Charco


CHARCO (Spanish for puddle) was a performative space that explored relationships between the body, technology and ecology, interrogating our connection to the non-human world. The work was set in an imaginary future in which all plant life on earth had died away. Viewers encountered a group of figures exploring new entities, formed from the residues of long dormant technological and organic material. Set in a disused swimming pool complex, Charco invited audiences to imagine ‘cyborg landscapes’, expansive spaces in which the moving body seeks out new relationships between infrastructure, ecology, and society.

CHARCO was presented as a work-in-progress performance in June 2021, at Spring Health empty swimming pool, Belsize Park, London. A collaboration between the choreographer Pepa Ubera, artist Miriam Austin and set designer Leila Arenou, the performance was 26 mins in duration. It was performed by Tania Soubry, Remi Graves and Silvia Commisso. 

Artists Pepa Ubera and Miriam Austin have been working since 2016 on an ongoing collaborative project that centres around an exploration of sculpture and choreography. They create environments and performances that re-imagine the terrain of the gendered body, mapping out possibilities for and images of intimacy and proposing alternative languages of embodied relationality.

Leila Arenou operates between different fields, producing and curating objects, displays, videos, sound pieces, clothing, performances, parties.