Bárbara Fonte
Fragments of a loving discourse
performance, 10 minutes

The title of the work written by Roland Barthes, ‘Fragments d’un discours amoureux’ (1977), gave its name to this action. Questioning the subject-object-desire relationship through the discourse of the lover, Barthes reveals the sinuous structure between expectation and disenchantment. Bárbara Fonte finds in this analysis the motif that unites three gestures displayed in this performance and which she describes as confirming the sweet ridiculousness of humanity, which is so profoundly sad and so joyfully foolish in its amorous decline. The rapture, the ritual, the attention, the faith, the despair, the restlessness, the absence, the tears, the death, have a continuous permutation between the dramatic and the comic. The creative instrument of the melancholic propensity for excess (an operatic feat), produces a violent and tender body that insinuates itself like a banner of fiery intentions. The artist’s body appears as a metaphor for female affection, defined in the domestic context and distinguished by the chronicle of Portuguese life.