Pro Helvetia to open office in South America

The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia is due to open an office in South America in 2021, with staff members located in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Columbia, as a follow-up to the successful «COINCIDENCIA – Swiss & South American Cultural Exchanges» programme. The programme was launched in 2017. It supported numerous projects by Swiss artists in South America and enabled cooperations involving Swiss and South American cultural practitioners and institutions. The new office will allow Pro Helvetia to consolidate existing international relationships and add an important seventh region to those already covered by its global network of offices abroad.

The «COINCIDENCIA – Swiss & South American Cultural Exchanges» programme was launched within the framework of the Swiss Government’s 2016-2020 Cultural Policy Statement («Kulturbotschaft») in order to promote the dissemination of Swiss arts and culture in South America and to strengthen Swiss-South American cultural exchange. Around 250 projects, including exhibitions, concert and theatre tours, reading tours and residencies, have been realised since 2017. They have led to cooperations between cultural practitioners and institutions in Switzerland and their counterparts in ten South American countries.

In view of the great cultural potential and the successful groundwork laid, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia has decided to establish a permanent presence in South America once the «COINCIDENCIA» programme, which is limited to four years, comes to an end in 2021. The aim is to continue the partnerships forged by the programme in the arts disciplines that the Swiss Arts Council supports. These comprise visual and interdisciplinary arts, music, literature, design and interactive media. The new office will also initiate collaborations in connection with Pro Helvetia’s new focus on arts, science and technology as well as residencies and research trips.

Pro Helvetia strives to promote a constructive and critical dialogue between Switzerland and the cultural regions in which its offices are located that does justice to the diversity of artistic and social perspectives of the participants involved. «Multilateral relations are of great importance in the world of culture, too. The opening of a Pro Helvetia office in South America is a marked enrichment of our global network. The consolidation of our cultural dialogue with the South American continent in this time of upheaval represents a great opportunity for cultural production both in Switzerland and the regions we are represented in,» said Philippe Bischof, Director of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

In view of the continent’s geographic expanse and diversity, the office will comprise four locations: Santiago de Chile (management), São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Bogotá. The six local staff members all have in-depth knowledge of and excellent connections to  their region’s cultural scenes, and will help forge partnerships between local and Swiss cultural practitioners. They are, moreover, all native speakers – Portuguese for Brazil and Spanish for the remaining countries.

With its presence in South America, Pro Helvetia’s global network will henceforth comprise seven major regions around the world. They are, besides South America: the Arab countries (office in Cairo), Southern Africa (Johannesburg), Russia (Moscow), Southeast Asia (Delhi), China (Shanghai) and the Centre culturel suisse in Paris for the French-speaking world.

Planta, in collaboration with the Argentinean collective Escena Política, and Identidad Marrón, is organizing a webinar on the decolonization of cultural institutions. In collaboration with Swiss and Argentinean cultural practitioners, the webinar, entitled « Race & Fiction », will examine the colonial context of racist structures in Argentina, as well as the references to Switzerland, and will also question the role of culture in this context. 

« RACE AND FICTION »  

Meetings of reflection and action  

Free online event 

During November PLANTA invites you with free access to be part of these meetings of  reflection and action created by artists, activists, thinkers and collectives, tackling the multiple forms that racism takes in Argentina. Practices, talks, premieres of video material  and meetings coordinated by  the collectives Identidad Marrón and Escena Politica in dialogue with Soraya Maicoño, Dani Zelko, Lucrecia Martel, Carlos Masotta, Cesar Gonzalez, Sach’a Sawila (Bolivia), Brandy Butler (USA/Switzerland), Sally Schonfeldt (Australia/Switzerland)
and  Kadiatou Diallo (South Africa/Switzerland).

More information  www.plantainclan.com 

GENERAL DESCRIPTION   

In a global context where the concepts of race and colonialism, and the relations that they propose to the interior of societies are put into question, we put the magnifying glass on the way in which they operate within the cultural field of Argentine society. From this urgent standpoint emerges a reflective and performative device that enables exchange between artists and thinkers from different territories emerges, addressing -with local productions- global problems and possible future ways of relating to each other. 

These meetings are creative exchanges between collectives and individuals, thinkers and artists, thoughts and practices. In this flow of materials, we investigate the forms in which racism and the fictions it sustains are intertwined in the present, the past and the future. These meetings will revolve around the questions that this urgent raising of awareness opens up. 

ABOUT PLANTA   

PLANTA is a space located in the south of the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina) in the neighborhood of Parque Patricios. 

It promotes encounters and creation practices to provoke the body through transdisciplinary experiences. Performative and audiovisual arts meet in contemporary practices of training, experimentation and production; designed for amateur and professional visitors, both national and international,  in a wide and transversal social scope. More information at  www.plantainclan.com 

RACE & FICTION TEAM

Video Editing Team: Manoel Hayne and Tomás Guiñazú
Still photo: Nacho Yuchark
Translations: Marina Tampini and collaborators
Subtitles: Fixie Films
Technical operators: r3nder blas lamagni
Webmaster: Alexis Paredes
Guest groups: Identidad Marrón; Escena Política 
Curators and general production: Elisa Carricajo, Melina Seldes and Juan Onofri Barbato.
Financed by « COINCIDENCIA PROGRAM – PRO HELVETIA »
Produced by PLANTA transversal research and creation. 

Identidad Marrón are in this action:
Alejandro Mamaní, América Canela, Valeria Liz, Florencia Mamaní, Euge Choque, Bby Wacha, Soledad Apaza M., Melisa Yaleva.  

Escena Política are:
Ariel Lutzker, Celia Arguello, Silvio Lang, Florencia Vecino, Amparo González Solá, Diego Echegoyen, Jimena Pérez Salerno, Diana Szeinblum, Nahuel Cano, Alina Marinelli, Bárbara Hang, Cecilia White, Manuela Fraguas, Margarita Molfino, Martin Tchira, Laura Kalauz, Elisa Carricajo, Melina Seldes and Juan Onofri Barbato.

« PROGRAMATION »

PART ONE 
NOVEMBER 13, 14, 15  

Memory as future territory 

Free online activities 

Artists in Dialogue: Soraya Maicoño (Puel Mapu), Dani Zelko (Argentina), Brandy Butler (USA/Switzerland), Dana Rosenzvit (Argentina), and Kadiatou Diallo (South Africa/Switzerland).   

We open Race & Fiction with the first meeting called “Memory as future territory.” Composed of  a sound piece, a video work, and a conversation. These works were created especially for this event, with the desire to generate instances of reflection on the multiple forms that racist violence takes place.  

We mainly propose sound means to make room for the ancestral and ceremonial dimension that inhabits words and language. In a present mediated by screens and distances, we continue to ask ourselves how to produce encounters of bodily and spiritual participation that contribute to rebuilding other ways of life and other ways of creating. 

FRIDAY 13 

7 PM  (AR/BR]
11 PM [CH]

Premiere
Zungu Mapu Rupu Meu : Justice must be invented.
 60 ‘ESP / subt ENG 
Creation: Soraya Maicoño and Dani Zelko 

For three months, Soraya and Dani sent words and songs to each other on WhatsApp, straining relationships between spirituality and politics, song and violence, land and justice. Then they listened to the material and together created this sound piece.  

Listening rounds (Optional)  

The piece “Justice must be invented” can also be heard in collective listening rounds in public spaces located in different cities and towns of the country and the region.  

At the end of the listening, we will give a fanzine made by Soraya Maicoño and Dani Zelko to those who come to listen. 

You can join a live listening round in these cities:  Ingeniero Huergo (Rio Negro, Argentina), Fiske Menuco (Gral Roca, Rio Negro, Argentina), Neuquen Capital (Neuquen, Argentina), Junin de los Andes ( Neuquen, Argentina), Niebla (Valdivia, Region of rios, Chile), Paraná (Entre Rios,  Argentina)   

Please bring a mobile phone with headphones and enough mobile data. Someone from the meeting  will wait for you, and walk you to the round. 

