Tiago Bartolomeu Costa

From Sweet and Tender

Criticising is not an act absent of guilt. This hypotheses of legitimization is not absent of guilt. Criticising is an act of public intervention, it’s a political choice, it’s a statement whose echoes should be felt, and perceived, on the moment that is being produced without distrusts or modesty, but mainly without being afraid of facing windmills that do nothing else than roar. Criticism is an act of reacting that cannot be dissociated from the one who does it. There’s not a hygienic, aseptic and educated criticism. Instead what exists is a process of reflecting publicly that cannot abdicate of an intense relation with its surrounding (and on this I include cultural, social, political and economical surrounding). It’s that context that legitimises criticism and the critic. It’s that context that alienates and annihilates criticism and the critic. The critic is part of that process of ending specially if he not considers and understands that being a critic is not an institutional position never to be questioned. That questioning begins on him, its something that’s conquered everyday in each text, on each choice, on the next show.

I'm a 28 year old free-lance performing arts critic based in Portugal and working for the newspaper Público, the german magazine Balletanz and the brazilian website | Idança, among other publications either in Portugal or abroad . I'm also the editor of | OBSCENA - revista de artes performativas