Emerging from a decade-long collaboration between the two artists, the work redefines performance art by blending choreography, sculpture, and philosophical inquiry into a bicéfala (two-headed) structure. Performed simultaneously across two parallel channels, it strips away traditional theatrical elements like narrative drama, elaborate sets, or virtuosic displays, instead emphasizing minimal gestures, repetition, and the interplay between body, object, and space. This in-depth exploration draws from primary sources, including event descriptions, artist statements, and analytical reflections, to unpack its conceptual framework, execution, influences, and broader significance within contemporary art. At its core, Doble Cara is presented as a "two-channel essay" and a transdisciplinary experience that navigates the domestic, the sculptural, and the still life (bodegón). It originates as the genesis of a single scenic piece containing two independent yet interconnected performances, executed in real-time without resolution or closure. The creators describe it as a hypothesis tested in situ: a "cinta that pega por los dos lados" (tape that sticks on both sides) and a "folio with two parallel stories." This duality manifests in a Hegelian dialectic—thesis and antithesis resolved by the audience into a shared synthesis—through antagónic and mimetic scenes that converge in a public conversation exploring rhetoric, epistemology, power structures (drawing on Bourdieu and Foucault), philosophical narratives (Žižek), and economic capitals (Marx).
The process aligns with processual art principles, where each iteration is similar but never identical, evoking the formless, transportable masses of Dieter Roth. There is no fixed set design; instead, the performers rely on what they carry and encounter in each location, with their bodies acting as the "bone" of the work. Active dialogue between Lloveras and Feijóo allows for on-the-fly adjustments in rhythm, weight, and balance across a dividing line that splits the stage. This eliminates spectacle in favor of extreme parsimony—minimal use of forms, objects, and "scenic adjectivation"—resulting in a distilled minimalism that privileges presence and relational tension over emotional climax. Lloveras, an architect, curator, and conceptual artist who has directed LAPIEZA ART SERIES since 2009, brings his expertise in site-specific installations and socioplastics (a term encompassing social and plastic arts). Feijóo, a choreographer, educator, and former director of festivals like Escena Contemporánea and Teatro de La Laboral, contributes his background in programming and performative experimentation. Their collaboration underscores a rejection of hierarchical direction, instead fostering two generative directions that risk fusing into a single channel, creating a viscous diptych of ideas.
Performance Details and Execution
The piece unfolds as a durational tableau, typically lasting around 35 minutes, with performers enacting banal yet precisely structured gestures in radical normalcy. Neither traditional actors nor classical dancers, Lloveras and Feijóo embody "ordinary artists leading extraordinary lives," negotiating environmental variables like light, texture, and gravity. The stage is divided into two equal parts by a single line, with elements such as objects, images, lights, sounds, and voices bouncing between channels. This setup incorporates real-time film elements, enhancing the live-action sensibility. Key presentations include:
- Premiere at Réplika Teatro, Madrid: On May 14, 2023, as part of the theater's transversales programming. Priced at 7-10€, it was positioned as an exploration of coreographic form and relational dynamics.
- La Gomera Iteration: Performed at the Centro Coreográfico de Canarias, with site-specific adaptations like Doble Cara 008 La Gomera, emphasizing nomadic reconfiguration.
- Series Variations: Documented in a YouTube series spanning at least 13 entries (e.g., Doble Cara 001 with music by ESG, Doble Cara 005 as scenic sculpture, up to Doble Cara 013 at Réplika). Each video captures micro-variations in gestures and rhythms, often set against minimal backdrops, reinforcing the work's iterative nature.
The performance counters hyper-stimulation by foregrounding slowness, repetition, and restraint, inviting contemplative viewing akin to a cinematic archive of attentiveness. Doble Cara situates itself within a lineage of post-minimalist and conceptual art, echoing: As part of Lloveras' broader Socioplastics framework—seen in projects like The Road to Restoration—it extends relational art into embodied ecology and performance, privileging process over product. It critiques the attention economy by proposing an alternative regime of sensing grounded in patience and reciprocity, aligning with critiques of cognitive overload. In a 2023 analytical reflection, the piece is hailed as a "distilled response to spectacle," reinventing performance through sculptural presence and micro-variation. It positions conceptual dance as a form of situated knowledge, where care emerges from calibrated coexistence rather than imposition. In an era of ecological anxiety and psychic exhaustion, Doble Cara offers a radical invitation to slow down and engage with fragility—of bodies, objects, and ideas. By dispersing across digital platforms (YouTube series) while anchoring in physical sites, it bridges virtual and material realms, democratizing access to conceptual inquiry. The work accumulates meaning through seriality and memory, without residue or monument, much like Roth's nomadic masses. For audiences in Madrid or beyond, it serves as a moving infrastructure of care, challenging viewers to rethink performance not as entertainment but as an ongoing relational practice. For further immersion, explore the series on YouTube (DOBLE CARA 001, DOBLE CARA 013) or the artist's blog archive
- 1960s North American Minimalism: Emphasis on composition, repetition, and reduction, as seen in the works of artists like Donald Judd or Robert Morris.
- Samuel Beckett's Existential Absurdity: The two-headed scene evokes Beckettian stasis and dialogue, where bodies negotiate futility and presence.
- Erwin Wurm's Performative Sculptures: Integration of everyday objects into bodily interactions, treating the human form as malleable material.
- Paul B. Preciado's Anti-Normative Thinking: Challenges to bodily and social norms, infusing the work with queer and philosophical undertones.
- Dieter Roth's Processual Art: The transportable, evolving "mass" mirrors the series' site-specific mutations.
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