2019-2023
Ongoing series of online endurance performances through which I explore presence, distance, and liveness in digital space. In each iteration, I remain silently present for a prolonged period of time—at a distance—while connecting with viewers in real time through minimal technological setups. My body is absent, yet insistently there. These works live in the tension between intimacy and separation, visibility, and silence.
Each version unfolds in a different context, across time zones and geographies, yet they are all connected by a simple gesture: being there, without being physically there. I think of these performances as quiet experiments in remote closeness. They are site-responsive, but always mediated—echoing a longing for presence across screens.
More info on each iteration of this project below.
The first iteration of Can you here me? was shown at an invitational group exhibition in Proyecto Casa Intervenida, Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 23rd and 24th, 2019, from 4 pm - 9 pm.
The second iteration of Can you here me? was hosted by Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, New Zealand and took place on Monday 23 May, 2022, 8am–2pm in New Zealand Time, Sunday May 22nd, 4pm - 10 pm in New York.
An excerpt of the second iteration of Can you here me? was exhibited at ReA! Art Fair, Milan, Italy, in October 2022.
The third iteration Can you here me? - Desde el Rancho was hosted by SVA Chelsea Gallery, New York, United States, and took place on Thursday 12 January, 2023, 6pm-8pm in New York Time, 20hs - 22hs in Buenos Aires / Uruguay Time.
Adeola, Olakiitan. “You hear me here you.” Blue Oyster Project Space, 7 March 2023.
Rovatti, Valeria. “Compartir, invitar, inventar excusas, presenciar, dar tiempo”. Blue Oyster Project Space, 7 March 2023.
Shiamtani, Paola. Review at ReA! Art Fair 2022 Catalogue, October 2022.
Screenshots of Can you here me? - Desde el Rancho. Third iteration presented in SVA Chelsea Gallery, New York.
Desde el Rancho, 2023
Online endurance performance – 2 hours
SVA Chelsea Gallery, New York / streamed live from Uruguay
In January 2023, I performed from a rural area in Uruguay during the opening of Dread/Dream at SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York. Titled Desde el Rancho, this piece was shorter—two hours—but held the same core intention: to be silently present, fully connected yet physically far. The work was performed simultaneously for guests at the gallery and online participants via Zoom, allowing a shared moment of quiet attention stretched across distance and setting.
"Investigations of time and space as conceptual and sculptural material play out in the performative videos of Dulce Lamarca. Her distance performances to gallery audiences via remote screen-sharing gains even more relevance to our zoom-laden world of today."
– Regina Basha, curator, "We Interrupt This Program", SVA Galleries, New York, 2020
Gallery views of Can you here me? - Desde el Rancho. Third iteration presented in SVA Chelsea Gallery, New York.
Can You Here Me?, 2022
Online endurance performance – 6 hours
Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, New Zealand
Three years later—now in a world profoundly shaped by the pandemic—I revisited the project. This time, I remained present in silence from my apartment in New York, while streaming live for six hours through Blue Oyster Art Project Space in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was Monday, May 23 (NZT) / Sunday, May 22 (NYT). The performance underscored the odd poetics of time zone disjunction, of being both with and apart, here and there, at once.
I am currently working on a 16 mm film shot in Uruguay during the summers of 2022 & 2023. I reviewed the footage for the first time, together with the audience, during this online performance. I would be reviewing my own work, taking notes on the screen: sharing my process. The audience would interact with me through the chat, and comment of my practice, on what they were seeing.
– Olakiitan Adeola, writer, 2022
“[Dulce’s work] thinks about time as a material, daily practices of making, and questions the 'point' of making by privileging the process over the outcome and the studio over the exhibition (...) deals firstly with process and duration and leaves space to question the capitalist focus on outcomes, productivity, and completeness. (...) captures material qualities of time through waiting, rest, patience (or impatience), and anticipation––modes of being which are central to our 'pandemic lives' but absolutely counter to the dominant productivity discourse.”
– Hope Wilson, Director of Blue Oyster Art Project Space, New Zealand, 2022
"From afar, the artist informally provides the audience with various visual, sonic and textual stimuli from her personal ever-expanding archive, improvising as she goes, bouncing off of their reception and perception of the material."
