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21/4/2010

Carlos Motta

Hebbel am Ufer - HAU 1, Berlin

Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) is pleased to present "Six Acts: An Experiment in Narrative Justice" and "The Good Life," two video installations by Carlos Motta, in the framework of the festival "Libertad y Desorden / Freedom and Disorder - Young Art from Colombia." Both works are part of the artist's ongoing "Democracy Cycle," a series of projects that inquire into the concept of democracy from different social and political perspectives.

Set against the current presidential election campaign in Colombia, "Six Acts: An Experiment in Narrative Justice" (2010), which is being shown at HAU for the fist time, is based on a series of performative actions in public squares in Bogotá. Six actors of different social and ethnic backgrounds read peace speeches originally delivered by six Colombian liberal and left-wing political leaders who were assassinated in the last 100 years because of their ideology. These performative 'acts' focused on the need to remember the systematic elimination of voices that have dared to oppose the ruling order by articulating their differing points of view and that have denounced by name those responsible for Colombia's repetitive history of political corruption and violence. Drawing upon the notion of 'narrative justice;' that is, justice from the perspective of an aesthetic experience instead of a normative concept, this work offers an exercise of collective memory to underscore its transformative potential.

For "The Good Life" (2005-2008) Carlos Motta recorded over 400 video interviews with civilians on the streets of twelve cities in Latin America. The questions he asked, on individual perceptions of democracy, US foreign policy, leadership, and social inequality, resulted in a wide spectrum of opinion, which varies according to local situations and forms of government in each country. Arranged in an open structure that evokes a classical space for the exercise of democracy, these conversations shed light on the effects of political intervention and the public perception of political concepts on the formation of national and individual subjectivities. http://www.la-buena-vida.info

Carlos Motta (b. Bogotá, Colombia, 1978) is a New York-based artist whose work has been presented in solo exhibitions at PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and Fundación Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá amongst others. His upcoming and past group exhibitions include: To the Arts, Citizens!, Serralves Museum, Porto; The Politics of Art, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Geography of Trans-territories, San Francisco Art Institute; X Biennale de Lyon; Biennale Cuvée, OK Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz; The Greenroom, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; Soft Manipulation, Casino Luxembourg; and Democracy in America, Creative Time, New York. Carlos Motta was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2008.

About "Libertad y Desorden / Freedom and Disorder - Young Art from Colombia"

The slogan of the Colombian State displayed on its flag reads "Libertad y Orden", Freedom and Order. This appears to be sarcastic, given the country's historical disorder. Artist Fernando Arias has produced a series of "representative" objects with the emblem "Libertad y Desorden," Freedom and Disorder – his work was HAU's source for the title of the Colombia focus, which aims to present and discuss the way in which young artists reflect on the everyday life, the political circumstances and the maelstrom of violence in their country.

The festival will feature dance, theatre, performance, film and visual art installations from Mapa-Teatro, Tino Fernández, Teatro Petra, Juan Aldana and many others.

"Libertad y Desorden" is sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung and the Goethe-Institut

"The only danger in this country: You will not want to leave again" is what last year a commercial for tourism in Colombia told the globetrotters in the rest of the world. But even if the Uribe-administration has declared a normal state, Colombia’s beauty, diversity and vitality are still being overshadowed by a 100 year old circle of violence, drug trafficking, mass expulsions and kidnappings. Briefly put it’s a civil war where all parties – guerilla, paramilitary, the official military and politics – seem to have hopelessly compromised, to a lasting damage among the civilian population.

The Colombian State’s slogan figuring on the flag says "Libertad y Orden", Freedom and Order. This appears to be sarcastic given the country’s historical disorder. The artist Fernando Arias has produced a series of "representative" objects with the emblem "Libertad y Desorden" – his work was HAU’s source concerning the title of the Colombia-focus, which aims to present and discuss how young artists reflect on the everyday life, the political circumstances and the maelstrom of violence in their country. How much abstraction is possible, how much actionism is necessary when elementary democratic and civic mechanisms are being questioned? However we will also take a closer look at the more subtle effects of the Colombian state of war. It treads on the right to personal freedom and unfolding and demolishing families and corporate feelings. What we will see is a revolt against these destructive interventions into private life and social order, as well as the Colombian people’s admirable capacity to celebrate, to form freedom, to call for peace. They do so with their feet, voices, bodies, heads and hearts.

The festival will feature dance, theatre, performance, film and visual art installations from Mapa-Teatro, Tino Fernández, Teatro Petra, Juan Aldana and many others.