For more info REGISTER HERE www.plantainclan.com 

9 PM [AR/BR] 
1 AM [CH]

Premiere
Meditation for the displaced: night vision*
 40 ‘ENG / subt ESP 
Created by Brandy Butler in collaboration with Juan Ferrari. 

Audio / visual / sound piece based on texts of how slaves talked about the stress of never being able to rest, to contextualize the importance of rest as a tool for resistance.
*The title is based on the poem Night Vision by Lucille Clifton.

SATURDAY 14 

12 PM [AR/BR]
4 PM [CH]

Re-run
Zungu Mapu Rupu Meu : Justice must be invented.
60 ‘ESP / subt ENG   
Creation: Soraya Maicoño and Dani Zelko 

For three months, Soraya and Dani sent words and songs to each other on WhatsApp, straining relationships between spirituality and politics, song and violence, land and justice. Then they listened to the material and together created this sound piece.  

3 PM [AR/BR]
7 PM [CH]

Re-run
Meditation for the displaced: night vision*
40 ‘ENG / subt ESP 
Created by Brandy Butler in collaboration with Juan Ferrari. 

Audio / visual / sound piece based on texts of how slaves talked about the stress of never being able to rest, to contextualize the importance of rest as a tool for resistance.
*The title is based on the poem Night Vision by Lucille Clifton. 

5 PM [AR/BR] 
9 PM [CH] 

Premiere
Conversation
 75 ‘ENG / subt ESP 
With Dana Rosenzvit and Kadiatou Diallo 

 Argentine sociologist Dana Rosenzvit in conversation with the co-director of SPARCK, a space for Pan-African research, creation and knowledge in Switzerland, Kadiatou Diallo, on racialization processes in an Afro-diasporic key.  

 SUNDAY 15 

12 PM [AR/BR]
4 PM [CH]

Re-run
Conversation
75 ‘ENG / subt ESP 
With Dana Rosenzvit and Kadiatou Diallo  

Argentine sociologist Dana Rosenzvit in conversation with the co- director of SPARCK, a space for Pan-African research, creation and knowledge in Switzerland, Kadiatou Diallo, on racialization processes in an Afro-diasporic key. 

3 PM [AR/BR]
7 PM [CH] 

Re-run
Zungu Mapu Rupu Meu : Justice must be invented.
60’ ESP / ENG subt 
Creation: Soraya Maicoño and Dani Zelko 

For three months, Soraya and Dani sent words and songs to each other on WhatsApp, straining relationships between spirituality and politics, song and violence, land and justice. Then they listened to the material and together created this sound piece.  

5 PM [AR/BR]
9 PM [CH]

Re-run
Meditation for the displaced: night vision*
 40 ‘ENG / subt ESP 
Created by Brandy Butler in collaboration with Juan Ferrari. 

Audio / visual / sound piece based on texts of how slaves talked about the stress of never being able to rest, to contextualize the importance of rest as a tool for resistance.
*The title is based on the poem Night Vision by Lucille Clifton. 

 

PART TWO
NOVEMBER 20, 21, 22 

Colonialism as a sentimental education

Free online activitie

Creations by the collective Escena Política (Argentina) in dialogue with Sach’a Sawila (Bolivia), Sally Schoenfeldt (Australia / Switzerland) and Carlos Masotta (Argentina). 

Escena Política shares its research and creation process: A collective attempt to dismantle whiteness, the cultivation of a decolonial garden, a ritual of return, a trip to the river. An anti-racist journey through physical, clandestine, virtual, dream-like, and epistolary meetings of invented spiritualities. 

A journey through colonial sentimental education, the fictions of the modern white project and its phallic monuments, school events, maps, the national state and its horrors, land ownership, the Columbus monument, the headless, and dialogues with Sach’a Sawila , Carlos Masotta , Sally Schonfeldt, in Buenos Aires, Florence, Amsterdam, Zurich, 500 years ago, today, the future. 

FRIDAY 20 

7 PM [AR/BR]
11 PM [CH]

Premiere
A colonial sentimental education Part 1
60 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Video, created by Escena Política. 

8.30 PM [AR/BR]
00.30 AM [CH]

Premiere
A colonial sentimental education Part 2
45 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Video, created by Escena Política.   

SATURDAY 21 

12 PM [AR/BR]
4 PM [CH]

Re-run
A colonial sentimental education  Part 1
60 ‘ESP / subt ENG 
Video, created by Escena Política  

1.30 PM [AR/BR]
5.30 PM [CH]

Re-run
A colonial sentimental education  Part 2
45 ‘ESP / subt ENG 
Video, created by Escena Política 

SUNDAY 22

7 PM [AR/BR]
11 PM [CH]

Re-run
A colonial sentimental education Part 1
60 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Video, created by Escena Política  

8.30 PM [AR/BR]
00.30 AM [CH]

Re-run
A colonial sentimental education Part 2
45 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Video, created by Escena Política

PART THREE 
NOVEMBER 27, 28, 29 

  Theatre of Justice 

Free online activities. 

 Creations by the collectives Identidad Marrón (Argentina) and Escena Política (Argentina), in dialogue with guest artists Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), César González (Argentina) and Kadiatou Diallo (South Africa / Switzerland).   

This will be our last meeting of the first edition of RAZA & FICCIÓN and it will be held by the collectives Identidad Marrón & Escena Política, which, after a process of 3 months of work, will exhibit a series of videos designed and set in the environment conformed by the Colón Theater, Presidente Roca Primary School and the National Palace of Justice, in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.  

These collective creations appeal to different types of registers and genres: documentary, television, fiction, performance, intervention, to expose the racist story that these buildings, streets, names, and history enunciate, and about which apparently we have nothing to ask ourselves. 

Everybody will be welcome to this open, public and free anti-racist artistic exploration.

FRIDAY 27 

7 PM [AR/BR] 
11 PM [CH]  

Premiere
Escena Marrón
60’ ESP / ENG subt 
Creation by Identidad Marrón & Escena Política collectives

Identidad Marrón & Escena Política collectives present a series of videos  that record the anti-racist actions that both groups carried out in the proximities of the Colón Theater, the President Roca School and the National Palace of Justice, all buildings located around the Lavalle Square in the City of Buenos Aires. 

What is the relation between Culture and Justice? How do these two spheres that seem so distant work together? What is the nexus between them? Culture produces a specific perspective of the world and a correlation of forces on its conflicts, while Justice is the norm that dictates the veracity and existence of the events that occurred in that world: whether something happened or not must be proven before Justice. Justice supports the correlation of forces, the possible privileges and (dis)advantages between the social actors of Culture. But are we all rights-holders? Are we all equal under the law? Who is represented in the eurocentric culture promoted by the Colón Theatre? Who is not? What link is there between those denied by the Colon Theatre and those trapped by Justice? How can we displace the transit of those identities oppressed and rejected by a hegemonic white culture until they are absorbed and appropriated by the Justice System? 

9 pm [AR/BR]
1 AM [CH]

Premiere
Vindication from brown gazes against structural racism
90 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Conversation between Lucrecia Martel and Florencia Mamaní + Alejandro Mamaní (Identidad Marrón)   

SATURDAY  28 

12 PM [AR/BR] 
4 PM [CH] 

Re-run
Escena Marrón
60’ ESP / ENG subt 
Creation by Identidad Marrón & Escena Política collectives

2 PM (AR/BR) 
6 PM [CH]

Premiere
Voicing the unspoken and the unspeakable
25’ ESP / subt ENG

Conversation with Kadiatou Diallo, Basel based curator and co-director of SPARCK, space for Pan-African research, creation and knowledge, about how artistic processes in Switzerland and in the African context address issues on racism.

