Carolina de Vega

Quiescent

Quiescent is a transdisciplinary solo performance and installation by Carolina de Vega currently in development.

The research began in January 2023, during the seminar ‘Dokumentation & Choreography’, led by Susanne Vincenz and Isabel Robson, part of the Master’s in Choreography at HZT Berlin. It started with a simple observation, hair caught in a shower drain, and what the body sheds without asking. That small, almost embarrassing detail became the starting point for a larger investigation into extraction, memory and what remains.

Quiescent departs from giving recognition, validation and space to the body materials we consciously or unconsciously lose every day as humans. From there, the research expands into an investigation of extraction as both a physical fact and a historical condition. What the body sheds involuntarily. What lineage loses across generations. What territory surrenders under economic and colonial pressure. These scales are not separate. What begins as one story often reveals another beneath it, and a third beneath that, personal, national and territorial histories entangled rather than layered in order. The piece works with objects and materials that did not consent to being shown, and treats that discomfort as part of its method rather than something to resolve. The piece operates at the intersection of the biographical and the geopolitical, tracing how these scales of loss are simultaneous and co-constitutive. It asks about the history that remains after the extraction, and about what gets accepted as normal today that later generations will name as violence.

In 2026, the project was brought to the ATLAS Choreographic Training Programme, part of ImPulsTanz, the Vienna International Dance Festival, with the mentorship of Angélique Willkie. The open showing of the work in progress happened on the 10th August at Rennweg Studios, Vienna.

Concept, performance, text and video editing: Carolina de Vega.
Collaborators: my family and my residues.
Music: Nike by Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster.
Mentor: Angélique Willkie
Video: Aled Ordu.