muSa mattiuzzi: Dive in the Dark

So far, the Abolition Garden project has manifested in three iterations: the monument dedicated to medicinal herbs in Florence, the study group Sweet Potato, which explored processes of rooting and uprooting and their interaction with Afro-diasporic positions in contemporary times, and the performance Dive in the Dark.

In her Focus Weeks event, muSa mattiuzzi will present the performance Dive in the Dark (30 mins, sound by Bartira) and reflect with artist Denise Ferreira da Silva and translator Jess Oliveira on the central questions of the performance:

How do we dive into the dark? What can we encounter in darkness? Can we create imaginary worlds from decomposing matter? muSa has immersed herself into the study of Radical Black Thinking to transform her approach to performance. While she once worked with needles and blood, she now explores the creative potential of decomposing matter. Dive in the Dark engages metaphorically with darkness—both as an aesthetic gesture and as a decolonial act of seeing. Beyond the visual composition with charcoal, sound texture always accompanies the performance, enhancing its immersive and sensory impact.

Text: muSa mattiuzzi

Access Info:

Onsite: Unfortunately, the space in Innsbruck is not wheelchair accessible. You can attend the event in person at Künstler*innenhaus Büchsenhausen. The call will be enabled with automatic closed captions in English. The bathrooms are used as gender neutral. Chairs with backs, arms and floor seating is all available. We have plenty of space to store mobility devices of all kinds. There is a low sensory space available.

Denise Ferreira da Silva’s academic and artistic work engages with the ethical challenges of the global present, delving into the metaphysical and onto-epistemological dimensions of modern thought. She is a professor and director of The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia. Her contributions to the arts include texts for publications linked to the Liverpool, São Paulo, and Venice Biennales, as well as Documenta 14. She has also collaborated with Arjuna Neuman on the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters – Deep Implicancy (2018), and has been involved in performances, talks, and projects such as Poethical Readings and The Sensing Salon alongside Valentina Desideri.

Jess Oliveira is a translator, researcher, literary critic, poet, and member of the research group Translating in the Black Atlantic (Universidade Federal da Bahia, UFBA). She is a PhD candidate in Literature and Culture at the UFBA, with a CAPES/DAAD research scholarship at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. She is currently a visiting professor at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Colorado College (USA). In 2019 and 2020, Oliveira participated in the artistic residency Rethinking the Aesthetics of the Colony in Johannesburg, South Africa, as well as the eponymous platform which explores translation studies and political imagination within the diaspora. In 2020, she was a finalist for the Jabuti Prize in the Translation category.
https://oyoun.de/profil/jess-oliveira/