Plataforma Berlin 2024

SurReal: Latin American Communities in Berlin

Networking gathering with actors from the independent performing arts of the diaspora in Berlin organized together with LAFT/PAP

In recent years, in Europe -including Berlin-, especially since the irruption of the last wave of feminisms and the Ni una Menos movement, and the rise of intersectional discourses, it is increasingly common to find festivals and/or programs that seek to establish a dialogue with Abyayala, known as Latin America. Now, how does this dialogue take place? How are the protagonists of the community involved or tokenized? What works and artists are part of the programs and how are they contextualized? Who is in charge, what are the power structures and how is curatorship carried out? what is the limit between the real interest (research and commitment) and the trend (extractive of bodies and knowledge)? How do these dynamics affect the distribution of works and the creation of community?

PLATAFORMA BERLIN has proposed since its inception in 2011 to provide a space, a platform, that allows us to reflect on these issues with a decolonial gaze. With the Performing Arts Programm we also proposed to open the dialogue in a meeting held last year. This summer we decided to join forces again. We invited, within the framework of the festival activities, to discuss these and other questions, to meet and share experiences and concerns with artists, managers and cultural workers of the performing arts of the Abya Yala diaspora in Berlin. This is the opening to the performances and installations of the festival that will take place from August 1 to 4.

With Jimena Soria (producer, Constanza Makras/Dorky Park), Sharon Mercado Nogales (performer, choreographer), Shantí Vera (curator, choreographer, manager, CUATROXCUATRO), Bárbara Santos (dramaturge, actress). Moderation: Martha Hincapié Charry (Curator, choreographer, performer, director Festival Plataforma) and Belén Marinato (The Berlin Performing Arts Program).

Das Performing Arts Programm Berlin ist ein Programm des LAFT Berlin – Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin e. V. Das Performing Arts Programm – Performing Arts im Fokus (PAP-PAFO) wird gefördert durch das Land Berlin – Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt und aus Mitteln des Europäischen Fonds für Regionale Entwicklung (EFRE), „Stärkung des Innovationspotentials in der Kultur III (INP III)“.

© Cirilli

Every war brings us closer to darkness
standing
in the middle of a coal volcano
in the midst of uncertainty
in the middle of a conflict
every war separates us from humanity
and brings us closer to death
and in death
in violent death
there is no light.

Today, several European states are facing gas shortages imposed by the current energy, geopolitical and humanitarian crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many of them have announced the extension or reopening of coal-fired power plants that were shut down in response to climate change issues. At the end of June 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition allowed to restart of 27 coal-fired power plants until March 2024; the German government is not the only one to make this difficult decision: Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and France have announced their intent to extend or restart power plants that were shut down, in an attempt to get through the next few months safely. Experts underline how the choice has to be considered occasional, but nonetheless, everyone is aware of such choice’s seriousness.

The relationship with coal has marked the history of the European continent, which until the end of World War II was the main source of energy, only to be gradually and slowly set aside in favor of more environmentally sustainable materials, primarily gas. In the current war crisis, Russia's substantial monopoly in the European gas market means that the Kremlin is in a position to use its resources in this regard as an instrument of political pressure on governments. Governments are now trying to rush into the development of alternative solutions, including the reactivation of coal-fired power plants. Parallel to the link with current events, coal represents, both literally and symbolically, forms of exploitation of the world's natural resources and populations–as underpaid, when not enslaved, workforce–that do not defer to the present geopolitical contingency, but which have distinguished the attitude of extractive capitalism for centuries.

On the occasion of the invitation from PAV, Regina José Galindo developed a new performance titled Charcoal to Light the Fire / Return to Coal; we see is a woman imprisoned in coal up to her neck. She’s a prisoner, a prey of the current situation, of this necessary, forced return to the past. Next to her, a man is working, throwing more coal into the mountain that gets bigger, and bigger, until the coal surrounds and invades everything. The man throws more coal and continues to work in the midst of chaos, in the midst of conflict. Like most of us, he can’t stop working: working while the war continues, while a gas cut is imminent, while the return to coal is a fact.

Commissioned and produced by PAV Torino, Italy 2022

https://www.reginajosegalindo.com/

© Claudio Rincón

LEIB is an investigation that places the body as the first territory of sensitive thought and sensitive encounter with the other, with the world. It unfolds on a map that inhabits four questions: what can a body do?; what does a body desire?; what can a body withstand? what does a body forget? These questions weave between the abstraction of Spinoza and Nietzsche and the tangible dimension related to the knowledge cultivated by members of collectives of searchers of missing persons in Mexico, a knowledge that dissolves the borders between empirical, mystical and metaphysical experience and science; between intuition and technique, between presentiment and knowledge. LEIB is a CONJURO that finds in artistic practice the ideal territory for growth, it tries to summon polyvocal and collective corporealities that whisper with the wind, with dreams, with the night, with trees and flowers, with the sun; it finds in dance the vital place where another world is possible or, at least, the way to perceive it and relate to it. LEIB is CONJURO for all the people who have disappeared to return home.