4 PM [AR/BR] 
8 PM [CH]

RE-RUN
Vindication from brown gazes against structural racism
 90 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Conversation between Lucrecia Martel and Florencia Mamaní + Alejandro Mamaní (Identidad Marrón)   

8 PM [AR/BR]  
12 AM [CH]

Premiere
Glass doors, metal doors. Differences and similarities
 75 ‘ESP / ENG subt
Conversation between Cesar Gonzalez  and América Canela + Alejandro Mamaní (Identidad Marrón)  

SUNDAY 29 

12 PM [AR/BR]
4 PM [CH]

Re-run
Vindication from brown gazes against structural racism.
 90 ‘ESP / ENG subt 
Conversation between Lucrecia Martel and Florencia Mamaní + Alejandro Mamaní (Identidad Marrón) 

5 PM [AR/BR] 
9 PM [CH]

Re-run
Glass doors, metal doors. Differences and similarities.
 75 ‘ESP /  ENG subt 
Conversation between Cesar Gonzalez and América Canela + Alejandro Mamaní (Identidad Marrón) 

4 PM (AR/BR) 
8 PM [CH]

RE-RUN
Voicing the unspoken and the unspeakable
25’ ESP / subt ENG

Conversation with Kadiatou Diallo, Basel based curator and co-director of SPARCK, space for Pan-African research, creation and knowledge, about how artistic processes in Switzerland and in the African context address issues on racism.

« BIOS CURATORS, ARTISTS AND COLECTIVES »

CURATORS

Elisa Carricajo was born in Mar del Plata. Since 2003, she is a member of the theatrical group “Piel de Lava” with which she made the works “Colores Verdaderos“, “Neblina”, “Tren”, “Museo” and “Petróleo”, performing in all of them as an actress, playwright and co- director. With this same group, she starred in and co- produced the film “La Flor” by Mariano Llinás together with Pampero-Cine. In theater she worked as an actress with Rafael Spregelburd , Javier Daulte , Mariano Pensotti , Santiago Gobernori , Mariana Chaud , Leandro Arecco and Agustina Muñoz, among others . As a playwright and director she premiered two plays “2035” and “2040”. Together with Lisandro Rodríguez she created the diptych “A Job” and “Another Job”. She did various works as an actress in cinema, among them: “Un crimen Comùn ” by Francisco Márquez, “Viola” and “La Princesa de Francia” by Matias Piñeiro, “Las insoladas” by Gustavo Taretto and “Cetáceos” by Florencia Percia . She studied Communications at UBA. She co-directs, together with Juan Onofri Barbato, Planta, Transversal Research and Creation Space.

Juan Onofri Barbato (Argentina 1983).
Researcher in audiovisual and performative arts. Director of the works FYZ, Tualet, Ocupaciones Breves, Pack, Todo Junto, Los trompos, Caravana, Tridente, Los Posibles and Duramadre. The last two were created with KM29 Group. He worked as a choreographer in films by Santiago Miter, Benjamin Naishtat, and Lisandro Alonso. Together with Elisa Carricajo, he directs PLANTA space in Buenos Aires.  

Melina Seldes (Argentina, 1981) is a performing artist, researcher and teacher. She shares her work and is involved in various artistic projects in renowned spaces and institutions in Latin America and Europe. She works as an artist’s coach and supervises research projects. Creator of the international  program El interprete_El Performer. Currently El Intérprete and La Ilusionista (her latest creation) are touring the national scene. She directs CILEM Research Center www.cilem.com.ar . In Europe, she is a member of Fingersix and IDOCDE network, as well as collaborates with the Swiss performance company piccoliproduction since 2009 and for the Scottish dance-maker Angus Balbernie; in Argentina she participates in the organization ESCENA (SCENE) and the Dance Emergency Front. In Buenos Aires she is a member of the programming team of the independent-space Planta.
She graduated from ArtEZ University, NL (BA in Dance-2005) and University of London, Royal Holloway (MA in Physical Theatre–2007).  www.melinaseldes.com

ARTISTS AND COLECTIVES

América Canela   Visual arts teacher and social manager. A member of Brown Identity collective. Teacher in schools and popular educator in sociocultural programs that work in shantytowns and poor neighborhoods. She specializes in access to the educational system. America´s production is inspired by her social activism and her career as an educator. Her work, in which multiple views converge, is constantly traversed by a feminist and anti-racist perspective 

Brandy Butler was born in Reading, Pennsylvania (USA), and has been living in Zurich since 2003. She is a soul singer, performer, activist and mother. Graduated at ZHdK with a Master´s degree in Music Education. She is a member of the African feminist diaspora collective Bla * sh, (Helvetia Rockt), and co-founder of the feminist think-tank collective Mino, which creates new opportunities to increase the visibility of diversity on the Swiss music scene. From 2011 to 2014 she was responsible for a renowned children’s music program. In 2012 she participated in the casting show “La Voz de Suiza” and was eliminated as a finalist. Since then, Brandy Butler has toured with various bands throughout America and Africa. She worked in theatrical productions directed by Christopher (Rüping Zürcher Schauspielhaus and the Münchner Kammerspiele). Since 2019, she is a member of the team at the Neumarkt Theater in Zurich. 

Cesar Gonzalez. Filmmaker, writer, visual artist. He was in different prisons between his 16 and 21 years of age for crimes related to theft. While being behind bars, he finished high school and enrolled in Philosophy studies. Once outside, he continued his Philosophy studies for a while at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), but would quickly drop out and devote himself fully to the study of history and filmmaking technique. At the same time, he would dedicate himself to the production of a literary magazine called ¿Todo Piola?, which began during his stay in prison with Patricio Montesano, a teacher who offered workshops there. The magazine would run between 2008 and 2012. As a writer he published 3 books of poetry; ”The Revenge of the Tied Lamb” (2010), “Chronicle of a conditional freedom” (2012), and “Rhetoric to the sigh of complaint” (2014). He has collaborated and written columns in different graphic and digital media. Besides being the scriptwriter, director, producer and editor of his films, he works as a visual artist and music producer.

Dana Rosenzvit Bachelor´s degree in Sociology (UBA) and Master’s Degree in Latin American Social Studies (UBA). Member of the Historical Sociology Studies Group and the Subalternities Studies Group in Latin America. First Assistant at the Research Workshop on Historical Sociology of Latin America, Giordano Chair (FSOC / UBA). She is currently a CONICET doctoral fellow. She is a member of the Research Group on Afro-American Studies (IDEIA / UNTREF) and associate editor of e-l@tina. Her current research revolves around the co-production of race and nation in and from Latin America. 

Dani Zelko , Argentina, 1990. His work is made of words and people, who come together through various procedures to generate encounters, publications and events in which political intervention and experiments with language feed off each other.  He has been carrying out the work Reunion since 2015. He published, among other books: “Juan Pablo by Ivonne: the counter- narrative of the Chocobar doctrine ”, “Lof Lafken Winkul Mapu ”, “Northern Border: forced migrations”, “Language or Death”, “Earthquake” and “The Complete Questions of Osvaldo Lamborghini ”. Some of them were translated into English, Portuguese, German, French and Italian.   

Florencia Mamaní San Isidro, Buenos Aires. Graphic Designer (UBA) and Filmmaker (FUC – Universidad del Cine). Web Developer, 2D Animator. PC technician and ex backpacker. She is part of “Identidad Marrón”, a group that emphasizes the racism that brown people suffer in Argentina. As an indigenous* descendent she is currently working on 2 audiovisual essays “Episodios Marrones, vol.1” and “La Felicidad de Florencia y Beatriz” where she denotes* the construction of structural racism in Argentina as well as the lack of rights that house-keepers suffer.

J. AlejandroMamaní Lawyer (UNT), Specialist in Computer Law (UBA), Master in Migration Law and International Migration Policies (UnTREF) Graduated from the Update Program on Global Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing and from the In-Depth Consumer Law Program (UBA). Legal advisor in the Association of Meretrices Women of Argentina (Ammar), Legal member of Lawyers for Sexual Rights (Abosex), Cultural Lawyers , Association of lawyers for indigenous rights (AADI), Lawyers for IDENTIDAD MARRÓN (Brown Identity Anti-racist Collective) and consultant to the Advisory Council of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity. 

