Airport Charles Didn’tgo [ACD]: a study of the man without a port

Abstract

The video-essay presents the process of creation and execution of the urban intervention site specific Airport Charles Didn’tgo [ACD], held in Dublin, Ireland, in 2018. The action, developed as a field study by the author during his PhD in theater ( UNIRIO/ULB), was triggered by a series of accidents caused directly or indirectly by the biggest snowfall in 36 years that surprised the country in those days. Victimized by some of these accidents and prevented, by a national lockdown, from distancing themselves from the place where they were staying, the author and his host, Charles, saw their plans radically changed. Combining performative procedures (especially urban intervention in art) with theoretical and practical knowledge from the arts (stage, visual and audiovisual), architecture, anthropology, history, psychology and sociology, the author presents in this video-essay a reflection on the possibilities from hosting the disruptive potential of accidents (understood as an unforeseen event that takes us by storm) and from the estrangement that it triggers – confronting us with the imponderable, both in the surroundings, as well as in us – for the production of performative urban actions. The theoretical approach is developed through the historical-conceptual transit of the stranger/foreigner from diverse and complementary perspectives that corroborate the defense of the accident as an enabler of new and unpredictable sociabilities.