Luciana Freire D’Anunciação’s multiscreen video installation Becoming explores the cyclical nature of life
Canadian-Brazilian interdisciplinary artist brings together film and dance in a work that can be enjoyed from different angles at the Roundhouse
Luciana Freire D’Anunciação’s video installation Becoming.
The Dance Centre presents Luciana Freire D’Anunciação’s Becoming: An Immersive Multi-Screen Video Installation at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre on June 4 and 5
EACH VIEWER OF Luciana Freire D’Anunciação’s art installation Becoming will have a unique experience, depending on where they are standing during the exhibition.
Presented as a multi-screen video installation, the work involves poetry, movement, and sound. D’Anunciação collaborated with the Roundhouse Community Dancers to create the piece through structured improvisation and writing prompts.
The four screens of Becoming work in conversation with one another. D’Anunciação says that although Becoming is rather abstract in nature, she is “editing the four screens together to see how they relate.
“They’re not random,” the artist continues. “They are connected, so I’m choreographing them thinking they will go in a circle.”
The video installations are set up facing one another, with room for audience members to walk through them.
“The point of view is going to be specific for each person, depending on where they choose to watch and how much they choose to move,” D’Anunciação explains. “They don’t necessarily need to look at one screen and then the next one. They can just be looking at everything combined.”
D’Anunciação is a Brazilian artist who has worked in both Canada and her native country since 2007. She received her fine-arts master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from SFU and works in performing arts, video, photography, sound, and installation, with a dance background that spans everything from contact improvisation to butoh. D’Anunciação’s pieces, from Echoes to With Myself, have been showcased and performed internationally.
Becoming follows the theme of cycles and circles by exploring the process of aging, and how perspectives shift over time. It is also rooted in D’Anunciação’s realization that her own future might unfold differently from what she once envisioned.
Luciana Freire D’Anunciação.
“When I turned 40, there was a big moment of asking myself questions of what I’m not going to do anymore,” the artist says. In Becoming, she embraces the grief that comes alongside accepting that certain dreams may be unattainable.
The creation of Becoming was a collaborative effort that involved the Roundhouse Community Dancers, composer Matthew Tomkinson, and project assistant Marco Esccer, a fellow dance artist in residence with the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre.
Becoming integrates the community dancers’ personal stories into the work, alongside D’Anunciação’s own distinct artistic touch. Taking pieces of the dancers’ improvisation and writing responses, she created movement videos paired with their recorded voices, reciting some of their written work.
“There are some poets in the group, and there are people that feel more comfortable expressing themselves through words, and some people that do not,” D’Anunciação says. “So some people just wrote a bunch of words, some people wrote nice poems. And there were also moments in which I asked them some questions and they wrote me back answers by email, so I also crafted poetry out of answers.”
D’Anunciação describes how the real choreographic work came after recording dancers in the studio. “There was a lot of improvisation in the shooting, and there’s a lot of improvisation and choreography now in this moment of the editing,” she says.
Alongside the presentation of the work itself, there will be an opening reception and artist talk, as well as a participatory movement workshop. D’Anunciação notes that the latter event will give people who were unable to participate in the creation process the opportunity to connect with the program. It is “a way to engage with people who want to know more about the project,” she says. 
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