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Artist statement
The collaboration between Moon Ribas and Quim Girón began in 2019 with the motivation to mix performing arts with cybernetics, and with observing natural phenomena and the animal world to inspire their creations. Their work investigates ways of mixing alive elements on stage that are beyond the control of the performer’s body, proposing a less body-centric stage art, giving space to new languages emerge within circus and dance. The disciplines covered by the duo are circus, dance, music, photography and video art.
This common territory has led them to create different projects such as Fenomen, premiered at the Grec 2021 in Barcelona. And the creation of the Pregnancy Sense, a new cyborg sense that allows Quim to be connected to their son’s embryo, of which they have made two performative interventions, one at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and with in the ISEA 2022 (International Symposium Electronic Art), Mataró.
Quim Girón Barcelona, 1985, Graduated at DOCH (University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm) 2012 where he received the Sophie Hulten’s scholarship for his creativity, risk-taking and his ability as a circus artist. Master’s Programme in Contemporary Circus Practices at DOCH Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden (2019). Founder and artistic director of the company Animal Religion 2012, interested in opening the limits of contemporary circus from an interdisciplinary perspective and using the body, lights and sound from the beginning of the creations to open up new stage performance. The company has been awarded several times, the Moritz Award for the best premiere of a street and non-conventional show at Fira Tàrrega with the show Chicken Legz 2014 (SP), the Grand Premi BBVA Zirkolika for the best indoor circus show and the City of Barcelona Special Award for the show Sifonòfor 2015.
Moon Ribas (Mataró, 1985) graduated in Choreography at Dartington College of Arts, England in 2007 and part of an exchange program at SNDO (School of New Development of Dance) Holland in 2015. Since 2007, Moon has been experimenting with the union between technology and her body to explore the limits of perception and experiment with movement in a deeper way, her work explores the limits of her body and her identity in art.
Moon defines herself as a cyborg artist, her most relevant project has consisted of having implants in her body for almost 7 years that were connected to online seismographs, and this allowed her to perceive the seismic activity of the planet in real-time through vibrations in her body. Every time there was an earthquake somewhere in the world she felt a vibration in her body, this new input is called the Seismic Sense, the sense of noticing the Earth’s seismic activity.
She defines designing new sense as Cyborg Art, the art of designing your own perception of reality through the creation of new senses and organs.
This new sense has changed her way of creating dance, where the movement not only comes from the dancer, but also comes from external forces. A more uncontrollable, ephemeral and living material. In order to share her experience, Ribas transfers this new sense to the stage by translating earthquakes into sound in her piece: Seismic Percussion; or dance, in her piece: Waiting For Earthquakes. In her performances, Earth is the composer or choreographer; and Ribas, the interpreter.
In 2010, she co-founded the Cyborg Foundation, an international organization that aims to help people become cyborgs, promote cyborg art, and defend the rights of cyborgs. In 2017, she co-founded the Transpecies Society, an association that gives voice to non-human identities, raising awareness of transpecies issues and defending the freedom of self-design.
Since 2013, Moon has given conferences around the world, such as TedxMunich (Munich,
Germany), SXSW (Austin, USA), Imagination Week (Paris, France), Bump Festival (Belgium), Indaba Design (Cape Town,South Africa ), WOW – women of the world, (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Talk Spikes (Singapore) among many others.