– Paola Shiamtani, curator, ReA! Art Fair Catalogue, October 2022
Screenshots of Can you here me?. Second iteration presented in Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Can You Here Me?, 2019
Online endurance performance – 10 hours
Proyecto Casa Intervenida, Buenos Aires, Argentina
In November 2019, I was invited to participate in Proyecto Casa Intervenida in my hometown of Buenos Aires. I couldn't be there physically, so I created a setup that allowed me to be present from my studio in New York. At the exhibition space, a computer shared my screen live, while a tablet streamed a video call connecting me with the audience. I remained present and available—without speaking—for the entire duration of the opening: two consecutive days, from 4 pm to 9 pm.
– Valeria Rovatti, curator, on Can you here me?, 2019 performance
"This work feels prescient to our times."
– William Powhida, artist and educator, on Can you here me?, 2019, thesis presentation, SVA, New York, 2020
Exhibition views of Can you here me?. First iteration presented in Proyecto Casa Intervenida, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“The computer is a device to get into someone’s mind,”
JODI
Olakiitan Adeola. Critical response to the online performance Can you here me?, 2022.
"Everything is about the passing of time. Everything swims in time. We everly yield to it. Laughing or crying, dancing alone, dining together, zooming... Presence yields to time, as time flushes into space. It appears impossible to separate the two. So then it can be said, for a durational performance that happens online, time is the space as much as space is time. Dulce Lamarca’s Can you here me? is an endurance performance that happens after Idle Hands, a group exhibition with works exemplifying downtime, waiting, anticipation, rest, and play. These themes are some of the varied preoccupations of her practice, this same pronounced dwelling, moulding, mangling, pulling at the strings of time. Titled with a word play that is characteristic of Dulce’s occasional bent, here, an adverb, becomes a verb, a doing word, a plea as though to say presence me, can you make me present?”
William Powhida. During Dulce Lamarca's thesis presentation, SVA, May 2020.
"This work feels prescient to our times."
Regina Basha. Text for the group show “We Interrupt This Program,” SVA Galleries, New York, NY, July–August 2020.
"Dulce Lamarca has been experimenting with films, performances and mediated spaces to explore how to engage an audience intimately both off and on a screen. (...) Investigations of time and space as conceptual and sculptural material play out in the performative videos of Dulce Lamarca. Her distance performances to gallery audiences via remote screen-sharing gains even more relevance to our zoom-laden world of today."
Hope Wilson. Director of Blue Oyster Art Project Space, in the context of the group show “Idle Hands,” February–April 2022.
“Both works [Dulce’s and Zoe’s] think about time as a material, daily practices of making, and question the 'point' of making by privileging the process over the outcome and the studio over the exhibition. I think Dulce’s Tuning Seriesworks sit beautifully alongside Zoe's work (...) both projects deal firstly with process and duration and leave space to question the capitalist focus on outcomes, productivity, and completeness. There are also some lovely connections between Dulce’s and Zoe's practices because they are both artists and educators and I think that brings quite a different perspective to how they both approach their practices. (...) Zoe, Kate, and Dulce all work with performance, to varying extents, to think about time from the perspective of an artist at work. Each project records and captures material qualities of time through waiting, rest, patience (or impatience), and anticipation––modes of being which are central to our 'pandemic lives' but absolutely counter to the dominant productivity discourse.”
Valeria Rovatti. Text on the second iteration of the performance “Can you here me?”, streamed from New York in 2022.
"Sharing, inviting, making up excuses, bearing witness, giving time. (...) Dulce lends us her time. She offers hers to us. (...) Time becomes a character in and of itself. (...) The artist returns again and again, re-enacting every second of an unedited film archive. (...) She exposes the interval. As her body rests in a hammock, the piece shifts tempo. (...) Dulce proposes, while staying protected within the distance of representation and reproduction. The veil of technology reveals and conceals all."
Paola Shiamtani. Review in ReA! Art Fair 2022 Catalogue, October 2022.
"Dulce Lamarca is interested in generating intimate scenarios where the audience becomes greatly involved, at times altering the work itself through their spontaneous reactions, interpretations and input. The artist works with mediums such as performance and video, reflecting on the absurd and bizarre aspects of everyday life and socio-cultural interactions. (...) From afar, the artist informally provides the audience with various visual, sonic and textual stimuli from her personal ever-expanding archive, improvising as she goes, bouncing off of their reception and perception of the material. The viewers may not be aware of the artist’s direct involvement initially, yet as they begin to engage with the piece, Lamarca’s presence becomes evident. The artist is constantly allowing the viewers to access her in-progress research and yet to be published body of work."