how it all began
The rubberbodies collective is a multi-disciplinary artist collective based on the island of Malta. The initial idea had not been to create a collective, but through discussion it had been realised that such an artist body was missing from the local community. This group would strive towards the active expression of the individual. We all spoke of creative ideas and the desire to translate and share them. Then, it was unanimously decided that we would create something stronger and through the interchange of ideas and the bindings of our cultural inheritance we would transform our thoughts into actions.
We come from similar family backgrounds – the working class; ancestral land workers, fathers the victims of the culture factories, mothers striving for the best child education, religious institutions inserting capsules of stigma and fear, and a manipulative government capitalising on what once used to be a simple and happy way of life. Today the urge to question and seek a different form of education and lifestyle, results in ostracization, one becomes the black sheep or a lost rocket floating in space.
The need to jump into a fantasy world of play, movement, scribbles and voices is a deviation from the system and is a journey towards a social common ground where expression can exist. This is where the collective begins.
Coming from different training backgrounds, we are curious of how our perception can be expressed through different mediums and methods. Also, we are fascinated by how single/singular ideas are able find pathways within the spectrum of performance. Captivated under a spell of creation, we have lunged into an exchange process that revolves around sharing techniques and approaches. This is a process that is very much about the Being alive and means drawing from the languages of movement, sound and image.
We created a method of devising and interlinking ideas without setting restrictions on what to do and how to do it. Our interests are to interweave, change and fertilise each others’ artistic visions and find ways of bringing to life our visual conceptions. Whilst we explore our imagination, we aim to integrate art as a category in a society that builds expectations, values and roles based on a controlled system generated by the powerful bodies of religion, politics and the media. We use art and our bodies to address culturally determined perceptions by creating spaces for the observation of serious social and political issues.
LabforCulture is a partner initiative of the European Cultural Foundation. LabforCulture is grateful for the support provided by its funders.
