Is it this week that you can test your submission to capitalism – can you resist a bait made of notes?
An artist suspended 20 meters high will distribute real money on Imaginarius – Santa Maria da Feira International Street Theater Festival, through challenges launched to viewers to test his degree of submission to capitalism.
Integrated no event that of May 22-25 It will take 43 companies to the city of Aveiro district and Porto Metropolitan Area, the show in question is “Acts of Liberation / Liberation Acts” and has production by Spanish collective Money for Free (Free Money, in the English translation), whose artistic director, Sergi Estebanell, promises at 6:30 pm on the 24th of the “poetic-political” intervention whose objective is “thrilling, the objective is“ thrilling, Barriers, capture the present moment and promote deep reflection ”.
In practice, the character described as “John Fisherman” (João Fisherman) will be suspended from a building and, under a yellow waterproof cover, without showing the face, will throw on the crowd a fishing cane in which the bait can reach a total of 200 euros. Meanwhile, two other elements of the collective will be on the ground inverting viewers to select who deserves to receive the amount the fisherman proposes to release.
“John really gives money and people do whatever they want with him,” says Estebanell in an interview with Lusa. “Who earns the most are the viewers who are particularly creative in the way Or who the public decides to receive it, ”he said.
Regardless of the reactions observed, the director of collective Money for Free says that there are no right or wrong behaviors: “The show is simply a mirror of our capitalist society because What happens during performance reflects what we are”.
“Some people go actively behind money, others do not believe what is happening, others propose ideas, rules and actions to change things… Some get angry, frustrated, and others go away, ”he explained.
After the project’s debut in 2018 at the Catalan Fira Tàrrega festival and more than 80 exhibitions in 20 countries, Estebanell confesses that it is still impressed when the audience of “Acts of Liberation” becomes emotional and genuinely participates in performance. About these moments, he recalls just as “some people have broken themselves from the symbol of money when making beautiful gestures: sharing him with those who need it, making anti-capitalist statements, eating, burning it or letting him fly in a balloon.”
The show thus fulfills the objective of promoting a collective and individual reflection on the money worship, in the awareness that any action has consequences.
“I believe we are living in a Increasingly individualistic, narcissistic and egocentric society. To get something together, we have to reconnect with both strangers and those we love, because an emotional connection can be the starting point for social transformation, ”says Estebanell.
In this cohabitation effort that is tolerant and empathic, the Spanish artist warns, however, to the need to avoid extremism, whatever ideology in the respective base. “I am concerned with the extremes, the struggles between peers, the rigid thinking, the systematization and automation of humanity-to stop looking each other, to embrace it, to take care of him,” he admits.
For this very reason, Estebanell’s conviction is that his professional area has an active role playing in the “new age” in which we now live: “We have to listen and understand the other – not only from a rational but also physically and emotionally – and art is essential to achieve it.”
