Everynew city, every different space, even a different metro station represents a universe of variables that opens up. That was what happened in Madrid. The new elements, in this case, were two: a GoPro camera on my body and a Sony camera on a tripod. What happens when cameras become part of the scenario? What sort of setbacks and demands will appear due to the presence of these simple, yet cunning, image devices?

Madrid was a test in itself. To choose a place to execute any performance is always a careful decision to be taken. With cameras involved, though, the choice has to be even more careful, thanks to two factors: 1) how to place them in order to minimize their potential to interfere with the audience’s experience?; 2) how to deal with the inconvenience of drawing the attention of security teams everytime a camera pops up in a public space?

Legally, one must have an authorization to record images in public as well as private spaces. Historically, the art of performance intends to problematize such formalities by occupying a space without the need for said authorization. Thus, we have an interesting duel of forces: the clashes around the legitimacy around the recording of these images and the ever-increasing need to collect audiovisual records – both to share and externalize the action to other layers of interlocution while investigating the post-experience as well as to deal with institutional premises that belong to the artistic field, such as public notices, projects, and funding.

Ideally, performances take place after being authorized, but this was not the case. I did not ask for any public permission to occupy the sidewalks of Principe Pioand Moncloa metro stations… and, for the first time, I was interdicted. Twice. This does not surprise me at all: I knew about this risk when I offered myself to do it. However, I have a suspicion: what was the role played by the cameras in the hastening of this interdiction? Could this new factor be the cause that led to such an immediate reaction?

When the performance was starting to attract more and more people, security teams arrived to interrupt it. Due to this fact, few people were able to truly participate in the performance. Nevertheless, the ones who participated were so unique and so passionate about it: a young man, after an accident that caused him severe pain in his back (and a few pins in his bones), on the same day said that he thought about “kidnapping someone to give him a massage” because he was feeling a tremendous pain himself; a multi-artist and scenic arts student who told me about her life while proposing similar actions to occupy daily spaces; a very young and very clever young Arab woman who unloaded the “heart aches” that afflict her in her condition of surveilled, watched and controlled genre, between (and even among) cultures.

Many people also stopped by, asked, smiled, identified themselves, and were thrilled by the idea – even if they did not have the time to enjoy it. To get in touch with the singularity of each place, of each experience, of each person, of each exchange, is what makes “I exchange your pain for a massage” so thought-provoking: there are things that can only be exchanged when the word silences with the touch of a hand. And, preferably, with a legal authorization – perhaps in the future...

Thanks to all of these experiences, it becomes clearer and clearer how much these performance propositions that sought to occupy non-artistic spaces are impossible without an arduous team work: from the choice of the place and the transportation of the chairs, cameras, and tripods to the audiovisual records and the act of collecting the authorization for the use of people's images. In the backstage, any kind of work is multiple and collectively enacted, even when individually idealized and executed. Personal projects that, in their consistent fragility, only become possible thanks to the support of a plethora of networks.