Trilogy for a Life Standing Is a collection of 3 performances – Part 1 Splatter, Part 2 No ID Represents Me, Part 3 Hologram – to be developed and merged into one piece.

Realization Lola Lustosa & BROKEN LOOP Collective (Anastasia Alekseevna, Jarkko Räsänen and Lola Lustosa)

Work in progress Part 1 Splatter is the first project of the BROKEN LOOP collective and has been shown at Plataforma Berlin Iberoamerican Festival at Verlin and Deviation Festival, curated by Musterzimmer, at Acud Macht Neu, Berlin. 2018.

The work is a free deviation and it proposes a loop structure studying with slide projections and recording sounds loops on stage. The soundscape is combined with theatrical gestures resulting into a trance/psychedelic sessions.

Password:bigdada

Work in progress Part 2 No ID Represents Me (Premiere) DOCK 11, Berlin, 2016 raises questions such as: is it possible for a body to knowlege? Where did we come from? What time are we living in? Are we drag characters of this time and are we going to break away from this existential loop?

A mirage opens from a compulsory displacement/ shift of the ego from the inner self, when the experience is gone. The inner self starts a journey back to where it had never left before. Infinite, everything and nothing are now accepted as dialogue by this ultra conscious body.

The artist is nude or not (it depends of the rules of the space), shifting from one position to another in between the public with holding a mirror in front of her face she reflects the light from the spotlight on the public. All movements are very slow and remain an urge for new ritual. The public can interact with the performer while reflecting itself on the dirty mirror or touching the body of the artist.

password: penetraveis

To be developed Part 3 Hologram and premier as work in progress at DOCK 11, 2019, at Plataforma Berlin Festival together with Splatter and No ID Represents Me as a final format of the “Trilogy For a Life Standing”.

Hologram is physical structure that diffracts light into an image. As a possible ending point of the trilogy hologram translates the whole, the universe, the total, the complete, the safe and sound.

The performer is now in a dark room out of the stage with a top light where a camera is filming and connected to a live projection on stage. The light of the projector is reflecting on dark layers of fabrics set on stage. Live projections, live sound and words are now inviting the public to enter the stage.

On residency during the Morni Hills Performance Biennale II at Panjab University Museum, in Chandigarth, India, 2018 I had the chance of performing “ NO ID Represents Me ” and to reflect on the concept for the whole trilogy by having interesting conversations with other artists at Morni Hills residence some directions got formed.

– Becoming a Hologram.

– A feeling of being a hologram.

– The hologram as an image for the inner self.

– The holograms could feel each other.

The Acceleration of the transition from the natural reality as we have experienced until now into virtual and artificial reality and intelligence globally is the trigger to escape the visual experience, mind and feelings of human form into hologram form: to find a way of presence and permanence in life.

“The people through its own fault/ Has lost the confidence of the government/ And only by redoubling its efforts/ Can it win it back/ Would it not be easier than/ For the government to dissolve the people and elect a new one? – will have any positive effect; the ghosts of the dead won’t let themselves be subdued by barrels of TNT. No one who’s given some thought to what the European states were like in the time of their “splendor“ can look at what still goes by the name of “state“ these days and see anything other than failures. Compared to the transnational powers, the states can no longer maintain themselves except in the form of holograms.”

“All the reasons for making a revolution are there. Not one is lacking. The shipwreck of politics, the arrogance of the powerful, the reign of falsehood, the vulgarity of the wealthy, the cataclysms of industry, galloping misery, naked exploitation, ecological apocalypse – we are spared nothing, not even being informed about it all. “ Climate: 2016 breaks a heat record“, Le MOND announces, the same as almost every year now. All the reasons are there together, but it’s not reasons that make revolutions, it’s bodies. And the bodies are in front of screens.” Extracts from political/philosophical book by The Invisible Committee called “Now“

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Never-Ending Stories (work in progress)

Never-Ending Stories is a participatory performance by Lola Lustosa inspired by the book Question and Answer (Graded Oral Comprehension Exercises) by L. G. Alexander (Longman, 1967).

In the book, Alexander writes that learning a language is similar to learning a musical instrument: the goal is to perform publicly while making as few mistakes as possible. Taking this idea as a starting point, the performance transforms language learning into a playful social encounter.

