In this video installation, Carlos M. Oliveira and James Newitt bring together their respective practices of choreography and moving image in order to address the bodily expression of language and the friction that occurs in communication between people.
The work highlights differences between languages whose expression passes through the body, exposing a multiplicity of modes of communication and their possible cohabitation. It explores a sensitivity to the diversity of bodies while blurring divisions between ability and disability. The idea of translation as equivalence of meanings is rejected and, instead, the work considers meaning that is in permanent transformation, supporting other forms of common existence.
Actos de Língua problematizes and celebrates what it means to live in a community made of differences, in which language is an act of constant translation and transmission: a social gesture that carries clarity and misunderstanding, as well as murmurs, tremors and vibration.