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I Will – Foreign Portrait is a transdisciplinary work on migration, identity, and the search for belonging. Crossing dance-theatre, live performance, analogue photography, multimedia installation, and cinema, the work takes place in art galleries and hybrid cultural spaces, where it adapts its form to the architectural, historical, and cultural context of each venue.

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The work exists in two temporal states: during the day, the space operates as an exhibition with photographs, scenic objects, video projections, and an 18-minute film. At night, the installation is reactivated by a live performance in which the performer leads the audience through the space, activating its elements as memory, vestige, and presence. The performance does not complement the exhibition — it temporarily intensifies it.

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Conceptually, the work begins with an archetypal fable: after a planetary catastrophe, our ancestors are thrown from the trees to the ground and forced to walk. In this gesture of falling and displacement, the figure of the first immigrant emerges — the Nomad sapiens. The project proposes that migratory movement belongs to the same flux that moves birds, seeds, and rivers. Borders are not natural; they are artificial interruptions of a movement inherent to life. The foreigner ceases to be a social category and reveals itself as a shared human condition. I Will – Foreign Portrait is also a homage to those who lost their lives attempting to cross borders. With us, they dance.

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Work in Progress — Selected Presentations

The project has been in continuous development since 2021, expanding across three continents through successive stages that each incorporate and transform the previous ones.

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2021 — Street performance and photo/video experimentation, Vienna, Austria 2022 — Rotlicht Analog Photography Festival; Das LOT Wien / Hybrid Butoh Vienna Art Festival, Vienna, Austria 2023 — Austrian Cultural Forum / Butohpolis Butoh Art Festival, Warsaw, Poland; KuBa Kulturbahnhof, Hitzacker, Germany

2024 — Semperdepot, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna / Rotlicht Festival (selected among the top 20 of 332 submissions from 43 countries), Vienna, Austria

2025 — Tochukaso Shisha, Otaru/Sapporo; Embassy of Brazil in Tokyo — exhibition, performance, artist talk and film screening, as part of the official celebrations of 130 years of Brazil-Japan diplomatic relations, Japan

Credits

Produced by: .ditiramb
Script, Performance and Direction: Will Lopes
Exhibition project: Nina Coimbra

Colaboration: Ilaria Vergani

1st Assistent: Andressa Viana

2nd Assistent: Rafael Frasão

Photography & Camera: Dino Rekanović
Camera 2: Amar Tahirović
Camara Assistance: Bojan Stekić
Assistance: Goran Bećirčić

Editing and Color correction: Amar Tahirović

Music Composition, Sound Design: Christoph Punzmann

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Photography & Photo Performance: Christoff Wiesinger

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Music Compositions and Research Funded by the City of Vienna and BMKOES

Project Supported by: Embassy of Brazil in Tokyo; City of Vienna (MA7)

Embassy of Brazil in Tokyo; Secretaria de Cultura do Destrito Federal (Conexão FAC)

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