City Vignettes — FLORENCIA GUERBEROF

City Vignettes (2018)

Collaboration with a performance during Photography exhibition by Maria Guerberof at White conduit Projects, London, UK. Live music by Hibiki Ichikawa (Shamisen), Yu Sato (percussion) and Joe Carvell (double bass).

“City Vignettes“ is a photographic project by Maria Guerberof. Her series capture her daily wanderings around the city of Buenos Aires during the political and economic collapse of Argentina in 2001. It also comprises Tokyo, where a sense of alienation surfaces.

Through the framing of these two different urban scenarios, she reveals the sinister invisibility of power with her main concern being how capitalism shapes societies.

Florencia Guerberof interprets Maria’s city landscapes through the means of performance. She focuses on the contrast between the portrayed individuals who appear more defined and those more mysteriously faint.

During the live intervention she embodies those figures interpreting them as living characters and spirits. She depicts bodies in transit drawing inspiration from “konpaku” a Japanese term that describes the river banks where the dead and the living come and go at peace with themselves in an horizontal relationship. Several times a year the dead cross the river to their ancestral homes.

Through Butoh, she deals with a body in a state of crises. An existence stands in-between two opposite forces: life and death. It meets with resistance. It struggles. This becomes even more apparent when Florencia dances against a background with scenes from her homeland, Argentina.