During the performance, audience members are invited—one by one—to choose a story title, share a cup of tea, and begin a game of collective storytelling. The work breaks with the traditional structure of narrative and allows new stories to emerge through improvisation between the artist and participants.

Never-Ending Stories was first performed in Berlin in 2015 inside a small Chinese tea shop in Mitte. The space no longer exists, but the spirit of the project continues: to travel, meet strangers, and generate new stories together.

The long-term vision of the project is to travel on a cruise from Europe to South America, interacting daily with passengers. Each encounter will be filmed and eventually edited into a feature film.

In collaboration with: Musterzimmer
www.musterzimmer.net

The project is currently looking for partners and collaborators.

EGO OPEN FOREVER

The Virus Inside the Virus

(ongoing digital performance / installation proposal)

EGO OPEN FOREVER is an ongoing digital performance by artist Lola Lustosa that investigates identity, ego construction, and self-representation in the age of social media.

The project began as an intervention using the platform Facebook—what the artist describes as “the biggest ego manager in history.” On the opening day, Lustosa took over the news feeds of more than 600 people for approximately three hours, posting a continuous sequence of self-portraits accompanied by fragments of her personal story. Through this action, she created what she calls a “virtual sculpture of the ego.”

By deliberately revealing intimate aspects of her life, the project explores the tension between what is shown and what is felt, questioning how digital platforms shape our identities and emotional landscapes.

The work functions as an open and continuous exhibition within the social media environment, accessible twenty-four hours a day through the digital network.

The series currently consists of 584 self-portraits and continues to grow.

The Virus Inside the Virus

We live in an artificial world — a virtual world.
We have closed the doors to a universal connection. In order to sustain this world of illusions we destroy living systems: trees, rivers, soil, water, and the organisms that repeat millenary flows of existence.

We produce waste that has nowhere left to go. Society becomes infantilized through the constant consumption of this waste.

With EGO OPEN FOREVER, the artist proposes to act as a virus inside the virus — an opposing force that disturbs the system from within. The work seeks to reopen the possibility of emotional and physical reconnection with what truly matters.

We have all acquired the same disease: the system.
To reconnect with the cosmos, the system must be broken.

— Lola Lustosa, Berlin, 2012

Flux

Everything is true. The hysteria is natural.

We are living through a moment of transformation in which previous structures of identity dissolve while we continue looking at them through old frameworks. The real tension today lies in confronting the possibility of existing without a fixed identity.

Our connections accelerate while we simultaneously long for slowness. Speed and slow motion merge, stretching time and perception. Humanity becomes a collective mass attempting to move beyond outdated narratives toward a new existential consciousness.

— Lola Lustosa, Berlin, 2013

Digital Performance

The digital performance EGO OPEN FOREVER consists of a growing series of self-portraits produced by the artist since 2005.

Initially created as a spontaneous and intuitive gesture, the images gradually became a personal archive reflecting instincts, ideas, frustrations, relationships, pride, failure, and persistence.

“I began taking these pictures as a random game.
With time I realized their deeper meaning: they became a door to my instincts, ideas, frustrations, happiness, relationships, pride, and failures.

They are proof of my persistence in life.

Now I have the courage and the pleasure to share these private reflections with you.”

— Lola Lustosa

“For those not interested in ego trips: please don’t come in.”

Physical Installation (proposal)

The project can also be presented as a physical installation transforming the digital archive into a spatial experience:

• hundreds of small printed self-portraits forming a sculptural wall
• texts accompanying the images
• headphones with music referenced in the digital archive
• projections of the social media feed
• mirrors or reflective elements placing the viewer inside the “ego sculpture”

In this format the digital performance becomes a physical environment of identity and reflection.

The project could also take the form of an artist book.

The artist is currently seeking partners and exhibition spaces to realize this installation format.

Recognition and Context

The project has been mentioned in Wall Street International and has been presented in artistic contexts including Fundação Iberê Camargo.

