DIEGO GIL - Studio 303

PROJECT // El sentir de las superficies

BIOGRAPHY

Diego Gil is an Argentinean choreographer, performer, dramaturge and philosopher who studied at the School for New Dance Development (BA) and Das Choreography (MA) in Amsterdam. After ten years of producing and showing his choreographic work across Europe (Tanz Im August, Tanznacht, Rencontres Chorégraphiques, Sommerszenne, Something Raw, ImpulsTanz) he moved to Montreal to obtain his PhD at the Interdisciplinary Humanities program of Concordia University.

In Montreal, he has collaborated as a dramaturge and performer in the choreographic work of Maria Kefirova, Hanna Sybille Mueller, and Lilia Mestre. He has also worked intensively with the Sense Lab, a research-creation laboratory at the intersection of philosophy, art, and activism, in the organization of aesthetic-politic events (i.e. minor movements (2020-19) schizosomatic workshop series (2019), movement of thoughts (2018-17)).

PROJECT DETAILS
El sentir de las superficies is a dance installation project. With this work, I’m exploring ways to produce surface effects that are inseparable from the environment. Blending storytelling, movement, performance, and philosophy, I want to unstick vaporous and ephemeral surfaces from the materiality of objects in the room—so they can be sensed by the bodies of spectators. I extend my left arm to plug in an extension cord while I tell a sentence from a queer cosmological story. In the small gap between gesture and narrative, a fleeting texture appears—something vague and on the verge of vanishing. I hope these vague presences can gently shift our attention away from the human body as the central agent of the world, allowing an ecology of interstitial forces to take shape.
This work’s collaborators are Nik Forrest (sound composition), Tiffany Boffa (light design), Lilia Mestre (dramaturgy), Maria Kefirova (outside eye), and Hanna Sybille Mueller (movement coach and production). The project has evolved from an initial lecture performance on “sense” into a triptych, developed and presented as a work in progress during residencies at Parbleux (2022), Montreal Arts Interculturels (2023), and Usine C/Labos du 4eme (2024).

PROJECT DETAILS

El sentir de las superficies is a dance installation project. With this work, I’m exploring ways to produce surface effects that are inseparable from the environment. Blending storytelling, movement, performance, and philosophy, I want to unstick vaporous and ephemeral surfaces from the materiality of objects in the room—so they can be sensed by the bodies of spectators. I extend my left arm to plug in an extension cord while I tell a sentence from a queer cosmological story. In the small gap between gesture and narrative, a fleeting texture appears—something vague and on the verge of vanishing. I hope these vague presences can gently shift our attention away from the human body as the central agent of the world, allowing an ecology of interstitial forces to take shape.

This work’s collaborators are Nik Forrest (sound composition), Tiffany Boffa (light design), Lilia Mestre (dramaturgy), Maria Kefirova (outside eye), and Hanna Sybille Mueller (movement coach and production).

The project has evolved from an initial lecture performance on “sense” into a triptych, developed and presented as a work in progress during residencies at Parbleux (2022), Montreal Arts Interculturels (2023), and Usine C/Labos du 4eme (2024).