Kadiatou Diallo Freelance curator, facilitator and cultural practitioner living between Basel and Cape Town. She is the co-director of SPARCK, a space for pan-African research, creation and knowledge, and producer of the podcast “Artists on Africa”. Her main interest is to understand decolonization through artistic practice. Beyond her curatorial and collaborative projects, Kadiatou currently works as an Associate Professor and Researcher of the Aesthetics from the Margins project at the Center for African Studies at the University of Basel Switzerland and as a member of the Faculty en édhéa (design school and secondary school of arts) in Sierre. www.kadiatoudiallo.com 

Lucrecia Martel Born in Salta, Argentina, Lucrecia Martel premiered her debut feature film LA CIÉNAGA (The Swamp) in 2001, followed by LA NIÑA SANTA (The Holy Girl) in 2004 and LA MUJER SIN CABEZA (The Headless Woman) in 2008. Her fourth feature, ZAMA (2017), an exploration of colonialism and racism in Latin America, had its premiere in the Venice International Film Festival. Retrospectives of her work have screened at many art and cultural institutions such as Harvard, MoMA, Lincoln Center, Cambridge and London’s Tate Museum, together with a series of masterclasses about sound and narrative that the filmmaker offered around the world.[Text Wrapping Break]In parallel, Martel has also shown an interest in other artistic languages outside cinema. Her latest collaboration was with Björk, taking on the direction of her concert CORNUCOPIA at The Shed, acknowledged as the most sophisticated show given by the Icelandic artist to date. 

Sach’a Sawila is a Queshwan woman belonging to the Ancient Wisijsa Nation. She was born in the Qallcha community of the Norchichas Province of Potosi Department (of today`s Plurinational State of Bolivia). She currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where for many years she has been practicing and spreading the knowledge and wisdom of her Elders, her Grandmothers and Grandfathers. It is through the traditional Queshwan Cuisine that she generates awareness regarding the essential role of good nutrition, of food as Medicine for the Good Living of us all. She has taught an enormous amount of courses, conferences and experiential workshops, and she is well known in the gastronomic field as well as in the spiritual realm, in which she always keeps the essence of her cultural sacredness and worldview. Andean spirituality is intimately bound to the practice and the body, therefore, Sach’a Sawila works with the food as medicines but also as transmitters of cosmic and ceremonial messages. In her role as native woman she performs complementary and duality ceremonies corresponding to each moment of the Andean year. She has been part of numerous meetings of spirituality along the Tawantinsuyu. In 2019 she visited for the first time to meet with the Native local Elders, Brothers and Sisters to share and accompany them in their ceremonies. There she also participated with Tayta Ullpu –an Elder from the same Wisijsa nation- of the Nayri Niara, Good Spirit Festival that took place in Luwanna Alonnah, Tazmania.

Sally Schonfeldt (1983] in Adelaide, Australia, lives and works in Zurich) investigates in her works how knowledge is produced and established. She questions who wields power over determining history and memory. By using historiography to question methods of knowledge production in relation to anti-colonial discourses and the position of women in history she repeatedly challenges Eurocentric historiographies. Schonfeldt shares the results of extensive archival research in experimental video essays, films, lecture performances or exhibition displays. Her works seek to generate alternative possibilities of interacting with history and contribute to the construction of new narratives in juxtaposition to those enshrined within the Eurocentric canon.  

Soraya Maicoño. Born in Tecka , Mapuche-Tehuelche town, in the winter of 1972.  Singer since the age of 7. Announcer since she was 15. Actress, since she was 22. Activist for the Mapuche cause. Creator of the Mahuidanches puppet theater group in 2003, with whom she created and directed the shows “La historia de Pañil”, “La historia de Elal ”, “ Epeu ” and “ Llallin cushe ”. Since 1997, she has traveled to communities, places, towns and cities as a compiler of ancestral Mapuche song Tehuelche.

IDENTIDAD MARRÓN It is an organization dedicated to the visibility, struggle and approach of public policies regarding structural racism in Argentina. The group was born with the aim of making racism towards people of indigenous descent - brown- visible from intersectionality and articulating interpersonal, institutional and cultural dimensions, with aspirations for real changes at a structural level, public policies and the full exercise of rights.   From an ant-racist approach, it seeks to create senses of brown identity with an agenda in various fields such as cultural management, law, communication, arts, cinema, social and political sciences.  

ESCENA POLÍTICA We are a group of performing artists from the City of Buenos Aires, an open space, without hierarchies or fixed roles. In 2015 we began to carry out actions to question and make visible dark areas of politics and the cultural production of the city. We call these actions “Iceberg”. During 2016 we held the Escena Política Transversal Congress. A space and time for collective meeting, cooperation and complicity, where we created other possibilities to perceive, think and experience our own political practices and artistic creation. The cultural emergency has been setting an agenda of resistance, and after four years of Macrism (Macri was the president ruling at the time), Escena Política comes together again during 2020 in the midst of a pandemic. This time, together with the collective Identidad Marrón and other artists and academics, we are working in relation to the structural racism that runs through Argentina. 

The pandemic has separated our bodies from each other in recent months and digitally multiplied them. More than ever, we are confronted with the digital representation of our counterpart and ourselves. “Open-ended encounters”, organized by the art platform Aarea from São Paulo, will focus on this phenomenon and develop a virtual space to experiment on the current forms of encounters with the Other.

« OPEN-ENDED ENCOUNTERS »

Open-ended Encounters reflects on the nature of encounters and the current forms of conviviality, which, over the last months, shifted almost entirely to the internet. How does it influence aesthetics and technology? Encounters are a potential trigger of the unpredictable, capable of affecting and transforming subjectivities; being open to others allows the imagining of new realities and worlds. Open-ended Encounters proposes to reflect on radical notions of otherness in association with distinct organisms, species, technologies, knowledges, departing from the desire of permeability informed by our recent collective experience of drastic social isolation. Open-ended Encounters is structured around live online sessions in which artists are invited to do presentations and performances that reflect on their relation with their research subjects and also the online format itself. The event will take place on an online platform/meeting place/work designed by O grupo inteiro on Open-ended Encounters.

Participating artists and researches: Chus Martínez & Vitória Cribb, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, O grupo inteiro, Ignacio Acosta & Ina Neddermeyer, Jorgge Menna Barreto, Jota Mombaça, Jup do Bairro, Luiza Crosman, Maya Minder, Orgie & El Plvybxy, pedro frança & Darks Miranda. Curated by aarea. Open-ended Encounters is a project of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and aarea in the context of the South America programme «COINCIDENCIA».

ABOUT AAREA

www.aarea.co is an online platform founded in 2017 by Livia Benedetti and Marcela Vieira to showcase artworks created specifically for the internet. Each edition presents a single project and the featured artists have all been challenged with creating a work whose only vehicle is the internet, most doing so for the first time. aarea’s activities extend beyond its website, in partnership with other institutions, promoting curatorial projects, seminars and public programs.

 

« PROGRAMMING »

FRIDAY
DECEMBER 4 

PREMIERE ON THE WEBSITE

GRAVITY
Creation: O Grupo Inteiro

Gravity is an online work under the weight of the sky. The weight that flies over our heads. The mineral concreteness of the dark clouds that hang in the air. The work presents, in real time, the average calculation of the material weight of airplanes that fly over global airspace. Gravity also functions as the mediation platform that hosts Open-ended Encounters activities.

More information:  OPEN-ENDED ENCOUNTERS 

PREMIERE ON INSTAGRAM
Between 4/12 and 11/12

The Tongue That Brightens the Planet
Creation: Chus MartÍnez and Vitória Cribb 

Story telling has become a fertile tool to create new relations between different discursive forms, but also a good pretext to fuel image production. After being introduced by common friends, Chus Martínez and Vitória Cribb decided to work together in a tale for Instagram. The production of a new art work demands many steps, the exchange of ideas, the beautiful process of creating possibilities and now, in this months driven by zoom meetings talking about content, and doing together is a relief. Still in the making The Tongue That Brightens the Planet is a story in images about the discovery of the language of all forms of life. A discovery that will challenge our relationship with nature forever.

