C-O-M (composition – the other – memory)

C-O-M is an interactive solo performance, conceived and performed by Rita Vilhena, that continues the artistic research initiated in Raio de Ti / Multirising the Other in I (2023). While that earlier work stemmed from an autobiographical territory, here the focus shifts toward the experience of the other — questioning the possibilities of transmission, embodiment, and sharing of memories and affects between bodies.

The project proposes a performative device for the expansion of individual subjectivity, where the performer’s body acts as a medium for the inscription and renewal of otherness. Rather than following a fixed formal structure, the dramaturgy emerges in the moment, through listening and presence, asserting a choreography of the sensitive that unfolds in response to encounter.

The performance unfolds as a space of indeterminacy, where the boundaries between performer and spectator become permeable. The audience is invited to participate actively in a field of physical and affective resonances, where the body becomes both a receptacle and an agent of immersive materiality. Between movement, sound, and projection, the event transforms into an act of sensory immanence, in which the performer explores the transience of the other.

As Marianne Hirsch points out, this is a process of post-memory, in which experiences and traumas are transmitted through gestures, affects, and bodily resonances, rather than through linear narratives. In a convergent way, Rebecca Schneider describes this dimension as a living archive — a field of presence in which memory is performatively reinscribed through sharing.

C-O-M thus situates itself as a territory of ontological suspension, where identities dissolve and recombine within a continuous flow of signification. By relinquishing a predetermined dramaturgical structure, the creation invests in presence as process, inviting the spectator into an experience of transmutation and co-creation.