- The Smudge -
2017
written and performed by Mariana Echeverri and Madeleine Stack




Your body slowly calms down, you're melting into the ground and you become one with your surroundings. You are one with the sounds and smells and tastes of the streets. What belongs to your body becomes indistinguishable from what doesn’t, becomes fluid, becomes what we call the smudge: the moment before someone leans in to take you, the moment the body takes the stage and opens its mouth and everything hovers on that, teetering. You feel what you sense it’s harmony, but something’s fishy, things are not black and white (even though their world is grey). A new flavour runs up your veins and clarity grows into illusion as you stand forever at the threshold.


>>>>This practice subverts a simplistic idea of rejection, the desire for a completely sheltered environment, and the fear of getting dirty. We are not philosophising without getting our hands dirty, without actually ingesting and digesting what we critique. Like breathing, you can let it occur involuntarily or choose to be aware of it, to consciously swallow. When we become aware of the present, of the acts we undertake without noticing, it creates a shift in perspective against the mainstream conceptions of cleanliness, acceptability, and being aggressive.
M&M
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