Concept, choreography and direction: Melissa Herrada and Shantí Vera
Art direction: Arturo Lugo from Tun Project
Light design: Melissa Herrada and Jésica Elizondo
Dramaturgie: Sendic Vázquez
Sound dramaturgie: Manuel Estrella and Fermín Martínez
Photo: Paulina Cervantes / Maremoto Producciones
Video: Fernando Frías/ Maremoto Producciones
Production: Centro de las Artes de Playas de Rosarito, Danza UNAM, Centro Cultural Helénico, Fabrik Potsdam, Programa MEGA del Sistema de Apoyos a la Creación y Proyectos Culturales (SACPC) & Cuatro X Cuatro.

https://www.cuatroxcuatro.org/

Photo: Sleep Now In The Fire, Still.

The short film directed by Todd Tourso explores the concept of liberation theology and was inspired by Tourso’s work with Rage Against The Machine. Christianity is a source of hope, strength, and identity for a large part of the world’s population and its iconography changed the art, beliefs and traditions of many native cultures. Western religion is also one of the greatest tools of oppression. The Crusades were the blueprint for the colonization of the Americas. “Sleep Now In The Fire” reframes the archetypal story of a suffering God resurrected, into a metaphor for the liberation of the poor and politically oppressed. Shot on location in Tlalnepantla, Desierto de los Leones, Nezahualcoyotl, Chimalhuacan, and Playa Chacalacas during the summer of 2022; The film is a visual meditation on death, rebirth, and resilience.

LA-based Todd Tourso is an USA director, filmmaker and art director.

https://www.instagram.com/toddtourso

Photo: Reciprocal Sacrifice, Still.

Caycedo’s film, Reciprocal Sacrifice, takes viewers on the journey of a salmon seeking to return to its spawning grounds in the Sawtooth Mountains. The salmon narrates the challenges it faces as it swims upstream and tells of the heating of the water in the lakes, creeks and rivers in the Snake River Basin. With voiceovers by members of the Nez Perce Tribe, viewers learn of the salmon’s generosity in sustaining people and ecosystems over generations. Caycedo writes, “this performative generosity is at the core of regional indigenous survival, their 20th-century fight for fishing rights and self-governance…. The film looks to highlight the cosmological story concerning self-sacrifice, generosity, love and gratitude enjoining us to care for salmon-human relations and inviting humans to take the turn to self-sacrifice in order to save the salmon relative.”

© Constanza Bravo

“Ren" A vast world is reflected in the dark inner life. It is the first piece of the research project "Cancelled Futures" by choreographer, performer, and dancer Valentina Wong. This work is presented as a choreographic exercise and a mobile sculptural installation, emerging from a futuristic imagination of the cyborg body. It uses the collection and investigation of both movements and objects as a medium, together forming a kind of armor.
The piece proposes the creation of a "new being" formed by layers of different bodies and internal and external architectures, seeking life through movement. In its exploration, it challenges and investigates the material and symbolic capacities of an exobody.
The concept of "Ren" emerged through dialogues, speculations, and fiction about possible futures, imagining a future where cyborg resilience prevails and adaptation to new environments through material modifications is possible. It claims the right to imagine a mestizo future where new identities and entities can take place, and where material and immaterial bodies coexist.
By invoking ancestries of the future, "Ren" installs itself in the present as a fleeting apparition in the vast spiral of time and space..

Concept, Choreography and Performance: Valentina Wong
Concept and Costume: Andres Benjamin Salazar
Photography: Constanza Bravo
Light Designer: Nicolas Russi
Music: Éliane Radigue L’Île re-sonante
Flyer: Felipe Galleguillos

https://www.instagram.com/vwvwvw.2

© Christian Altdorfer

Take a look at me and tell me what you see. You don’t have to love me but l am not your enemy. They never talk positive; their words are full of parasites sucking people’s minds and poisoning them with hatred. Walk in good ways to have long days. If you feel what you are doing is right then why do you hide behind a mask? Why then do you hate and turn your attention to a little guy who points from the sideline. For sure, power doesn’t change who you are but it reveals who you are. Be very careful with that you are preaching? We are not stupid nor your fools clearly, we have been to school.

Choreography & Direction & Performance: SoKo ‘Mclntosh pedzisai jerahuni’
Music: Leonard Bernstein, Greg Haines, Peter Broderick, McIntosh Jerahuni, Zonke Family
Voice overs: President Robert Mugabe, President Donald Trump and Former President Barrack Obama
Costume: SoKo ‘McIntosh pedzisai jerahuni’
videography: SkyNews, BBC
Duration: 30minutes

(*) Credited support from company nora chipaumire

https://www.instagram.com/mcintoshpedzisai/