RE.CLA.MAR

RE.CLA.MAR creates a temporary pulpit where people displaced from their territories are invited to voice their complaints freely. The performance emerges from the tension between the right to complain and the vulnerability that migrants may experience when questioning, criticising or expressing dissatisfaction with the country in which they live.

In Portuguese, reclamar can mean “to complain”, “to protest” or “to make a claim”. The title breaks the verb into separate units while keeping this range of meanings in play.

When stepping up to the pulpit, each participant decides what they wish to make public and how long they wish to speak. Complaints, personal experiences, political questions, gestures, hesitations and silences become the very material of the action. The device transforms complaining into an exercise in taking the floor and produces an archive of the different forms of presence that passed through that space.

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

RE.CLA.MAR begins with a simple question: who is allowed to complain, and under what conditions can that complaint become public? For migrants, the act of criticising or questioning the place where they live may be shaped by relations of power, fear, precarity and an expectation of gratitude towards the country that has received them.

The performance creates a situation in which this speech can occupy the centre of the space. The pulpit does not represent a pre-established authority; it is activated successively by those who choose to approach it and take the floor. The action thus shifts complaining away from a gesture that is often dismissed or discredited and towards a public form of presence, listening and dissent.

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