The Dark Shining Thing is a performance piece in seven acts that was created during a month-long artist’s residency. During that time, the artists intervened in the residency space on seven different occasions. Each intervention lasted between 90 and 120 minutes, and we occupied different gallery areas in each intervention. Espacio ODEON is an old building that was formerly a cinema; it was abandoned during the 90’s and then became an art gallery.

The Liminal Art Collective was working and creating inquiries related to our being queer and people of color. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldua’s book, Borderlands, we developed a series of performances that reflect on ourselves in the space as a commune of irrupting beings. Creating multiple dialogues through movement, aesthetics, and the use of objects, we invited our audience to think about the place differently.

The first act: In the shade of the garden, we were wearing long red fabrics that connected us while keeping us anonymous, in constant dialogue, tracing lines on the space. In the darkness, we could not see anything; we just felt.

In Metamorphosis, each one of the members of the collective intervenes on the space simultaneously, like cells working distant from each other, creating a new body of work altogether.

The third and four acts consist of the intervention of other artists’ work (with their consent) in which we, as a “piece of art,” transform another “piece of art” in the making. This was the specific case of act three: Reminiscence and act four: Re-Enchanting the world, inspired by the book from Silvia Federici and her statement of the politics of the commons.

Tableau Vivant, act five, took place in the garden and was a ritual where we explored with spoken word, the sacred fire, prolonged movements, deep breathing, and nudity.

We occupied the gallery for more than two hours, and the experience was transcendental. Due to the props we used, none of us could see, so all the exploration happened through the awakening of all the other senses. This performance trespassed the gallery boundaries and occupied the street for a while.

In The Blue Sky, our last act, some of us were hanging from ropes, walking and dancing over a broken ceiling while others performed below us. We were exploring other possibilities on how to inhabit the space while reflecting on heaven and earth as wholeness and the only place where transformation can occur.