confirm humanity

Position your body alongside the outer contours of its skin, and then further past, cross the bounding-line of what it knows, linger in the space of intersecting realms. Contend that being at the edge, where one thing resists another, is the way to know, feel, sense, and experience.
–Meg Stuart

Infiltrated by technological advancement, bombarded with information, sensorially reprogrammed, and caught in the cross-current of artificial fields, the contemporary body is as digital as it is human. confirm humanity asks where the human resides when the body is reset to its factory settings. Varinia Canto Vila and Meg Stuart enact this solo choreography for two dancers, situated within the intermittent folds of Lifes.

For one week only, this performance will take place daily inside the Lifes galleries at 2:45, 3:45, 4:45, and 5:45 p.m.

Choreography by Meg Stuart

Created with and performed by Varinia Canto Vila and Meg Stuart

Dramaturgy by Descha Daemgen

Costume by Aino Laberenz and Meg Stuart

Production Damaged Goods and zero point

Varinia Canto Vila (b. 1976, Santiago, Chile) is a dancer, choreographer, and movement researcher currently based in Santiago, Chile. In her choreographic work, she has explored medium-based themes such as three-dimensional aspects of the body on the stage (No Title, 2008); the finitude of space (Beast, 2008); intention and desire as manifestations of self-reflexivity in the dancing body (During Beginning Ending, 2010); and audience experiences of haptic vision (by getting one’s hands dirty, 2017). Parallel to that, Canto Vila is developing an ongoing research on the notion of extended choreography and the social body, and she is exploring the relationship between law and movement. She graduated from Universidad de Chile, and from P.A.R.T.S in 1999. In 2014, she finished an MA in Art & Politics at the London Goldsmiths University. In January 2017, she completed a post-graduate degree in advanced performance and scenography studies in Brussels. Canto Vila has collaborated with various artists and choreographers from the independent dance/performance scene in Brussels, where she lived for 24 years: a.o. Claire Croizé, Marcos Simoes, Mette Edvardsen, and Thomas Steyaert and Raul Maia. She collaborated with Meg Stuart and Damaged Goods on Highway 101 (2000) and VIOLET (2011).

Meg Stuart (b. 1965, New Orleans) is a choreographer, director, and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. With her company, Damaged Goods, founded in 1994, she has created over thirty productions, ranging from solos and duets such as Blessed (2007) and Hunter (2014) to large-scale choreographies such as VIOLET (2011) and CASCADE (2021), video works, site-specific creations like Projecting [Space[ (2017-2019), and improvisation projects such as City Lights (2016). Stuart’s work moves freely between the genres of dance, theater, and visual arts, driven by an ongoing dialogue with artists from different disciplines. Through fictions and shifting narrative layers, she explores dance as a source of healing and a way to transform the social fabric. Improvisation is an important part of Stuart’s practice, as a strategy to go into physical and emotional states or the memory of them. She passes down her knowledge through regular workshops and master classes in- and outside of the studio. Meg Stuart has received several awards in recognition of her oeuvre, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Biennale di Venezia in 2018.