Artist in Residence, RAUN 2016, Workshop, Performative and Ritual Action.
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.
Within the hallowed halls of the MITAV Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Theater and Live Arts at the National University of Colombia, we embarked on a journey into the heart of festivity. Laughter became our militant weapon, resistance our creed, disobedience our battle cry, trance our cosmic channel, and transcending our ultimate goal.
Through intense exercises in performative action and ritual, we joined hands with the spirited students, nurturing an aesthetic-political practice. Celebration was our compass, leading us to explore the realms of joy as we immersed ourselves in play, humor, and the sensual language of the body. We reveled in pleasure, danced to the rhythm of our souls, and communed through emotions, forging profound connections with our fellow travelers.
With ‘la fiesta’ as our guiding star, we dived into its rich tapestry of rituals, gestures, and symbolic objects. It became our grammar, our language of resistance. Here, we formulated our unique political project – a performance of ecstasy, a sanctuary for our deepest emotional states.
Our quest was to unleash the dormant, reveal the hidden, and manifest the latent aspects of our society. It was an expedition to disrupt the mundane, to spark a revolution in the everyday. The ‘corro’ and the sonorous body became our tools, our conduits for emotional contagion, transmitting our fervor to all who would listen.
We drew inspiration from Daniela Lucena’s profound text, «Strategy of Joy,» and the archives of the «Losing the Human Form: A Seismic Image of the 1980s in Latin America» exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Spain. These resources paved the way for our second ritual-festive exercise, which delved into the trance as a grammar of its own.
Militancy, resistance, disobedience, trance, and transcending – these elements now pulse within our creative beings. Together, we have birthed a manifesto of joy, a declaration of the human spirit’s boundless capacity to transcend the ordinary and transform the world through festivity and art. We have danced with ‘la fiesta,’ and in its wild embrace, we have found our true selves.