More Information: Instagram 

SATURDAY
DECEMBER 5 

10 H [BR]
2 PM [CH]

YGRG170
Creation: DOROTA GAWęDA & EGLE KULBOKAITė

Young Girl Reading Group (YGRG) is a project by artist duo Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, which came into existence as an actual, weekly reading group in their Berlin (DE) flat in 2013. Since then, under this extended serial performative project the artists organized more than 160 reading groups and performances at various locations. YGRG started from a collective reading of texts which explore the intersections between gender, race, ability and technology. YGRG170 will read extracts from Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble and Ghostly Matters by Avery F. Gordon.

SIGN UP FOR THE FORM: YGRG170

11 H [BR]
3 PM [CH]

IBIRITAQUERA GHOST STONE 
CREATION: PEDRO FRANÇA & DARKS MIRANDA

IBIRITAQUERA GHOST STONE deals with ghosts of Brazil’s colonial historical past and questions the idea of progress and extractivist development that has prevailed throughout modern times. Monuments are questioned, as they are specters of our colonization process, of the sacrificed people, forest and animals, coming to the surface in an explosive movement. A wolf made of cloth wanders over a devastated earth. The stones are now disenchanted and something that was trapped inside them leaks. What lives inside the stones, what spirits? What’s left of carbonization, when we all become minerals? IBIRITAQUERA GHOST STONE tries to explode a monument as a constructive gesture, so that something is released.

14 H [BR]
6 PM [CH]

Weather report girl
CREATION: LUIZA CROSMAN

Weather report girl is a performance-video-lecture by Luiza Crosman in which the artist investigates the relationship between governance and the planetary scale. Taking advantage of the Zoom platform interface the performance takes place on two channels, allowing for a dialogue between two Luizas, the news anchor and the weather report girl. Both characters develop different scenarios regarding climate change governance and governance of planetary conditions.

16 H [BR]
8 PM [CH]

 WHAT HAS NO SPACE IS EVERYWHERE
CREATION: JOTA MOMBAÇA

The departing point for this study session is the conceptual and experiential framework of Jota Mombaça’s latest video production, WHAT HAS NO SPACE IS EVERYWHERE (2020). Namely, the problem of place-making in the diasporic experience, the tension between velocity and disintegration, and the paradox of black success in the global contemporary art system.

18 H [BR]
10 PM [CH]

TALLER DE MECÁNICAS
CREATION: ORGIE + EL PLVYBXY

At Centro de Arte MUNAR (Buenos Aires), Orgie will live stream a practice of musical decomposition and movement departing from the album Sinteticlube, by El Plvybxy. Orgie collective look for experimenting disarmament, instrumentalizing the deconstruction of listening systems. They propose sensory-auditory mechanics with African and Latin American rhythmic formulas. They propose to unhook and to continuing testing. Listen to the disengagement of limbs and organs. Transform the operation of colonized operations. A materialistic experiment on disarmament and restitution.

 

SUNDAY
DECEMBER 6 

11 H [BR]
3 PM [CH]

Archaeology of Sacrifice
CREATION: IGNACIO ACOSTA

Ignacio Acosta will present his film Archaeology of Sacrifice followed by a a conversation with the curator Ina Neddermeyer based on her recent essay The Beauty of Forensics to be published in the forhcoming catalogue of Archaeology of Sacrifice.

14 H [BR]
6 PM [CH]

Sterile Encounters
CREATION: MAYA MINDER

Maya Minder wil do a public lecture performance and a group workshop. During the pandemics of 2020 we are in times of warfare against invisibles agents. Creating a microphobic environment erases not only viruses but germs and microbes. Invisible ergo non- detectable by mere human senses, they are in the air that we breath, the surfaces we touch and the ground we stand on. Its an enduring and sisyphus like work to fight against microbial omnipresence, a perpetual work on keeping things sterile. The workshop will teach everything you have to know about creating sterile petri dishes inside your own kitchen lab. A participative hands-on experiment with easy materials found at home. Easy like cooking, you can grow your own microbiota from self-sampling the microbes that inhabit our screens and surfaces.

SIGN UP FOR THE FORM: Sterile Encounters

16 H [BR]
8 PM [CH]

Three-dimensional Taste
CREATION: JORGGE MENNA BARRETO

When Marcel Duchamp came up with the idea that there is an image that is not formed in the retina, he freed artists and their audience to imagine a way of seeing that is not attached to its central organ. That also opened a precedent for us to think of ways to dis_organ_ize other senses. Inspired by Duchamp, Three-dimensional Taste imagines how we can conceive a sense of taste that does not form in the mouth, but in the world, in close relationship with the landscape, in and out of our chewing cavity. Taste therefore gains ecological and complex proportions, as it is no longer limited to our taste buds. Such was the starting point for a collaborative process between Jorgge Menna Barreto, Lara Fuke and Rafael Spínola, which resulted in an animation that mixes modeling, drawing and sound design by Hugo Rocha.

18 H [BR]
10 PM [CH]

CREATION: JUP DO BAIRRO

A performance based on morning TV shows. 

        « BIO ARTISTS AND      COLECTIVES »

O grupo inteiro gathers different practices and repertoires in the fields of art, design, learning, architecture and technology. Based in São Paulo since 2014, the group has positioned itself as a crossroad. It thus seeks to multiply paths and establish conditions for public dialogues through political–aesthetic propositions informed by different networks, platforms and projects realized by its members (Carol Tonetti, Claudio Bueno, Ligia Nobre, Vitor Cesar) and allies. Our current research addresses multiple dimensions of infrastructure and its modes of operation regarding the dynamics of life and the Earth. O grupo inteiro has been working with diverse international cultural and academic institutions and collaborators.

Chus Martínez heads the Art Institute at the FHNW University of Art and Design in Basel. She is also the expedition leader of The Current, a project initiated by the TBA21 Academy (2018-2020). The Current also served as a source of inspiration for Art is the Ocean, a series of seminars and conferences at the Kunst Institut that examine the role of artists in conceiving a new experience of nature. Martínez leads a research project supported by the Muzeum Susch at the Institute for Art on the role of education, which promotes equal rights for women in art. Chus Martínez, born in Spain, has a background in philosophy and art history. Previously, she was chief curator at El Museo Del Barrio in New York. She took over the curatorial department of dOCUMENTA (13) (2012) and was a member of the Core Agent Group. Before that, she was occasionally chief curator at MACBA, Barcelona (2008–2011), director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005–2008) and artistic director of Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2002–2005). She curated the Catalan Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and the Cypriot Pavilion (2005). She also took part in the Istanbul Biennale (2015), Carnegie International (2010) and the São Paulo Biennale (2010). Martínez is also curator of TANK, the exhibition space of the Institut Kunst in Basel, where she oversees a number of specially commissioned exhibitions. Chus Martínez lectures regularly and publishes catalog texts and critical essays for the Artforum and numerous other international journals.

Vitória Cribb (b. 1996, Brazil) daughter of a Haitian father and Brazilian mother raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Student at Superior School of Industrial Design of State University of Rio de Janeiro, she is a new media designer and interdisciplinary artist who explores the convergence between the immateriality of new media with physical and tactile media. The artist seeks to bring multidisciplinarity in her artistic series by investigating the behavior of new visual technologies and their developments. The artist participated in the Possible Futures Online Residency Program with artistic direction and curation by Gabriela Maciel and co-curated by Yasmine Ostendorf at Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (May-July 2020); also participated in the Web Residency Program at OLHÃO space, São Paulo, Brazil (June 2020). Her work has been show in ZAZ10ts Gallery (NY, USA); Epicentre and WDWDN (The Wrong Biennale-2019); ACT “Beginning of the Century” Galeria Jaqueline Martins (São Paulo, Brazil); CADAF (MIAMI, USA); Art Core Festival (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil); Enneagram Festival de Cine Experimental (Córdoba, Argentina); installation ‘FastLine’ at ArtNight Festival London (Walthamstow Venue, UK); Lives of Net Art – Face Up Tate Exchange,Tate Modern Museum (London); at Valongo International Festival of Image – (Santos, Brasil).