Exhibition

The digital exhibition has been open since
23 March 2012 — 19:30 (Berlin time)

Website
https://lolalustosa.com/ego-open-forever/

Archive
https://www.facebook.com/EGOOPENFOREVER

All images © Lola Lustosa

timeline Original format:  Lola Lustosa, OPEN SINCE 23/03/2012. 19:30

FACEBOOK

IT IS TIME TO RETURN

It’s Time to Return

A work-in-progress experimental film by Lola Lustosa

(Ritual Film, 2024–2026)

In a world already undone, the sacred feminine returns—bare and burning through time, myth, and stone. A poetic resistance in motion, reclaiming the naked body as memory, presence, and revolt.

Lola’s current film “It’s Time to Return” is a work-in-progress: a non-linear, intuitive film-ritual that explores mythopoetic embodiment, ancestral resonance, and metaphysical time.

Her video works are part of the film archive at TFM – Theater, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna, where they remain open to researchers and future generations of artists and students.

1.>> Introduction:

IT IS TIME TO RETURN

It’s time to return” is an independent film directed, acted, shot and produced by Lola Lustosa. The film presents dreams, rituals, efforts, mind Settings, time and space, in constant transformation and connected from the starting point. It is the result of the documentation of a witchcraft series made by Lola Lustosa since 2016. So far, the film shooting has toured Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Athens, Milos Island, Rome, Chapada dos Veadeiros, Paraty and Sidikauki. The artist was supported to start this film by artist and curator Serge Ivanov. Sadly, Ivanov disappeared on Papa Westray Island in early 2017 and there has been no news of him since. The project addresses questions such as: Is it possible to return to the one, to being without the unfolding of time? Is it possible to be completely outside the matrix? Can we live in a plural physical time and space and be aware, conscious of this existence? Is there an eternal reality? How do we perceive the plural dimensions?Are they measurable? Is disappearance possible? And the universe, is it possible for its becoming to be exhausted?

“She dreamed that she was a butterfly and did not know when she woke up whether she was a woman who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly who now dreamed of being a woman.” Chuang Tzu (300 a. (C)

3.>> Project description

 I begin by attending to a strong intuition resonating in my body of memory – ancestral intuition copulating with the force of nature. This intuition leads me to a definite encounter, a fusion between nature and the human, split in modernity. From this perspective, I see myself as a woman, mother, single, artist / dancer / filmmaker / photojournalist … woman and I confess that many times during the process of making the images for this film, the perception of gender was not evident, fundamental is existence and how to maintain it on a daily basis, unlock myself from prejudice, hostility, criticism, trauma, fear, death, fear of man, of generations, of myself, of social modernity.

This film, when finished, will be an absurd promise of the promised and forgotten autonomy of the human being. But how to rescue this autonomy? In a first moment, the social instructions that by repetition, inertia, impose themselves on my movements / actions as a woman, as a human being, need to be suspended. The legitimacy of this condition is crucial: how to reestablish my primitive self without emancipating myself from the utilitarian? (of the constructed / semiotic).

These searches made me ask myself: who is this “one” in this moment when I isolate myself, in a solitary attempt to search for its truth? Many times during the filming I was completely alone, others with people around me, others with close friends or strangers holding the camera for me, no matter these consequences. What matters is the attentive listening to my intuition at every moment that this intuition challenges me. This reality made me come across how Schopenhauer responds to his own psychological crisis (described at the book “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell). This listening sharpened my senses, represents the opening to a metaphysical consciousness that realizes you and the other are only one, that you are two aspects of a single life, and that your apparent separation is only the result

of the way we experience the forms forged under the constraints imposed in time and space. Our true reality lies in our identity and oneness with total life. This is a metaphysical truth that can arise spontaneously in circumstances of crisis. For this is, according to Schopenhauer, the truth of his life. I realize myself in this truth. And I experienced this philosophy in the process of capturing the images in this film.

I believe that the hero is the one who has surrendered the materiality of physical life. Believe that the hero is the one who offers his physical life in sharing some trait that helps him the special understanding of this truth that provokes me in different sensations, forms, images, sounds and materializations. The idea of loving one’s neighbor is to be in tune with this truth.

