performance
swab9
Swab9 is a new section within the fair dedicated to contemporary performative arts, a project by CLUB9, an independent platform committed to fostering and promoting performative practices.
This initiative seeks to generate an unprecedented meeting point between live art and the ecosystem of galleries, artists, and professionals that converge at SWAB each year. At a time when performance is consolidating as one of the key artistic languages of the 21st century, Swab9 positions itself as a platform for its visibility, professionalization, and integration within the exhibition format of an art fair.
In this edition, the program will present six performances curated by CLUB9, selected from among the exhibitors of Swab 2025, which will activate the space throughout the fair, establishing a direct connection between body, action, and context, and fostering dialogue between ephemeral practices and the institutional frameworks of contemporary art.
The project will also feature a collective reflection talk, conceived as a space to debate the challenges and opportunities that the integration of performance poses within the gallery context and the art market, thus expanding the conversation beyond the live experience.
A signal slows the body writes the code. Katya Savel. INGAHEE
- THURSDAY 02 OCT
- 6.30pm – 7.30pm
PERFORMANCE | GENERAL PROGRAM | Swab performance area
A signal slows the body writes the code és una performance que s’estèn en el temps de Katya Savel, desenvolupada en tres fases interconnectades.
A la primera, realitzada en privat a Barcelona, camina per la ciutat recollint sorra i terra, creant un mapatge íntim del lloc a través del material. Aquest acte meditatiu connecta l’artista amb l’indret, eleva el natural dins l’urbà i reuneix la matèria primera per a l’acció pública.
La segona fase té lloc a SWAB9, on s’agenolla i disposa la terra recollida en formes angulars i geomètriques que recorden paisatges digitals. El seu cos intenta funcionar com una eina de precisió, però carrega els tremolors de la respiració, la fatiga i la imperfecció. La performance revela el “glitch” dins els sistemes de control, equilibrant natura, màquina, treball humà i ritual. Un cop completades, les formes són destruïdes per les mateixes mans que les van crear, evocant la impermanència dels mandales de sorra.
A la fase final, també privada, la sorra i la terra són retornades a la ciutat i al paisatge. Subtilment transformades, porten la petjada energètica i emocional de la performance de nou a la terra.
Suelta los Caballos (a sound and water based performance). Hannah Archambault. outhouse
- FRIDAY 03 OCT
- 8pm – 9pm
PERFORMANCE | MyFAF | Swab performance area
The performance sits somewhere between live concert and artistic action, creating a real-time soundscape. Through field recordings, voice, sound objects such as glasses filled with water and ice, and organ drones, an intimate and contemplative atmosphere is built — one in which time seems to dissolve and space is transformed into a place of shared, collective listening. With a gentle volume and an ambient aesthetic, the piece invites a sensory encounter and a common experience of deep listening.
Zone X. Evamaria Schaller. SUAVEART
- SATURDAY 04 OCT
- 12.30 pm – 1.30pm
PERFORMANCE | POLAR AND TROPIC | Swab performance area
ZONE X is a mobile and installation-based performance: a large pink X marks the action zone and creates a space for multiple participatory acts.
The X holds many meanings: on one hand, it can signify crossing something out — erasing it; or it can mark a place, a crossing of paths, or even represent a handshake. What places do we mark, and what traces do we leave on those marks?
Participants draw a golden envelope that contains instructions for actions to be performed together with performer Evamaria Schaller, within a three-minute time frame, marked by the sound of a bell at both the beginning and end.
The instructions relate to the theme of touch: all interactions explore different ways of touching — such as caressing, kissing, hugging, or carrying one another.
Touch is something many people currently miss or have lost. It also ties back to the Covid pandemic, which suddenly made touch dangerous. That behavior has lingered, especially among young people.
The ZONE X performance revisits this theme and attempts to bring interpersonal interaction back into the spotlight.
Latencia. Montse Aránega. ESCAT
- SATURDAY 04 OCT
- 7pm – 8pm
PERFORMANCE | GENERAL PROGRAM | Swab performance area
In Latencia, a white surface becomes a space of subtle resistance. The gesture is slowed to its limit, unfolding through intervals, silences, and absences. The performance is conceived as an unstable form of writing — made of marks and pauses — where the line does not seek to represent, but to inhabit.
The action follows a logic of containment: the line appears and disappears into the void, hesitates, fragments. The body, in intimate relation with the surface, does not seek spectacle, but attention. Every movement becomes a question: How to draw without invading? How to sustain a gesture without exhausting it?
Latencia unfolds as a minimal choreography, a poetics of the almost. It insists on the small, the suspended, the barely perceptible. The work resonates with neo-materialist and feminist approaches that conceive the body as porous matter, attuned to the imperceptible. Here, the trace — like the body — becomes an ephemeral archive, a mark that does not seek permanence, but affect.
Drink my sour milk from your stripper heel. Alida Maria Lanzi y Anusha Jean Ramesh. 200CENT.
- SUNDAY 05 OCT
- 6.30pm – 7.30pm
PERFORMANCE | VÓRTEX | Swab performance area
This performance traces the act of moving together within systems that dictate desirability. Performed by Alida Maria Lanzi and Anusha Jean Ramesh, it stages a negotiation between resistance and emotional obedience, embodied in the figures of the stripper and the exotic dancer.
Structured as an improvised choreo-sonic score, the piece begins with each performer wearing a single transparent stripper heel, moving alongside leather sculptures that slowly leak milk. These elements act as totems of gendered and racial hierarchies around desirability, asking: Who has the right to be seen? Who is condemned to obey? How do colonial systems inscribe themselves onto our bodies, even within friendships and so-called “safe” spaces?
The performers crawl and stumble under the asymmetry of the single heel, turning sensuality into resistance. The dripping leather vessels evoke both vulnerability and rupture, challenging notions of purity and care while exposing their potential for exploitation. The sound of breath, friction, and movement is recorded and distorted live, creating an unstable sonic landscape, while shifting light manipulates visibility and the gaze.
The piece opens a space for tenderness and fracture, for vulnerability and resistance. It does not seek resolution, but insists on making visible how intimacy, complicity, and even resilience remain entangled with Eurocentric frameworks of desire and power.
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