Dorota Gawęda (b. 1986, PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (b. 1987, LT) are an artist duo based in Basel (CH). They work within a variety of media spanning performance, photography, installation, fragrance, sculpture and video. In their work, the duo explore artistic production through collaboration and search for aberrant media that lend themselves to creating speculative environments. Formally, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė explore incompleteness and linguistic ingraspability, apparent both in their approach to performance as in the sculptural objects and environments that they propose, offering ways to renegotiate our complex relationship to Nature – ecological system that we have historically defined as separate to ourselves, as outside. Gawęda and Kulbokaitė are also the founders of YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (2013-), an extended serial project under which they organized more than 150 reading groups and performances at a sustained pace and at various locations. Currently the duo are developing the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP digital archive, which will launch in April 2020, in collaboration with ARIEL- Feminisms in the Aesthetics, Copenhagen. Their past exhibitions include: Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (solo, 2020 and 2018); Fri Art – Centre d’Art de Fribourg / Kunsthalle Fribourg and Wallriss (solo, 2020); Futura, Prague (solo, 2019); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); Schimmel Projects – Art Centre Dresden (solo, 2019); Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (solo, 2019); Spazio Maiocchi, Milan (2018); 6th Athens Biennale (2018); Cell Project Space, London (solo, 2018); Baltic Triennial 13, SMC/Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2017); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2018); 6th Moscow Biennale For Young Art, MMOMA, Moscow (2018); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Mikro, Zurich, Switzerland (solo, 2017). Their upcoming solo exhibitions include: RYXPER1126AE, Trafo Gallery, Budapest (2020); horizontal vertigo, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2020); MOUTHLESS (DZIADY), On Curating Project Space, Zürich (2020).

Pedro França (b. Rio de janeiro, lives and works in Sao Paulo) is an artist and member of Ueinzz Theatre Group. He studied at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro between 2001 and 2005 and holds a Master Degree in Social History at PUC- Rio (Rio de Janeiro). Since 2011, pedro frança has been working as an artist in a variety of media, mainly paintings, installation and video. His work engages in schizo and metonymical rearrangements of images and objects, in both individual and collaborative practices. Among his main collective or individual exhibitions are: The Void Before (Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paulo, 2020), Marcantonio Vilaça Prize Exhibition (FAAP, São Paulo, 2019), AI-5 – It’s still not over (Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, 2018), -Don’t Judd me! I just arrived and there’s this Giant Ulcera among us (Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto, 2018), Sites of delirium (MAR, Rio de Janeiro, 2017), Frestas (SESC Triennial, São Paulo, 2017), Homeroadmovie (Centro Cultural Sao Paulo, São Paulo, 2012). Since the same year, moreover, frança has been a part of Ueinzz Theatre Group, a theatre collective which gathers people with all sorts of psychic experiences. With the group, has participated in the development and performance of the works Cais de Ovelhas (Noreadymademen) [2012-2015], Gravidade Zero (Zero Gravity) [2015-2017], and Mobedique HORS ACVE [2018-2019]. Finally, he was nominated for the PIPA Prize in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 and Marcantonio Vilaça Prize in 2019.

Darks Miranda is a mixture of auto-fiction and possession by uncontrollable obscure and comic forces, a slapstick entity from the shadows. It has made its first appearance when balancing fruits over its head while haunted by its ancestors — all of different but equally shady origins. From time to time, it emerges from the mute ruins of modernity, swagger-less, moving through layers of mud that concrete has gathered over the years. Working across video, performance, installation, photography and sculpture, Darks employs strategies of appropriation to display distorted versions of both Brazilian and Latin American imaginary, the feminine and the drag, the fetishist and the fruitful, sadness dressed as joy and vice versa. In dereference to the first “fruit-woman” Carmen Miranda, Darks goes through mass culture, starting from the middle of the twentieth century, passing through the different fruit-women (Brazilian mass media phenomena of the 2000’s) and lambada, flirting with post-pornography and animism while crossing references and images through montage. Darks has shown its work in spaces such as Galeria Ibeu, Capacete, Galeria Cavalo, Casa França-Brasil, Galeria A Gentil Carioca, Archive Kabinett (Berlin), Filmhuis Cavia (Amsterdam) and Tate Modern (London).

Luiza Crosman is an artist and cultural producer currently based in Brasil. Her work spans installations, speculative design, education and institutional dynamics with special interest in diagrammatic and infrastructural methodologies. Her main interests relate to contemporary infrastructure and governance, science fiction and abstraction. She has developed projects for Strelka Institute, 33rd São Paulo Biennial, Pivô, São Francisco Moma, Wiels, KW amongst others. Between 2014 and 2017 she directed the project space casamata, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is also a founding member of the educational platform BLOCC (Building Leverage Over Creative Capitalism), developed during the SommerAkademie Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland.

Jota Mombaça (Brazil) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work derives from poetry, critical theory and performance. The sonic and visual matter of words plays an important role in their practice, which often relates to anti-colonial critique and gender disobedience. Through performance, visionary fiction and situational strategies of knowledge production, they intend to rehearse the end of the world as we know it and the figuration of what comes after we dislodge the Modern-Colonial subject off its podium.

ORGIE – Organización Grupal de Investigaciones Escénicas – was born in 2016 as a group of scenic action that investigates the forces that operate in the production of contemporary subjectivity. Diarios del Odio (2017), on the homonymous collection of poems by Roberto Jacoby and Syd Krochmalny, was their first stage creation. It was followed by Pasadas de Sexo y Revolución (2018), a show of the political-sexual imagination of activism and a public party. ORGIE also organizes scenic and political training cycles such as Strange Formations and Entrenar la fiesta.

Ignacio Acosta is a Chilean-born, London-based artist and researcher working with photography and film, in places made vulnerable through the exploitation of ecologies by colonial intervention and intensive capitalisation. He works with interconnected research projects that involve extensive fieldwork, investigative analysis, audio-visual documentation and critical writing on sites and materials of symbolic significance. Acosta focuses upon resistance to extractivist industrial impact on valuable natural environments and, through technologies of seeing, he develops work towards the generation of meaningful visual narratives. His work as an artist is situated within the urgent need for artistic approaches to address critically the depleted landscapes created by mining. Recent exhibitions include: Archaeology of Sacrifice, Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, Germany (2020); Human Nature, Västerbottens Museum, Sweden (2020); Tales from the Crust, Arts Catalyst, London, England (2019); Drones y Tambores, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile (2019); Litte ja Goabddá; Ájtte Museum, Jokkmokk, Sweden (2019); Tierra, CDAN / Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Huesca, Spain (2019); Game of Drones, Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, Germany (2019); Drone Vision, Hasselblad Centre, Göteborg, Sweden (2018); Mapping Domeyko, Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland (2018); Copper Geographies, National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, England (2017); Traffiking the Earth, MAC, Museo Arte Contemporáneo, Chile (2017).

Ina Neddermeyer studied art history, political science and philosophy in Berlin and Florence. After her scientific traineeship at the Kunstpalais in Erlangen, she was the curator of the municipal collection Erlangen from 2013 to 2016. In 2014, she also held the position of acting director of the Kunstpalais in Erlangen. She has been curator and head of the art department at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen since 2016. Ina Neddermeyer curated numerous exhibitions, including solo exhibitions on Peter Land, Reynold Reynolds, Otto Dix, Marta Hoepffner and Willi Baumeister as well as the group exhibitions #catcontent, Thicker than Water. Family Concepts in Contemporary Art, Brave New Worlds. Virtual Realities in Contemporary Art and Game of Drones. Of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Maya Minder, based in Zurich, activist and artist, researches the importance of microbes for daily life. Her work is about cultivating communities and culinary delights. Fermenting and the focus on the human microbiome plays a key role in this process and she often uses the term of Social Fermentation. Similar to the concept of culture, which has its roots in an agricultural context and now encompasses concepts related to knowledge, values and civilisation, the concept of social fermentation, describes a metabolic process such as the chemical transformation of sugar into acids, refers as well to social phenomena of agitation and uprising. Several awards and nominations Kadist Award, Pro Helvetia Werkbeitrag, Pax Award, as well exhibited in local and international visual and performing art contexts: Ars Electronica, AEGardens2020, Piksel Spill Fest, Norway, Kunsthalle Zurich, Swiss, Klöntal Triennale, Swiss, Food Culture Days, Swiss.

