“Loving lara
Do I wanna be her? Do I wanna fuck with her? Both?
cuz she is so lonely in such vast spaces. Longing for vastness.
Stab him lara!”
I look up Lara Croft. I don’t know her, I’m probably a bit too old or a bit too analogue. When I think about it, that’s not even true – I do ‘know’ her. I start to think about Angelina Jolie, gaming, teenage boys in large, soft chairs and long slim legs, waists as tiny as can be. Unobtainable beauty. I think about Kim Kardashian and how Lara Croft might have been what Kim asked for when her personal trainer asked what her goal body was.
I look up Lara Croft and read further into the universe that surrounds her. I am told that she is a highly intelligent and athletic British archaeologist who ventures into ancient tombs and hazardous ruins around the world. As my eyes scroll through the Wikipedia page, I sense that the person who has written the extensive timeline of the Tomb Raider franchise is a fan to say the least. No criticality seems necessary here.
I also find out that Croft kills men and that she is described some places as a feminist, placed inside a universe created to cater to capitalism and the male gaze. Mixed emotions float around inside me as I continue to think together with the agency of Lara Croft.
My research happens in connection with an invitation to enter the nuanced thinking and making of Teresa Ves Liberta, who was in residency at HAUT exploring the gestures as well as the politics and aesthetics of Lara Croft; a double bind between misogyny and fetishization opened to me in this performance in the making.
In a black box at Teater Zebu the room was lit up by red and green lights and as the work-in—process began, Teresa Ves Liberta placed herself at the center of the stage, in front of a screen where both sound and image started to play and play into each other. Computer-generated images, made by Fayxka Silva in black and white began to fill the space as a backdrop and showed sky and earth intersecting in a series of setups, sometimes blending between each other through water rising and falling. The imagery was dramatic yet calm and was very seductive I immersed myself in it with its constant transformation.
The visuals were accompanied by music, by Tanis Silke Nielsen, which responded to the visuals by them attuning their instrument to the movements. A newly build instrument, where large strings on top made it possible for Nielsen to prolong and pull the sounds into their wish regarding length and sonorous expression. The sounds rose and fell in a dance with the aesthetics conveyed on the screen.
Both sound, visuals and Liberta´s body movements as well as gaze were all derived from within the fictional universal of Lara Croft, reworked and morphed in the worksharing.
Liberta had been sitting while the visuals and soundscape encapsulated the audience, looking at us through tinted sunglasses, with an effortless calmness. Suddenly she jumped to her feet and began a sequence of an animal-like movement, where she was on all four, ass in the air, looking through her legs, moving quickly around, then pausing and shifting her weight slightly from one foot to the other. It was as if she was a sexy spider, with all its connotation to wanting to fuck and then afterwards eating her lover. While looking at her, my own body felt a tiredness of trying to fit into an impossible pose; holding up my body as to do something which is psychically demanding yet needs to look like the most natural thing in the world. A bodily memory, which more easily than anything else can become present, in trying to fit into impossible standards.
Orange breaks through in the visuals and it’s no longer wind and waves but a person who walks through a forest. The deconstructed twerking changes into a slow crawling towards the audience, while Liberta as an incarnation of Lara Croft lets her mouth hang slightly open and drool begins to fall to the floor.
It feels both good and bad to stare at her, it’s as if she is behind a screen, looking into infinity, not aware that I’m looking at her drooling.
It becomes more and more clear that Liberta is investigating movements that comes directly from the universe of Lara Croft, as she lays down and starts to swim, without moving her torso, only her arms and legs. She is constantly trapped within movement that takes her nowhere. An infinite swim.
The actions become faster and more upbeat, which is emphasized by the soundscape that rises with her. She stands at the center of the stage, mouthing words she doesn’t utter, instead we are left to decipher sentences that never will be heard. The sentences are accompanied by movements, such as ‘motorcycle’, where her hands mimic gassing up, starting the ride, her eyes a little lowered, her lips pursed as if mouthing ‘motorcycle’ might be the sexiest thing you could have ever heard. There is something deeply uncanny about watching Liberta playing the part of sexy revenger, there is a constant flux between having power and how power is used against femininity.
Slowly a rage seems to build up and she starts to mimic yelling while also jumping with force, slamming both of her feet simultaneously into the ground, making the floor echo with her force. The returning credo could be: fight while you look sexy.
In the final part of the work sharing, the lights are turned on as she herself starts a smoke machine. The visuals and the sound stop and she sits down and starts to read to us from what looks to be personal notes. She reads in different paces, in both English as well as Portuguese, making the sentences into both meaning and feeling, as all is not understood by the audience, and is neither meant to be.
While reading it is as if the grip of Lara Croft releases the body of Teresa Ves Liberta a bit, as we hear her own thinking around the character of Croft. Sentences flow towards me such as
Level super hard
Kiss my angels
Remember gender more vividly
Cis narrowness
Transvengence
Daddy issues
Such a shame
He’s a bitch
As the screening of the work ends I moved out of the Teater Zebu wondering about entanglements between misogyny, trans-vengence, the male gaze and gaming and how they intersect and in what way Lara Croft both can serve us a state of release as well as connecting us to patriarchy.