 This listening in many moments beckoned me to forget, in others, possessed me in the past and in the myths of the location chosen for the shoot. In this shooting, I freed myself and let myself live all the impressions that presented themselves: Eve, Venus, Age of Aquarius, sounds of Tibetan gongs, mermaids, Sufi dances, sufferings, the goddess Iansã (the goddess of heavenly rays), insects, birds, whales. The choice for nudity is justified by a non-consent to the female figure in a given time and space. I have the inclination, or rather the duty, to provide opportunities for this collective identification.

The constant task of strengthening the human connection with nature and its particular forms of repetition (particular god, akasha…). Over time, I have come across objects or limitations imposed by man on his territory (elapsed time and territorial construction). I have been magnetized into a mirror, magnetized into a fence, forced to wear clothes, sometimes by social rules, sometimes by too much cold. There is a reason in every event. What was captured by the camera during the experience and by this timeless consciousness. Necessary is that the dream is ongoing and needs to be realized. Necessary is that the dream is in pursuit and needs to be completed. Let this love of life be documented and receive its best editing.

I have yet to shoot the element of fire, walk naked down an empty road, and talk to a giant (a puppet) in the undergrounds of Berlin. Now I port a bow and arrow. It is important to say that my intention is to bring beauty. To bring back human beauty in its natural, intellectual, emotional, constructive and per formative uniqueness. I notice that this encounter of images comes strongly close to the quid of the feminine condition that at the same time I try to move away in social discourses. The further I move away, the closer I get to this sacred woman.

I would like the feminine (the sacred feminine) to return to its imagetic position. That the naked woman be strengthened in her visual freedom, that I can express the simplicity that exists in this condition. Haunting. The myths haunted me throughout the process of capturing images for this film. Indistinctly. Wherever I was: in the meditative or psychological work I was doing to myself. I never intended a psychological control, accepting what is presented to me became an integral part in the construction of this “story”.

On the Role of the Body / Nudity in the Film

In “It’s Time to Return,” nudity is not a provocation, nor an aesthetic device. It is a spiritual and political gesture—part of a lived ritual. I appear naked in much of the film because I do not wish to claim any specific time, space, or identity. The absence of clothing is a refusal to be placed, labeled, or owned.

For me, being naked is a way of not belonging to any era, place, or construct. I am not dressed for a system, a gaze, or a chronology. I move through landscapes and myths with a body that listens rather than performs. This nudity allows the film to enter a space before the social—where body and earth meet without interference.

It is a return to a sacred, pre-coded state of being. It reflects a desire to be porous, intuitive, and free—to transform, to disappear, to reappear differently. In this way, the body becomes not an object, but a channel through which ancestral memory, myth, and healing pass.

“The choice for nudity is not aesthetic or erotic but ritualistic and symbolic. It is a refusal of imposed roles and a return to a sacred, pre-coded state of being. The body becomes an instrument of truth.”

In the future, I may no longer be able to reveal the precise locations where the film was made. The body, as it appears in these images, becomes something else—a timeless body, suspended between geographies and histories. Ironically, what began as an intuitive, poetic act may have grown into something stronger than I imagined—legally compromising, politically charged, and too free to name. For my own protection, I may be required to transform locations, obscure their names, or even claim that the scenes were staged or digitally altered. Perhaps I will have to say that I was never truly naked. And if things become too hot—if risk outweighs ritual—I may have no choice but to hide or even destroy the original footage. But the body knows. The body remembers. And what was offered in that moment cannot be undone.

THE WORK IS LOOKING FOR SPONSORS/ PARTNERS TO BE FINISHED

Raises questions such as: is it possible for a body to know?  Where did we come from? What time are we living in? Are we drag characters of this time and are we going to break away from this existential loop?

A mirage opens from a compulsory displacement/ shift of the ego from the inner self, when the experience is gone. The inner self starts a journey back to where it had never left before. Infinite, everything and nothing are now accepted as dialogue by this ultra conscious body.

Duration: Approx 40 min

Concept / Performance/ direction: Lola Lustosa

Sound: Jarkko Räsänen/Laura Leiner

Lights: Lola Lustosa \ Anastasia Mikhaylova

Photo: Geno Lechner/Tiago Bartholo

Premier work in progress in Dock 11 Berlin 2016

Looking for partners, collaborators/supporters.