Jorgge Menna Barreto, Ph.D. is a Brazilian artist and educator, whose practice and research have been dedicated to site-specific art for over 20 years. In 2014, he did a postdoctorate at UDESC, Brazil, to study relations between site-specific art and agroecology, centring around agroforestry. He is now working on a second postdoctoral research at LJMU, England, which will lead to the work he will present at the Liverpool Biennial in 2021. Menna Barreto has engaged in multiple art residencies, projects and exhibitions worldwide. In 2016, he participated in the 32 São Paulo Biennial, where he showed his award-winning project Restauro: a restaurant set up to work out a complex system of environmental restoration in collaboration with settlements of the landless people movement [MST]. The project travelled to the Serpentine Galleries in London in 2017, where the artist worked with a wild edibles expert, a botanical illustrator and local organic growers. In 2020, as a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Netherlands, he launched a periodic called Enzyme, created in collaboration with his partner Joélson Buggilla. Since 2015, Menna Barreto has been a professor at the Art Department of UERJ, Rio de Janeiro, and will join the Art Department and MFA in Environmental Art and Social Practice of the University of California Santa Cruz in 2021.

Jup do Bairro is a multiartist. In mid 2007, Jup do Bairro found in the arts the possibility of externalizing her experiences. She has been working as an educator, speaker, styling, actress, singer, performer and event producer, all in a self-taught way and always bringing narratives that cross her transvestite, black, fat and peripheral body. In recent years, Jup do Bairro has collaborated with her musical partner and great friend Linn da Quebrada, inside and outside Brazil. In addition to developing her solo career, Jup is also a presenter, alongside Linn da Quebrada, of the TransMission TV show on Canal Brasil channel. In 2020 Jup launched the EP CORPO SEM JUÍZO, with BADSISTA’s musical direction and feats. by Deize Tigrona, Rico Dalasam, Linn da Quebrada and Mulambo.

Chile’s population wants a new constitution and more participation in political processes. The webinar, held by Chile’s largest cultural center, the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral, reframes how cultural institutions need to collaborate and work together in a different future: How can cultural participation take place? What future is being built by a new generation of politically engaged artists? What role should art and culture play as central collaborators for democratic processes? 

« CO PRACTICES »
 principles and challenges for

(co) munities
(co) mmitment and
(co) llaboration

PRESENTATION

The seminar will be structured around Provocations: brief 30 to 40 minute talks that inspire the participants regarding a specific topic. They aim to bring new ideas by detonating lines of thought or innovative examples in the field. Conversations will also promote discussions between different cultural agents.

The entire seminar will have English and Spanish subtitles. The panel on December 9th will also have a Chilean sign language interpreter. The most important points of the provocations and panels will be summarized in real time through the graphic illustrations of “Keep Ideas”.

Registration is free at www.gam.cl
This seminar is possible thanks to the support of Pro Helvetia.

 

« PROGRAMMING »

DAY 1. (CO)MUNITIES
December 9

Different groups meet and recognizing in themselves different common values, making them a community. This leads to common activism around themes such as inclusion.

10.00 HRS. (CL/BR)
2 PM. (CH)

Opening ceremony at Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center
Words by a Representative of Pro- Helvetia

10:15 HRS. (CL/BR)
2:15 PM (CH)

PROVOCATION:

THE DECLARATION OF THE MANY (DIE VIELEN), Germany
Philine Rinnert and Raul Walch

The association of the Many is a collaborative articulation composed of various cultural organizations that met in 2017, and works to strengthen opportunities for communication and action between artists, spaces and agents within the performing arts. They articulate political activism by promoting theater and creation as a means of building a diverse society. They promote a creative space without censorship, made up by people of all colors, genders, sexual orientations, needs for inclusion, as well as all religion or non-religions realities and, above all, based on equality.

12 HRS. (CL/BR)
4 PM (CH)

[CO]NVERSATION:

Francisco Medina and Francisca Guerra, Inclusive Residence GAM (Chile) and THEATER HORA PROJECT (Switzerland)

The GAM Digital Inclusive Residence, “Creative Contagion”, proposes a new methodology of residency experience with artists with disabilities, appropriating the ideas of dance / inclusion / community and adapting the concept of “contagion” to a single instance. This residency works with the idea of ​​the creative community, encompassing non-professional performing artists to award-winning film directors, marking a shift in the social model in which we face the idea of ​​disability. It is a 2020 digital GAM project.

 

Day 2. (CO)MMITMENT
December 10

The arts commitment is addressed in multiple dimensions including the political one. On the international day of human rights, we revisit the artists’ gaze on how creative processes affect the political fabric of their contexts and territories.

10 HRS. (CL/BR)
2 PM. (CH)

PROVOCATION:

Collective Las Tesis (Chile)

12 HRS. (CL/BR)
4 PM (CH)

[CO]NVERSATION:

Lola Arias, Theater Director
Marco Layera, Theater Director, Chile
Wallmapu Ex Situ: Aldir Polymeris and Jose Cáceres Mardones

 

DAY 3. (CO)LLABORATION
December 11

Faced with adverse scenarios, organizations look into collaboration strategies that develop new models and perspectives to enhance their work. The innovation proposals on these methods will be key in the process of a joint construction.

10 HRS. (CL/BR)
2 PM. (CH)

PROVOCATION:

Lala Deheinzelin (Brazil)

12 HRS (CL/BR)
4 PM (CH)

[CO]NVERSATIONS

RESO, Swiss Dance Network:
Boris Brüderlin, Director
Simona Travaglianti, project manager

NODO ARTES VIVAS (Chile)
María José Cifuentes, Chile
Francisca Peró Gubler, Chile

 

 « BIOS ARTISTS AND COLECTIVES »

Raul Walch [Germany] Visual artist living and working in Berlin. He studied sculpture at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and at the University of the Arts Berlin. He was a fellow at the Institut für Raumexperimente, and has exhibited internationally at various venues. As an activist, Walch is a board member of the initiative Die Vielen e.V. (The Many) and the Berlin artists’ association, BBK. He currently teaches at the international MFA-Program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies”, at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

Philine Rinnert[ Germany] Studied stage design at the University of Art Berlin and the Theatre Academy of St Petersburg. She works as a freelance stage designer and artist for different directors and theatres, amongst them Hebbel am Ufer Berlin (HAU). Beside her theatre work, she creates site-specific projects and installations. In 2017, she cofounded the association DIE VIELEN (The Many) in Berlin.

Francisco Medina (Chile) Actor, director, researcher and performing arts teacher. He is one of the founders of the Compañía Teatro Niño Proletario and founder of the Compañía MANADA, pioneer in the investigation of dance projects for early childhood and the use of new technologies in Chile. In 2020 he was selected by the Mustakis Foundation and NAVE Creation Center as Resident Artist for the Grant of said foundation, and started the first Creative Residency at the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center, implementing a creative proposal for artists with disabilities, musical composers and film directors.

Francisca Guerra (Chile) Third-year student in dance interpretation at the University of the Americas. She participated in the cycle “Intelligence Body”, held on September 28 2019, in which she took part in a performance in honor of the national choreographer Carmen Beuchat, where she presented the final version of the work “The moon is a witness”. She participated in the reassembly of the work, for the “Peñiko” performing arts festival in Villa Grimaldi. Due to spinal correction surgeries, Guerra has a metal brace along her entire back, as is the only student with a motor disability in her professional career.

