Noiserv in conversation with Raquel André
Raquel André is a Portuguese artist with training in theatre. Currently she also declares herself a collector of lovers and collectors. The activity of collector has always been latent in the artist’s work from early on, but it was during a long stay in Brazil that she strengthened it and shaped it artistically.
Noiserv is the musical project of David Santos. He has been writing songs, EPs and LPs since 2005 and is one of the most renowned Portuguese musicians of nowadays, and he even outlined the soundtrack of the documentary film José&Pillar (2010). 00:00:00:00 is his most recent album, released in 2016.
Below we find a conversation, in which Noiserv questions Raquel André about her most recent projects Colecção de Coleccionadores and Colecção de Amantes, premiering at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, with a soundtrack created by Noiserv. It cannot be missed, until November 22.
Noiserv – I only got to know you when you were 30. I don’t know anything about what happened before that, except when I saw you in Lua Vermelha (a soap opera of the TV channel SIC) every now and then. And so I wanted to know how things came to this.
Rachel – I started in theatre when I was 9 or 10 years old, in an amateur theatre group, when I moved to Famões, in Amadora. When I was 14, Malaposta was looking for young actors to do performances like Felizmente há luar of Luís de Sttau Monteiro so that other schools could see it. That was when I did my first professional performances. I later discovered Espço Noé, which was quite important to me. At that time I had to pay to study and, since I was penniless, I suggested to work and be paid in classes and for two years I cleaned the school to pay the course. That was the first time I really studied theatre, I got acquainted with more performative languages and people from other areas such as photography, music, visual arts, dance… After these two years, I tried to join the Conservatoire and I did it. I did the three years and, after completing them, I was part of the soap opera Lua Vermeha. I was afraid to do TV, but it was an amazing experience. When that ended, I did another creation of my own and, in the meantime, the Inov-Art scholarship popped up, allowing me to go to Rio de Janeiro where I ended up staying for six years, a place where I even completed a master’s degree. In 2008 I found a chest with letters from a family of the 70s, 80s and 90s and, in 2009, I did my authorship work with Tiago Cadete.
That was during Lua Vermelha…
It was a bit before that, precisely when the school was ending. I took the letters home and suddenly there were 650. I spent the entire summer sorting those letters.
Did you have experience in working with collections at that point?
Yes, my three previous creations were already related to collections.
How do you go from those three collections, which are deeply truthful, to one that is slightly falsified?
Falsified?
You say that it is about faking an intimacy, isn’t it? You can fake it or not, but the principle is much falser than the one of Coleção de Colecionadores.
When I did my master’s in Rio de Janeiro and I choose, as an object of research, Collecting in Performative Arts, I thought: up to this point I have been working with already existing collections, how would things be if I did my own? I never had collections, so I started to research on the subject of collecting and study what a collection really is. What it means, and I realized that it is much more than what it contains. I focused more on the memory that surrounds the objects. And that was when I decided to start to create a collection of my own and understand what I need to keep. That was how I reached people, and encountered them. It is false in the sense that there is a program…
The word lover is too strong and too weak at the same time.
In Portuguese, though. But it is about that issue. It is about how we use this word to a third person.
In the context of theatre, I understand the performative setting and the provocative idea. Whereas in something more real, and in relation to how you started to work on other collections, I think that this less true. Not the work itself, but the title Coleção de Amantes (Collection of Lovers) is falser than the other titles.
But the issues brought by the project, like the things you mention, is the work already in motion. We have just presented a TV version of Coleção de Amantes on RTP2, which went viral on social media. The people’s comments are a sign that the project is working.
Yes, the title has strength. But when you treat encounters as lovers, it appears that you are diminishing their significance. It seems to me that something much bigger exists, which does not fit into the word lover, as per understood in Portuguese. But during the encounters, you ask them to take a photo, isn’t that so? Are the people allowed to keep the photo?
No.
Is the goal to make you look as if you were quite close?
For me the goal is to have the lover looking at the photography and identify that document as something intimate.
You mentioned that you started this project to try to find someone. If you find someone, will that change everything? I think that an actor is good when he presents himself and believes in what he is doing, so that we can also believe. But, in your work, everything is more personal, as it happens with my own music. If I am deeply sad I will never be able to make a happy song. Since you said that you started this to find someone, if one day you find that person, will this play lose its meaning? Or does it become false and, if it is false, will it stop making sense?
I don’t know because that has yet to happen. I started by collecting lovers, now I also collect collectors, but the truth is that I still haven’t found anyone. My question now is: am I unable to do it because I’m doing this project? I have crossed paths with lots of people, but the idea will always to witness something with someone, having a partner. This is an issue for me because I do not know if someone will realize what I’m doing. But I don’t know. If that happens, surely something will change.
Imagine yourself 50 years down the road. You’re the artist who does collections of everything and then some. What collection can you easily say that it will not present? For you, what is the most important, something that fulfils you more as a person or something else that fulfils the show you’re doing?
I don’t know how to answer that question. Each collection communicates in a very different way. In Amantes, the viewer creates a very strong relationship as well. The issues that the show generates are very powerful. Not only for me, even for people. With their relations, the way they deal with affection, the journey that each one makes is very strong and personal. In this regard, for me, it becomes difficult to choose because both communicate in different ways in different places.
Can you picture yourself doing something non-personal? All your shows revolve around something that you lived in particular, and now imagine that you get invited to make and/or portray something totally different. Does this makes sense or not?
I would really want to try because I do not know. But I already did many works in which I do theatre and that is work. I’m very curious, because I don’t know if I’m an actress anymore. But I really want to work with others in order to find other works to do. Especially now that I am back in Portugal, this is the first time that I’m in Lisbon for this long since seven years ago. But I also question myself, will I able to memorize a text, and make a character? Because the body is mine, the emotion is mine, it’s me. But, yes, my works are related to an experience. I have an experience with someone and then I turn it into theater. And this is very powerful, a great tool even for my personal and artistic growth, for everything.
Will you reach a point where there are no longer experiences to do and there is only emptiness? I’m saying this because music is like that too. I cannot see myself being asked to play a random song. I’d say no as well. Because I also do not know if I’m a musician or not yet. I studied Engineering and music is something that I have always done and worked. But you have another path. You did a course on theatre.
I’m afraid people will only associate me with the collections in Portugal. Because I’m not just that, or perhaps I am, I don’t know (laughs).
That depends on the moment when people get to know you. But being just one thing is fine, while being many other things as well.