April 22nd to April 30th, 2022
Exhibition View. Photography: Samuel Duarte
GROOUP EXHIBITION:
David Leal, Diogo Henrique, Hannah Archambault, Hugo Cubo, Hugo Cantegrel, Luísa Tudela, Madalena Anjos
CURATORSHIP:
Francisca Portugal
Duplex Security: Welcome... but you are late, the party is over. A lot of people came , you wouldn’t be even able to enter. You missed the music, the dancing, the flirting, the illegalities and the staged photos. You can stay but you won't find much more than what your eyes will catch.
Audience: But we've come to dance, it's on the poster and everything! This is wrongful advertising. It's a party! It says here: Stayin Alive, from six to nine.
Duplex Security: Be aware! There are several interpretations of this song from 1977. The most conventional one is the one based on the meaning of the lyrics and not on the rhythm. I’ll explain: the singer doesn't want to let life's challenges put him in a depressed state. Instead, he dances in the opposite direction of his problems. And in the process of doing so, he calls on others who are in a similar situation to his to fight to stay alive in the big city.
Audience: Wow! The world hasn't changed at all, it's still just the same irl…
Duplex Security: The people who danced here found in this place the possibility of social detachment. By establishing a community without hierarchies, among the dark, in the heat, with the noise of the music and the tiredness of the body, they found a transversal freedom in which everyone felt relaxed and happy. Exactly the same as the lyrics of Stayin Alive reveal: the collective search for something that will never arrive, because it has already happened. It's melancholy, which in turn is mixed with some groovy beats and some falsetto.
Audience: So, but if there's no party, what are you keeping?
Security-Invigilator Duplex: From the moment the party ended, it became a very serious exhibitionary place: this is where the symbolic memories stayed. I see a certain despondency projected in this now emptier space as a portrait of that nostalgic feeling that you too look for in throwback parties and vintage sets. This exhibition is about the threshold of the beginning and end of an era and its corresponding abstract community coming together to celebrate something without concrete meaning. In every fold of this mirror you will also see the presence of all who have been here and will be here. It is a contradictory place where the slight desire for change reigns and, at the same time, the circularity of events. It is up to you to decide whether or not it will be an invitation to start again a festive future.
