No Rio há uma cidade que nos separa / In the City, There Is a River Between Us is an international residency and performance project developed by Gabriela Cordovez, Daniel Paiva de Miranda, and CuntsCollective (represented by artistic director and curator Tone Lorenzen).

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The residency took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2021 and brought together ten independent performers from Nordic countries and throughout Brazil.​The project aimed to foster decolonial artistic practices and explore territorial heterogeneity by initiating dialogue around the absurdity of hegemonic social norms, political brutality, and patriarchal dominance. Through the use of sweating bodies, breath, and heartbeat as performative and political tools, the residency created a shared space for embodied reflection and artistic resistance.

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Each participating performer developed a solo work rooted in their personal understanding of territorial belonging. These works examined geopolitical perspectives shaped by histories of either colonial power. Created in direct dialogue with the cultural, political, and environmental context of Rio de Janeiro, the individual solos were later combined into a collective 12-hour durational performance and installation presented at Solar Real in February 2021. The presentation formed part of the Abra Alas Festival in the Santa Teresa neighbourhood and included guest performances by local artists, strengthening the dialogue between the residency participants and the local artistic community.

 

The residency was structured as an intensive collaborative and learning process grounded in ritualistic practices, collective creation, and site-specific research. During the first two weeks, workshops were facilitated by the resident artists, artistic leadership, and invited local guest artists.The residency framework encouraged co-authorship and collective responsibility. Participants actively engaged in discussions around organizational structures, role distribution, and shared artistic leadership. Following the workshop period, the artists entered a two-week research phase, culminating in the public durational performance.​The entire project centred on process-based creation, emphasizing artistic research informed by context, locality, and decolonial perspectives.

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The residency fostered cross-cultural exchange and highlighted the potential of collective artistic practices as a means of challenging dominant narratives and imagining alternative social and artistic structures.