◊
aka Ulysses
aka Nostophobia
GEOLOGY
GEO/GENEALOGY
OF A HOMECOMING
An allegorical reflection on the relations and frictions between theater, place, and ubiquity, ITINERARY is the result of a nomadic process of epistolary writing to be undertaken during a slow journey between Helsinki (where I live) and Lisbon (where I used to live). The work will ultimately coincide with a critical analysis of my artistic trajectory as a whole, risking the reinvention of its history and, by accepting/confronting an eco-conscious dogma, also predicting its present and future sustainability. Unfolding (other) ontologies while analysing an anthology has inspired the writing of a nostophobic odyssey, tragicomically executed through slowing down, wandering and losing oneself. On that account, the resulting "performative text" will attempt the untangling of two contradictory directions: a deceptive quest for a new beginning ("there is no past..."), and a failed promise for reparation ("there is no future..."). Examining notions such as hospitality, isolation and affiliation, but also impermanence and circularity, the project aims to build a collaborative and inter-relational platform for collectively "think and act against the dictatorship of time".*
* Subtitle of André Barata's book "E se parássemos de sobreviver?/What if we stopped surviving?", Documenta, Sistema Solar, 2018.
Direction, text and performance: Rogério Nuno Costa
Light design and video mapping: Roger Madureira
Sound installation: Vasco Zentzua
Graphic design and illustration: Jani Nummela
Collaboration: Susana Mendes Silva
Scientific consultancy: Aida Castro, Alexandra Polido, Manuel Bogalheiro, Sara Moreno Pires
Executive production: Cláudia Teixeira
Promo photo: Alípio Padilha
Coproduction: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II
Administrative and financial management: Sufoco Associação Cultural
Within the frame of: STAGES – Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift, a project co-funded by the European Union
Support: O Espaço do Tempo, Festival Paragem/Bóia – Associação Cultural, Festival END, Festival Citemor, Festival Contradança/ASTA Teatro e Outras Artes, c.e.m – centro em movimento, Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte, IHME Helsinki/Vihreä Taide, O Lugar do Meio, Recover Laboratory, Rota Clandestina, Teatro Praga, New Theatre Helsinki, Inestética.
PREMIERE:
29 October - 2 November 2025
Sala Estúdio Valentim de Barros / Teatro Nacional D. Maria II
Lisbon, Portugal
All pictures by © Alípio Padilha
AVANT-PROPOS
With the working title Geology of a Homecoming, ITINERARY concludes a triptych of retrospective live art performances initiated with Missed-en-Abîme (2021) and followed by Lamento Imenso (2023). The project is the prototypical result of a 3-year experimental research laboratory at the intersections of art, science, and technology, bringing together Rogério Nuno Costa and a group of researchers, scientists and scholars from the fields of media theory, performance studies and environmental/climate sciences. Structured around a cross-disciplinary and speculative inventory of creative modes and procedures sensitive to ideas of sustainability, ecological footprint and territorial impact, the project revisits Rogério Nuno Costa's Vou A Tua Casa (2003), a series of performances and happenings for domestic spaces that had already envisioned and tested ecologically sustainable operations for the creation, communication, presentation and circulation of live art performances. Retrospectively, ITINERARY proposes a radical, perhaps tragic, exercise: to reactivate those untimely operations but within a time outside of Time, and in a space that is no longer a house, or it never was: the Theater, both the art form and the building. Notions such as refuge, exile, perdition, but also invasion, immersion, and suspension, obsessively explored in Vou A Tua Casa, will now be re-mapped and re-analysed in the light of new urgencies, speculating the prospect of their actuality, their continuity, but also their unavoidable expiration: a journey and its negation, perhaps its end.
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CONDOMINIUM
As part of STAGES - Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift, ITINERARY will activate meetings, performances, meetings-as-performances, performances-as-meetings and other public and/or private happenings and experiences during a slow journey starting in Helsinki on the 24th August 2025 and concluding in Lisbon on the 12th October 2025. Each encounter will bring together artists, researchers, scientists, directors and other local agents with the aim of collectively speculating around the query: how to exercise de-accelerated mobility and (radical) hospitality in times of climate crisis? The modes of transportation will always be the ones with the lowest carbon footprint (mostly buses and trains, with only two segments of the trip done by ferry). Stops: Stockholm, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw*, Berlin, Prague*, Budapest, Zagreb, Maribor, Ljubljana*, Milan, Lausanne, Luxembourg*, Liège, Ghent, Paris, Barcelona*, Madrid*, Miranda do Douro* and Amares*. More on the journey's programme and how to participate/collaborate/accompany soon.
* (independently organised activities)
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JOURNAL
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