Heading 1
Container or music series
The Amazonia is not here
Wellington 2017
Victor de La Rocque
The artist invites passers-by to pay $20 to be allowed to shoot him with a paintball gun.
This performance addresses the land disputes between Brazilian land-owners with the indigenous peoples who consider the Amazon jungle a place for survival and subsistence. These violent conflicts are occurring in a place where the law of the strongest is carried out in a cruel photosynthesis of red blood on the green leaf.
De La Rocque was born in Pará, the second largest state in Brazil, and part of the Amazon region. In 2015 a report was issued to the media about murders caused by land conflicts in this region, declaring Pará as the leading state for violence by land conflict in the country; with a record of 645 killings by conflicts over land issues between the years 1985 to 2013.
In 2005 the international media turned its eyes to the Amazon and Pará, with the death of a North American missionary and naturalized Brazilian. At 73 years of age, Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered with six shots, one in the head and five around the body. Ten years after her death, the murderers remain free, showing the impunity affecting the conflicts in this region.
Born in the Amazon with a wild heart, Victor de La Rocque is a multimedia artist who works on expanding performance languages, always attempting to provoke discomfort and initiate a dialogue. His work has been presented in exhibitions and artistic residencies in Brazil, Portugal, France, Scotland, Sweden, Mexico, USA, and Colombia. He draws on Albert Camus' quote that "the only true role of man, born in a absurd world, is to be aware of their life, their anger, their freedom". In this way Victor engenders monsters, or encounters his own monstrosity reflected in his works. The attempt is to articulate the absurdity that Camus describes, as well as express a rebelliousness towards conflict and injustice. His works could be described as a collection, or succession of failures that retain this same resonance: manifesting their same absurd uselessness, each a casual flourish, seeking some road to freedom, born of a desire to forget the trail itself, discovering roads to nowhere, united by a passion without tomorrows, through compositions for video, photography, film, performance parts, texts, recipes, facilities, web, and small actions.
Presented by International Programme Partners Bolton Hotel
Supported by the Public Art Fund, Wellington City Council
