Marco Paulo Rolla

'BODY EXTENSIONS'

Definitely the liveliest person in the group. Trained as a musician and a visual artist Marco's performances had seriously matured from simple shock value sessions, which subverted the immediate obvious situation at hand into a caricaturist hypothetic underbelly of itself.

His previous installations also shared the same aesthetic of using pretty icons to render intensely disturbing imagery. The primary work he did at Khoj was an evolution of prior practice and the two initial episodes of this narrative employed similar shrinkages of spaces into strategically chiseled translucent situational tunnels of emotional inferences. The final Performance pieces were very painterly, shadowing into each other within the compositional iconographies. Marco's compositions marked a vital usage of performance art to accommodate dimensional jig sawing similar to a rubric's cube.

"Body Extensions" was one of the most intensive performance sessions on the Open Day Evening. Marco's carefully orchestrated studio acted as a jinxed out multi dimensional space with a variety of urban iconographies like discarded Television sets, and other electronic gadgetry "strewn" around, some obliterated by years of misuse and sessions of ravaging by electro junk hunters. He had constructed a serious apparatus using wall plug stands, which could just about support one foot. Naked and clad in just a rock climbers waist harness, armed with extra rope and karabiners he proceeded on a visually painful series of repetitive journeys from floor level to various junction points on the wall, each time picking one of the strewn objects which were pre-connected to a power cable and this he would first connect to power socket and then take over to far flung point on the wall across the room. This action repeated a number of times, rearranged the chaos from the time when the performance started, into a completely different spatial logic. Accentuated by a mechanically resonating jerky sound, Marco's gesture of display, exaggerated by the connection between the body in it's post industrial environs was a phenomenally arresting presentation.

_{Hemant Sreekumar}

Marco Paulo Rolla  
 

“Body Extensions”

The main issue of my visual work is a reflection on human existence and its daily relation with the energy of life, and with its desire that has more recently been deformed and directed by the technological market.

I come from multiple backgrounds, swinging from music to fine arts and in between taking part in collaborations with dancers and theater artists. So performance came along as a natural media to move in and relate with the other disciplines I work with such as drawing, painting, video and ceramics.

Today, all over the globe, technology is as much a part of life as food and sex. Computers, internet, mobile phones, laptops, televisions and all sorts of electronic equipment build up a virtual layer in life. The human body is no longer able to live naked in a space. It has become addicted to the electric objects that were born with the industrial revolution in the 19th century and its development after the 2nd world war. Now in the 21st century we are facing a body that is both emotionally and physically dependent on electronic extensions.

The urban body wakes up with a digital alarm clock, showers in an electric douche, makes coffee in an electric coffee machine and drives a car to get anywhere. The mobile is never off and the laptop always within reach. At the end of the day this body kills its last hours in front of the TV, looking to the latest news in the world and eating home delivered fast food warmed by microwaves. Every day this is a reality for many people, the body does not know how to exist out of the system, The “play” is directed by the capitalist market and every day creates a new desire. The body forgets its basic needs and lets them pass, blind, it doesn’t notice the mechanical desire.

“Body Extensions” is a performance where I want to relate the human body, electronics, daily objects and food taking them out of reality. Developing a kind of ritual/action displacing functions and bringing symbolic values up. “Body Extensions” tries to create the complexity of life today, where sometimes we can even forget our body and have difficulties understanding its desires.

Collaborations

“South Extensions”

Brasil /India, bossa nova/ Hindi filme songs. This collaboration came to me when I knew I would be working with Monali Meher during the performance-based residency. The idea of using musicality to create an invisible bridge between our two countries was very appealing.

The proposal was that I and Monali should learn a song from each one of our countries. By singing them for a long time and using improvisation we wanted to create new rhythm and melodic games. One song melts into the other as ananas and mangos, caju fruits and guavas in the past, histories and legends from both countries travel from mouth to mouth. Later, we decided to place it in the site on the subway-walking link between two areas in New Delhi, South Extension Part I and South Extension Part II. A flux of people from south to south makes the tunnel a perfect symbolic site to explore. in addition its acoustic element provides an amplification of the voices and words allowing them to fill the space.

At the end it was a unusual experience as after 10 minutes of intervention at the subway lots of curious people stopped to see and hear the action untill the policeman would stop it with the no politeness, showing the unreal power they believe they possess over society and trying to convince us that that public space was threatened by the singing acts.

On a micro scale it imitates very real situations where many political powers try to prevent the south world from connecting strongly because, if it were to happen that could bring a new development and dissolution of power towards political and economical fields in the world.

Another important point of this happening is the fact that this brings to light the real possibilities of a performative piece. One can’t predetermine what is going to happen, particularly in a public space! That is what makes a performance work so alive, the tension of reality towards the action!

“Trans”

This work is a collaboration with Teijal Shah where using video we construct the trans…, formation, sexuality, site, mutation, figuration  from one gender to its opposite.

Male and female, where is the limit?

The beard as a macho statement. Jewelry and make-up constructing the female sensuality and gestures. Two masks that operate as a cliché for the gendered society.

What is happens when male and female cross these boundaries?

We try to communicate and make possible a reflection, an exploration of the opposite sexual behavior as a possible affinity for a human sexual being. In two monitors, one in front of the other, where two faces mirror each other, a man and a woman, cross their original gender and making a transsexual looping.

What is the limit of human sexuality?

This work also touches upon the issue of identity. Does your appearance reflect the real you? Many people are born and are unable to realize what they would like to be, what is appropriate behaviour, sexuality or style of dressing.  But there are also people that are born with the desires specific and clear, even if these are not what society believes they should be, and this becomes a problem in many countries across the world. Several societies cannot yet understand the rights of being just human, wishing, feeling, dealing and not judging or imposing. Religion, sex and culture can’t be dictated for anyone and it is what makes a strong identity, the liberty of being!