Lola Arias [Argentina] Writer, theater and film director and performer. Her works crosses the borders between fiction and reality. She wrote and directed outstanding works such as “My Life After” (2009), “Minefields” (2016) and “Atlas des Kommunismus” (2016), many of them in co-production with theaters and international organizations. In Chile, she premiered “El año en que nací” (2012), based on the biographies of young Chileans born during the dictatorship. She has worked in collaboration with different artists from different parts of the world and her texts, such as stories, poems and scripts, have been translated into more than seven languages and are presented at festivals around the world.

Marco Antonio Layera (Chile) Theater director, teacher and playwright. He studied law and specialized in criminology. His theatrical training was carried out at El Teatro Escuela La Matriz and at Escuela Teatro Imagen. In 2008 he founded the company La Re-sentida, of which he is the Artistic Director, staging various projects including “Landscapes to not Color” (in Production with GAM). His work has been presented in thirty countries and on over a hundred international stages. In his shows, he assumes impudence, the desecration of taboos and reflection from provocation as a duty, relegating a great political responsibility to theatrical creation and understanding himself as an instrument of criticism, reflection and construction.

Lala Deheinzelin (Brasil) systematized a methodology that combines studies of the Future with New Economies (Creative, Shared, Collaborative and Multicurrency) to satisfy the needs of the market and the 21st century society. She analyzes processes, available resources and knowledge between interest groups with a four-dimensional vision: cultural, environmental, social and financial. During 2020 she has been working hand in hand with ten cultural organizations from Chile defined under a performing arts hub (NODO) that has been working with this system in a collaborative mechanism.

THEATER HORA

Theater HORA (Switzerland) was founded in 1993 with the aim of making theater with people with disabilities, mainly for artistic reasons and in order to contribute to the scene, rather than as a therapy process. They work with renowned artists from the Swiss community as well as international.

Presenters:

Yanna Rüger (Switzerland) Actress, curator, teacher and independent manager. She studied acting in a bachelor’s and master’s degree at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK. In 2012 and 2013 she was engaged in the acting studio at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. From 2013 to 2016 Rüger was a permanent member of the ensemble at Theater Neumarkt Zurich, and acted in the collectives “Andcompany & Co”and “Das Helmi”. She is the initiator and artistic director of the collective “Infinite Cooperation”. From 2018 to 2020 she co-directed and curated the Zentral Bühnen for the Zürcher Theater Spektakel. Since summer 2020 she has been working as artistic co-director at Theater HORA – Stiftung Zueriwerk. She also teaches the Feldenkrais Method in individual and group classes.

Ivna Žic (Switzerland) She studied applied theater studies, theater directing and dramatic writing in Giessen, Hamburg and Graz. Since 2011 she has been working as a freelance writer, lecturer and director at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Schauspielhaus Vienna, Lucerne Theater, Theater Neumarkt, Schauspiel Essen, HKB Bern, Goethe University Frankfurt and other theatres and art schools. Žic has received numerous scholarships and prizes for her work as a playwright. Since 2020 she is part of the new directorial team at Theater HORA-Stiftung Züriwerk in Zurich/Switzerland. She is co-director of the HORA Labor, which she joined in 2012.

LAS TESIS

Collective Las Tesis (Chile) is an artistic, interdisciplinary and feminist collective by women from Valparaíso, Chile, made up of Daffne Valdés Vargas, Paula Cometa Stange, Lea Cáceres Díaz and Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem. The collective dedicates itself to the disseminating of feminist theory through performances; specifically, through an interdisciplinary language that combines the performing arts, sound, graphic and textile design, history and social sciences. With their work, they seek to translate the theses of feminist authors into visual, sound and physical stimuli, configuring a device for multiple audiences. Part of their work has included specifically reviewing the approaches of Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato, resulting, among other processes, in the renowned street intervention “Un violador en tu camino”, replicated in more than fifty countries. They are among the hundred most influential people according to Times Magazine 2020.

WALLMAPU EX SITU

Wallmapu ex situ is a virtual project transmitted over Zoom that bases its research reference on indigenous ontologies and Bruno Latour’s “Parliament of Things.” In the project, representatives of human and non-human actors from Switzerland and Chile meet in order to reflect on their common history and their interdependencies within the Wallmapu.

Presenters:

Aldir Polymeris (Chile and Switzerland) Video artist and performer, who has lived between Chile and Switzerland. After a year of anthropology studies at the University of Concepción (Chile), he studied art, artistic mediation and art history, in Bern, at the High School of Art, the Pedagogical Institute and the Institute of Art History, respectively. Aldir is co-artistic director of Trop Cher to Share, and co-founder of the Schwobhaus house-workshop. Aldir was recently appointed as member to the Art Commission of the City of Bern.

Jose Cáceres Mardones (Chile and Switzerland) Independent historian and curator, teacher and researcher of Latin American history and postcolonial studies at the University of Zurich.

RESO, Swiss Dance Network

RESO was created in 2006 as a continuation of a unique process, where the Swiss dance scene came together to fight for better conditions and social recognition of dance as an artistic discipline. This network coordinates local and national initiatives. We will learn more about the Programmers Fund and the Young Audiences Fund. Programs where each year, RESO members select dance projects for co-production.

Presenters:

Boris Brüderlin (Director) Brüderlin studied literature, theater, history and aesthetics of cinema at the Universities of Lausanne, Bern and Berlin, as well as dramaturgy at the University of Music and Theater in Leipzig. He worked as assistant director at the Luzerner Theater and at the Théâtre Vidy -Lausanne. Administrator and playwright of various theater and dance companies, notably in Kaserne Basel, Gessnerallee Zürich and Dampfzentrale Berne, he directed the Treibstoff Theatertage Basel from 2010 to 2013, before being appointed director of dance, theater and culture for young people within the Department of Culture of the Canton of Basel-City. He has been in charge of RESO since August 2016.

Simona Travaglianti (project manager) She studied performing arts, history and aesthetics of cinema and art history at the Universities of Bern and Lausanne. In 2013, she received her doctorate from the Bern Institute for Theater Studies with the interdisciplinary work “Spaces in Situation”. She has held various positions within the framework of the University and Secondary Schools of Art (assistant, teacher, scientific collaborator). For festivals and dance shows, she has carried out mediation formats, such as accompanying workshops, presentations and encounters with artists, and has participated in productions as a freelance dance playwright. She is a member of the jury for the Swiss Dance Awards of the Federal Office for Culture. Since 2019, she has been a project manager within RESO.

NODO ARTES VIVAS (CHILE)

NODO ARTES VIVAS (Chile) The performing arts hub (NODO) is created through a CORFO project in order to find mechanisms of common initiatives between ten cultural projects working with dance, theatre and visual arts organizations in Chile. The common objective is the internationalization of artists and services. This experience will present the project, as well as the new learnings and challenges that the NODO has encountered in its process of collaboration.

Presenters

María José Cifuentes (Chile) PHD Candidate in History and Master in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture. Historian, teacher, researcher, manager and curator in the field of performing arts. She has participated as a programmer and curator in festivals in Europe and Latin America, also conducting conferences in various countries. Author of several books dedicated to dance, she is also a member and curator of different national and international organizations. She is currently Artistic and Executive Director at NAVE, a center for creation and residence in Santiago, Chile.

Francisca Peró Gubler (Chile) Bachelor of Humanities and actress, with studies at the UCLA School of Acting. Since 2017 she has been acting as executive director of the Biobío Theater, in the city of Concepción, a cultural space inaugurated in March 2018 as the largest stage in Chile. A teacher and programmer of festivals, cultural centers and performing arts markets, she collaborated in the coordination of international programming for GAM in various projects including: GAM off Buenos Aires, GAM Nordic dance cycle and Diminuto Circus tour to Australia 2016, financed with a DIRAC fund.