An installation created for the exhibition “Library of Exile”, shown at the Japanisches Palais Dresden in November 2019, ROOM OF NOTHINGNESS is Joao's first collaboration with set designer Greta Wilhelm (which culminated in a collaboration in BILDUNG?), also alongside fellow designers Hans Werner and Federica Fortunato. It approaches the choreographic idea of shaping space with materials other than human bodies.

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ROOM OF NOTHINGNESS departed from visualizing the universe (the empty, the unknown) as a room to be entered: how to materialize the shapeless and the absence of matter?

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This reflection led to the boundary between the exercises of design and performance making: creating a tangible result, a product to be touched, in contrast with the ephemeral quality of the performance event. The shapeless room took form: a woolly, undefined dark cavern with a tail made out of a cupboard.

This otherworldly shape, set in a museum wing, offered a dark room for the audience to get lost inside and experiment total darkness, the outside noise isolated.

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The proposition of the installation was to create an alternative space within the museum room, that would reshape its traditional structure.

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creation

construction

light             JOAO

                  GRETA WILHELM

                  HANS WERNER

                  FEDERICA FORTUNATO

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Presented within the exhibition “Library of Exile” at the Japanisches Palais Dresden, in November 2019.