{"id":22924,"date":"2026-01-15T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hexagram.ca\/demo68-marcella-franca\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T10:22:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T15:22:37","slug":"demo68-marcella-franca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hexagram.ca\/en\/demo68-marcella-franca\/","title":{"rendered":"DEMO68 Marcella Fran\u00e7a \u2501 Corpus: memory, body, and embodied technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

January 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this DEMO, Marcella Fran\u00e7a<\/strong> presents the development of her research-creation project entitled Danser l\u2019archive : le reenactment du Paragol\u00e9 comme moyen d\u2019explorer le reembodiment et l\u2019inter-performativit\u00e9 dans la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 augment\u00e9e spatiale (RX\/SAR).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The master\u2018’\u2019s student at \u00c9cole NAD-UQAC explores the critical and participatory power of a Brazilian artwork when it is performed. Her research examines how performative principles can activate a collective bodily memory and generate new forms of embodied engagement through extended reality (XR) and spatial augmented reality (SAR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This text guides you through several key stages of Marcella Fran\u00e7a\u2019s research: an autoethnographic approach, performance as method, participatory workshops, a residency showcase, and data collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The residency at Hexagram-UQAM gave me the opportunity to explore the critical and participatory power of reenactment and the performance Parangol\u00e9[1]<\/sup><\/strong><\/sup><\/a><\/em> by Brazilian artist H\u00e9lio Oiticica within a digital context. This avant-garde work from the 1960s, emblematic of participatory art in Brazil, serves here as an experimental ground for analyzing the body as a performative, political, and sensory medium within contemporary immersive digital arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This residency was crucial for adopting an ethnographic and autoethnographic approach, grounded in performative research, where reenactment is conceived as a process centered on practical experience and the experimentation of re-embodying concepts. During the two weeks I occupied the experimental space, I explored corporeality and the power of embodiment by the public through mediation workshops and the presentation of a corpus of performative and installation works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a context where immersive technologies increasingly mediate cultural, artistic, and media experiences, my research examines how embodying the performative principles of the Parangol\u00e9s<\/em> can activate a collective bodily memory and enhance new forms of engaged corporeality, reactivating the political, sensory, and participatory dimensions of the original work through extended reality (XR) and spatial augmented reality (SAR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three main conceptual axes of my research-creation are, first, reenactment as a form of critical reactivation within the field of performance; second, its interrelated concepts, such as embodiment and re-embodiment and third, the notion of interperformativity. Through this framework, I seek to articulate a renewed understanding of digital art through the body, examining how the body, in its sensitive, performative, and relational dimensions, ceases to function as a passive support and instead becomes an active agent of creation, memory, and aesthetic relation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Autoethnography Through Performance<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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In this project, autoethnography articulates lived experiences, artistic practice, and reflexive gesture, starting from the idea that knowledge emerges from the body in action. In dialogue with Spry (2001), I understand that conducting research through performance means allowing improvisation and experimentation to guide reflection, without separating theory and practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach reinforces the central point of the research: knowledge emerges through encounters\u2014between myself and the participants, between body and technology, between the historical work and its digital reactivation, and between physical space and immersive environment. Each action reactivates the work, creating new layers of meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Performance as Research\u2014Practice as a Method of Inquiry<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Performance as Research <\/em>(PaR) approach (Haseman, 2006) constitutes the central axis of this investigation, positioning practice as its own mode of knowledge production. From this perspective, knowledge emerges from the body in action, from situated experimentation, and through friction with the world. PaR understands performance as an epistemological device in which the body operates simultaneously as agent, material, and archive.

It is within this context that becoming<\/em> (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980) manifests as a driving force in the reenactment of the Parangol\u00e9s<\/em>. Becoming<\/em>, understood as a continuous movement of transformation within the body-environment-work relationship, appears in states of flow (fluidity and concentration) and sensory intensification\u2014conditions that transform performance into a field of embodied knowledge. Thus, the methodological trajectory grounded in PaR allows the reenactment of the Parangol\u00e9s<\/em> to function simultaneously as artistic practice and as an epistemological tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Performative Workshops<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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During the research-creation workshops at Hexagram-UQAM, the working dynamic unfolded through several complementary stages. After a conceptual introduction based on the screening of an archival film about the original Parangol\u00e9<\/em> and H\u00e9lio Oiticica, participants were guided through somatic exercises designed to awaken bodily awareness and facilitate a state of flow. They then engaged in an improvisational dynamic using movement-based keywords, creating trajectories that articulated body, space, and language. From this process, a collective creative writing exercise emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u24b8Charlie C\u00f4t\u00e9<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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Subsequently, participants were allowed to have a physical experience of the Parangol\u00e9<\/em>: each person could compose their own Parangol\u00e9<\/em> on their body, using multicoloured fabrics, diverse patterns, and themes aligned with the cultural, sexual, and identity plurality of the groups involved. At this stage, they were able to attach the words and phrases produced earlier to their Parangol\u00e9<\/em>, incorporating them into movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This process directly echoes H\u00e9lio Oiticica\u2019s description of the artistic dynamic of Parangol\u00e9<\/em>:
\u201cThe very act of \u2018wearing\u2019 the work already implies an expressive and bodily transmutation of the spectator, characteristic of dance, its primary condition.\u201d<\/em> (Oiticica, 1986).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Credits : Marcella Fran\u00e7a & Charlie Cot\u00e9<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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End-of-Residency Showcase\u2014Immersive Interactive Exhibition<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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At the end of the two weeks, I presented an immersive end-of-residency exhibition featuring two interactive installations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Danse: \u00c9crit du corps<\/em><\/strong> is<\/strong> an XR installation created from conceptual studies of the reenactment of the Parangol\u00e9<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\"Une<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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Credits : Marcella Fran\u00e7a & Charlie Cot\u00e9<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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Considering the body as the interface of agency within the Parangol\u00e9s<\/em>, simultaneously both medium and message, I developed the interactive installation Danse : \u00c9crit du corps<\/em>. In this work, participants are represented by particle-based avatars whose movements generate visual trajectories and feedback, transforming the body into an inter-performative device for writing and political expression. Gestures captured by a Kinect sensor served as vectors for a textual narrative composed in real-time through movement. Following the somatic workshop and the writing dynamics implemented during the sessions, the collected words were integrated into the word-bank database for the Danse: <\/em><\/strong>\u00c9crit du corps<\/em> experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first prototype of H\u00e9lium<\/em>:\u00a0 an interactive reenactment in spatial augmented reality (SAR).<\/strong>
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Credits\u00a0: Marcella Fran\u00e7a & Charlie Cot\u00e9<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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On the other side of the room, my most recent prototype was presented: floating virtual fabrics, responsive to gestures captured by a camera and a hand-tracking system, integrated into an installation entitled H\u00e9lium<\/em>. This work aims to transpose, through spatial augmented reality (SAR), the interperformative capacity of the Parangol\u00e9s<\/em>, as discussed by Salter (2010), extending the fabrics of the original artwork into a digital environment where they respond to participants\u2019 real-time movements. It is an extended form of reenactment, in which the body remains the catalytic agent of the work, but now in dialogue with a reactive, sensory, and immersive environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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