Terra Nullius

Terra Nullius is a performative audio walk that tries to capture the experience of a distant place. For a year, Paula Diogo was in Reykjavik developing a project that combined personal and collective narratives. Her process was founded on two simple actions: walking and writing.
 

Terra Nullius is a performance that strives to overflow the space of the theatre, occupying the city’s geography and the virtual space of discussion and thought. The final version of the project was presented at the end of 2020 at the D. Maria II Theatre, having toured through Europe and Latin America since then. At this moment, the work is a great sound tapestry that crosses geographies, placing them in dialogue with each new city in which  it arrives. 

For each location a path is drawn in the city to create an overlap with the pre-existing audio track. The public is then invited to walk through the city in a group experience. This experience concludes with the solitary reading of the book Terra Nullius, which each audience member can take home. 

 

Terra Nullius was a term created by international law to define territories that did not belong to anyone and therefore could be occupied and declared as “new” territory. But the term also contains a poetic meaning. The idea of unexplored, unclaimed territory, where it is possible to live outside market and production laws, a kind of oasis of freedom where one could start anew and rethink society. Etymologically, it literally means no man's land, a land without an owner and that cannot be claimed, the zero point.