The point of departure for A Garden at Night is the garden that belonged to the German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) when he was still a child. This garden was destroyed by a group of children from his neighborhood, starting  a sequence of speculations that is now the motto for the development of a fiction.

Through the appropriation and recontextualization of narratives from Schwitters’ universe, this project speculates around the paradoxes inherent to that garden: how to represent a garden that is not dominated by the authority of human gestures, but rather embracing vertigo or trauma? How can a garden embody an idea of fragility, in which the hand of the gardener is weakened? If a geometric garden generates a choreographed body, can a garden being destroyed find its reflection in a spasmodic body, unable to act rationally?

In the form of an installation, A Garden at Night considers the garden as an in-between space: bordering temporal experiences, splitting body from movement, separating memory from event, between trace and performance.

A Garden at Night was produced with the support of Criatório 2019, a grant for artistic creation awaded by the Porto City Council, and in collaboration with RAMPA.