; Companhia Casa Cheia Partnership: Karnart
Support: Direcção Geral das Artes | Ministério da Cultura, GDA Foundation, Self-Mistake
A production: Parrotrecord - cultural association
Acknowledgements: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Teatro meia volta and then left when I say