“Terra Cobre” is a new creation commissioned by BoCA to the musician and sculptor João Pais Filipe and the choreographer and dancer Marco da Silva Ferreira. It is born and expands from the village of Alcáçovas (Alentejo), in a creative process that crosses the traditional rattle art of Alcáçovas – ancestral method of a manual manufacturing process – with contemporary artistic practices, anchored in percussion and dance.
The manufacture of rattles was a practice that UNESCO declared an Urgent Need for Safeguarding in 2015, and since rewriting symbologies is a characteristic of Pais Filipe and Silva Ferreira – both in the universe of dance and in the universe of sculpture and sound -, “Terra Cobre” challenges traditional Portuguese iconography and symbolism to place it on an exploratory and sensory level. The project deepens an investigation around a device that offers sound and choreographic premises based on material heritage, questioning the historical and cultural properties of these objects.
João Pais Filipe and Marco da Silva Ferreira have already been present, individually, in previous editions of BoCA. In 2019, BoCA proposed the first exhibition of gongs to João Pais Filipe, “Voluta”, which was presented at Casa do Volfrâmio / Mosteiro de Tibães. In the same year, in Lisbon, Marco da Silva Ferreira was the protagonist of “Silent Disco”. It is curious to see how sound, noise and silence occupy the imagination of both artists, under different layers of interest and materiality.
