Zé de Paiva deals with the decolonization of bodies on stage. He is part of and co-founder of the intercultural and interdisciplinary performance collective Syntax Schwarz. Not least in these collaborations, he deals with narratives from non-Western contexts in terms of content and aesthetics and places technology at the focus of the performative work: they pose questions about the politics of the creation and consumption of technology, but above all they bring technologies onto the stage as players.

He placed the camera at the center of the performance, posed questions about image politics and developed new ways of appropriating cameras and images. He used capoeira as the basis for his movements. His long and intensive training in capoeira was and is fundamental to his work as an actor and performer. The practice of capoeira demands a level of attention and responsiveness that he finds incredibly fruitful for his stage presence.

In the context of Syntax Schwarz, he has already begun to examine capoeira more closely for these purposes, developing “Syncope Motion”, which is the study of capoeira as a tool for performance.