handy #23

Handy #23 is the second chapter of a trilogy of solo performances revolving around the "logic of space," which began in 1997 with Ms Domicília and her Casio Tone. This time we created a piece with what was most readily available: texts, objects, music, ideas, and all sorts of material that had been set aside in previous pieces and accumulated on Handy shelves. The result was a work about the construction of a show – Handy #23 – built in several takes, as if we were watching the filming of a movie whose probable title would be "The method’s mistakes."

* Handy – a brand of easy-to-assemble shelving units. Some people, when talking about collapsible bookshelves, even of other brands, use the word "handy" to refer to them.

Real Pelágio, June 2021

One needs to have a good problem in the first place if one is to solve it through a show, obviously. Or would it be better to think about building the show from the solution at the outset and then finding one’s own method? (…) With music played live by a band, this work is rich in metaphors and suggestions, establishing itself as a mighty self-reflexive piece: the complexity of the outright discourse of method is all unpacked therein, ready to be consumed by audiences eager for performance theory & shelving units. That is to say, all of us.

Mónica Guerreiro, “Handy #23 – you should be dancing yeah”, Blitz, 27-11-2001

The duo returns to the imagery of comic books, with humour and a curious ability to laugh at themselves, or rather, at the artistic work, and with a musical component that functions as a soundtrack for a cinematic object.

Cláudia Galhós, “Diálogos a solo”, Público, 4-12-2001