"In what ways do we give ourselves? Is it the simplicity of a gesture of affection, like giving a kiss, a hug, a cuddle, a hand or a shoulder? Would it be giving to give up a little of yourself, like giving blood, a part of your body, your time, your energy? Is it just the radical gesture of giving up your whole life?"
"Listening as a gesture"
"Ana says that in Venice - curiously, the city of lovers - no one sat down to tell a story. It was the adventure of waiting, but one that nevertheless builds weaves: Ana's love narrative is the tangle of stories she heard from others, but also from the moments when she waited, feeling the city, suspended in time without being passive."
"it aims to recover the spatial dimension of speech as sound to the detriment of the temporal dimension of speech as language"
"By not being interested "in the life" of the storyteller, as one of the interview participants said, the work encourages those who sit next to Ana to have another experience of individuality, in which they are not there as subjects exposing their intimacy in an "inappropriate" space, but as a thing that feels in an encounter with another thing that feels, in an event of giving of mutual availability"
"In this sense, it abolishes the logic of giving and receiving as activities connected by a cause and effect relationship in favor of an indifferentiation between the two positions."
"Giving oneself as something that listens: affections of sonority in the work Listening to Love Stories, by Ana Teixeira", article by Daniele Pires de Castro
Listening to Love Stories (2005-2013), is an performance art piece, from Ana Teixeira (Caçapava, SP, 1957). The artist waits for an interlocutor to tell her some love story. While waiting, the artist weaves, and does not interrupt the process if someone arrives and sits down. Dividing attention between the interlocutor and the atention to the manual work, Ana acts as a listening person. The verb to listen, here, has a certain complexity, as it is close to actions that involve the other: telling, narrating and, mainly, “confessing”. Perhaps it would be interesting to investigate our past as confidant beings and, in this recovery, enhance the multiple readings of this action. (translation from the artist website)
"my aim is to cause a short circuit in the fabric of the city and its inhabitants"
"I could listen without understanding, but people don't just want to be listened to, they want to be understood"
"people told the stories not to me, but to that place, that environment"
Jô's program
Ana Teixeira carries out projects on public roads
The artist once stood on a stool with the sign: I listen to love stories
Genre: Talk Show, Personality, Variety