The work exists through a pair whose individual movements continually reshape a shared composition.
Interactive wearable performance · 2015
Be Loved
Two connected wearable pieces turn the pull of braided hair into an intimate audio performance about attachment, anxiety and the freedom of being tied to another person.
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Project typeArtwork · Performance · Collaboration · Fashiontech
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Wearables & e-textiles · Speculative & critical design
FormInteractive wearable performance
Developed2015
CollaborationIria do Castelo + Ricardo O’Nascimento
PresentedSouth Explorer · Niffo Galerie, Rotterdam
01 · Proposition
Love is tested through attachment
Be Loved explores the boundaries of love and bodily attraction through two wearable forms that can only be experienced in relation to one another.
Created and performed by Iria do Castelo and Ricardo O’Nascimento, the work dresses the artists as a pair of contrasting twins. Long braids extend from their garments and connect their bodies, making every separation, approach and turn part of a shared physical system.
The connection is also sonic. Pulling and moving the braids activates an interactive audio response, translating the performers’ changing tension into sound. Tenderness and restraint coexist: the same bond that limits independent movement becomes the condition for listening, coordination and mutual freedom.
Video documentation
See the connection in motion
02 · Experience
Approach, pull, respond
- 01
Connect
A pair of wearable forms joins the performers through long braided extensions, making distance and direction mutually dependent.
- 02
Activate
Movement and tension travel through the braids and activate an interactive audio layer.
- 03
Negotiate
Each performer must continually adjust to the other, turning restraint, coordination and trust into the material of the work.
03 · Reflection
Freedom is made relational
The work treats attachment as an active condition rather than a simple opposition between dependence and independence.
The twin garments externalise a relationship that is normally invisible. Their exaggerated hair binds two bodies while preserving their differences: black and white, separate and paired, self-directed and responsive. Because movement produces both resistance and sound, neither performer can act alone. Be Loved frames intimacy as a live negotiation in which freedom is not the absence of ties, but something produced through attention to another body.
Hair becomes a visible conduit for physical tension, attraction and interactive sound.
The audio performance holds contrasting emotional states together without resolving their tension.
Credits & archive
Project record
- Concept, wearables and performance
- Iria do Castelo and Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Project support
- MAC Contemporary Art Museum Gas Natural Fenosa, A Coruña, Spain
- Presentation and collaboration
- Niffo Galerie / Recycle Studio, Rotterdam
- Photography
- Lidia Vevi
- Video
- Javier Lloret
