Something I feel that is part of being Portuguese is very well described by the word saudade which has several meanings, always describing a nostalgic mood, such as the feeling of longing for something, homesickness, or missing somebody, or even, in a poetic sense, longing for future events. This term does not exist in English, nor does it have any exact equivalent in other languages, so it is hard to transmit its meaning, and I aim to broadly explore this concept through this short performance, trying to translate by movement this untranslatable word.

 

Both songs, videos and live performance aim to create a confusing atmosphere, where many actions happen simultaneously allowing the audience to have an active posture with the choice of where to look at. This confusing and overwhelming atmosphere transmits what usually happens when one tries to explain the word saudade to someone who does not speak Portuguese, as well as, how the person attempting to understand it might feel. The first song I chose to play talks about how many times our bad choices in life might have harmful bodily implications. António Variações is essentially saying that the body is the one paying for our bad decisions: “When the head is not wise, the body pays….”

 

The second section of the performance will be accompanied by another of Variações songs but this time I will project a video of myself responding to the same task I will be doing live in front of the past projection. In this song, Variações talks about an anxious feeling of dissatisfaction, which connects to the word saudades. Variações says: “This dissatisfaction, I can’t understand it, Always this sensation, That I’m missing out”. These words explain how these kind of emotions and feelings that one feels but cannot understand or explain create an urge of finding where one belongs, bringing back the idea of heritage and translation as fluid, broad and dynamic processes.

 

Concurrently, the imagery and audio of this performance will clash and create almost an uncomfortable situation, where various examples of Portuguese heritage are presented including the ones that are not necessarily considered conventional or traditional representations of the country. This presentation could be the beginning of a larger event that I would curate. An open call could gather various artists from different countries who would find a word in their language that similarly to saudade would not have a direct translation in other languages and create a collection/archive of these words through several performances.