Towards the end of the performance of MARGIN by Brazilian dance group Original Bomber Crew at the Grand Hôtel-Dieu, the three performers, makeshift drums and masks in hand, gathered at the centre of the room. They invited audience members to join them in a huddle of bodies, the arms of strangers resting gently on each other’s backs. One of them spoke in hushed Portuguese, his eyes directed at the group, as an inner-circle translator followed his words swiftly in English: ‘we all have families, people we love who are not here. Let us remember them and that without them, we wouldn’t be here, now, either.’

For me, this statement encapsulated many of the topics that had arisen during our discussions on the theme of hospitality – invitation, responsibility, obligation, community, presence – with the addition of absence. By calling into being others who were not present, our awareness was temporarily extended to the outside world and to the role of its existence in our experience of the present. In that moment, the Original Bomber Crew reminded us of those who were not here, be it due to geographical distances, limitations in resources, borders, loss or simply not having been invited.

Invited guests become a representation of not only themselves but also the places, contexts and people they have come from. I wondered about the multitude of artists, both international and local, whose names did not appear in the Forum programme. This programme had been compiled though a cascade method: a selected curator for each region would select a local artist, who in turn selected their own artistic collaborators for the Forum project. Nonetheless, due to politics as well as the physical constraints of time and space, there will always be those who have not been invited – or represented. With grace, the performers of MARGIN found a way beyond these limits by naming their communities, as well as drawing links to the invisible networks that accompanied every individual present. They brought their guests into the room as ghosts, whom we held, lovingly, in our minds.