Slugs'garden — amgs studio

Slugs' garden/cultivo de babosas 2014 - Fabian Barba

A project by Fabian Barba and Esteban Donoso

While researching Andean dance, Fabian Barba and Esteban Donoso felt trapped by its visual force. As if blinded, they were tempted to overlook their own lack of comprehension about that culture. Trying to escape the danger of falling into an exotifying gaze, they closed their eyes and set out to devise mechanisms that purposely escape the pitfalls of visuality.

slugs' garden is an immersive space for tactile contemplation. It's a habitat to be calmly dwelled in, a playground of subtle sensations. It’s an intimate context in which we can consider our relation to our surroundings - to other people and other objects - and let it morph, unintendedly. slugs' garden is also the time to let us experience minute events of seemingly no consequence. This is the time to let small gestures mushroom to the centre of our attention.

Like a garden, it's a space to spend some quiet time, having nothing to do or think about in particular. This slugs' garden is there to be inhabited and to be played with; an exploration of the space, an experience of time.Here we take the time to touch our environment, centimeter by centimeter. We slide through it slowly, with no specific intention, wandering without plans, having no goal to achieve. It is a time we take to grow into slugs.

Research, concept Fabian Barba, Esteban Donoso With the collaboration of Josh T. Franco Performance (Antwerp) Students dance of the Royal Conservatory Antwerp – AP Hogeschool: Antoni Androulakis, Marie Colla, Nicolas Coutsier, Anna Heuer Hansen, Elise Moreau, Julie Querre, Arne Schögler, Helena Araujo Bento de Faria, Una Björg Bjarnadóttir Textile design Ana María Gómez Set design Ive J.K. Leemans.