22 april until 1 may 2010

Premiere
LOS SANTOS INOCENTES / Das Fest der Unschuldigen Kinder
Director: Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden / Mapa-Teatro
22 until 24 April
Mapa-Teatro, founded 25 years ago, is one of Colombia’s most renowned groups, and at the same time an alternative cultural centre at the heart of Bogotá, where political activity and artistic practice cross with each other. The directing duo not only places emphasis on visual, poetical productions, but also on documentary productions. On stage they are showing political developments and complexities by means of video and musical-scenic installations.
"Los Santos Inocentes" is being produced in co-production with HAU, referring to the "Festival of Innocent Children" on 28 December in Guapi. This town is located in the Pacific region of Cauca, which guerilla, paramilitary and government fiercely fight for and which is mainly inhabited by Afro-Colombians. The people there have witnessed systematic expulsions of the local farmers, as well as intimidations through individual executions or massacres. Originally it was a Catholic festival recalling the child murder of Bethlehem. Throughout the centuries it changed to become more carnival-like in Spain and Latin America, and in Guapi it seems to have transformed into a ritualised coming-to-terms with the experiences of the cruel civil war: men with grotesque masks, often disguised as women, slash their whips at everything they encounter in the streets. Women gather to hunt men as an ‘end-of-the-year revenge’. "No festival without an enemy" is the motto of the Santos Inocentes Day in Guapi.
Fiction and reality, truth and lie, festival and massacre: Mapa-Teatro explores the region’s musical traditions and imageries, mixing marimba sounds and evocations of spirits with the voluntary self-accusations of brutal paramilitaries, the most recent testimonies of war from Colombia.

LA BUENA VIDA/THE GOOD LIFE & SIX ACTS
Video Installations by Carlos Motta
22 until 30 April
For a few years now Colombian video artist Carlos Motta, born in 1978 and living in New York, has been exploring the concept of democracy from diverse social and political perspectives under the title of "The Democracy Cycle". For the first part of this series, "La Buena Vida", he has carried out more than 360 interviews between 2005 and 2008 with people from all social strata in twelve Latin American cities, asking them about the relation of the process of democratization in their own country and the interventionist US-policy in the region. The result is a wide range of surprising statements that will be presented at HAU 1. His latest project "Six Acts: An Experiment in Narrative Justice" is being developed in Bogotá in March 2010: During the current Colombian electoral presidential campaign, on the public squares of the capital, six actors of different social and ethnic origin will perform historical peace speeches by six former liberal and leftist presidential candidates that have all been assassinated. The images to be shot during these interventions will be part of a video installation that will be shown at HAU for the first time.

Erinnerungstheater in einem gespaltenen Land
Lecture by Ivan Orozco
23 April
For a long time now dealing with violence and armed conflicts has been a central factor in all Colombian government programmes. The law "Justicia y Paz" (Justice and Peace, 2005) is supposed to control the process of demilitarization in the country and is primarily aiming at paramilitaries who surrender their weapons. In exchange they are being granted – to a large extent – impunity or very minor charges in the face of the crimes they had committed. How does the Colombian society handle a law that does not create justice? And what is the meaning of "transitory justice" for all those implied in the conflict and for the society as a whole? What does it mean for the estimated four million displaced persons in Colombia? What is the context between the judicial approach to drug trafficking and the method of extradition to the U.S.A. on the one hand, and the trial of "Justicia y Paz" on the other?
Ivan Orozco is Professor for Political and Social Sciences at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.
In co-operation with Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

MOSCA / Fliege
based on Shakespeare’s "Titus Andronicus"
Director: Fabio Rubiano Orjuela/ Teatro Petra
23 until 25 April
Fabio Rubiano, the author and director of this "Titus"-adaptation, once said that he had been very surprised about the way the people reacted on his production in his own country. Of all the places in the world it’s in Colombia where the public laughs a great deal about a play that features so much vengeance and violence. Shakespeare’s debut as a playwright is indeed the most brutal and blood-thirsty work by the Elizabethan author – however the legendary and grotesque version of Teatro Petra from Bogotá does not shed a drop of blood. Instead lots of vegetables are being chopped for the supposedly cannibalistic last supper where Titus serves Tamora her own sons as an apparent meal of reconciliation. In Rubiano’s production the spectators are seated at three big kitchen tables. The actors make them participate in this meticulously planned and brilliantly incisive happening, which is made utterly repugnant due to its high entertainment-value. "Mosca" is a modern parable which succeeds as only few other productions do in showing a close-up of the horrors of everyday life without thunder and lightning.

SOBRE ALGUNOS ASUNTOS DE FAMILIA. EL AUTOR INTELECTUAL / Familienangelegenheiten
Director: Jorge Hugo Marin/ La Maldita Vanidad
24 until 26 April
The company of director and author Jorge Hugo Marin from Medellín, born in 1981, was only founded recently, but what they’ve come up with in the living room comes close to a small theatrical miracle. The spectator sits outside in the courtyard, following the play like an almost random voyeur through the veranda panoramic window, and inside you can see five outstanding young spectators acting with such a precise and yet unpretentious realism that their tragicomic story is on the verge of becoming your own. In the house of their bedridden mother the siblings Nora, Jorge and Sergio get together in order to discuss who will have to take care of the old lady. It would be easier to decide if the three of them weren’t living in completely different social circumstances and if the two brothers had come without their wives who staunchly refuse to take on the responsibility for this nursing case. It’s a gathering which reveals the dark side of a dysfunctional Colombian family with intelligence and dark humour…

NO ES LO MISMO DINAMARCA QUE CUNDINAMARCA. HAMLET O EL DIÁLOGO ESPECTRAL/ Cundinamarca ist nicht Dänemark. Hamlet oder der Dialog mit den Geistern
by and with Juan Aldana
24 and 25 April
Cundinamarca, "nest of the Condor", is the name of the province surrounding the capital of Bogotá. However in his performance the artist Juan Aldana refers less to the phonetic vicinity to "Dinamarca" (Spanish for Denmark) then to the comparison of what exactly is rotten in either state. He projects, paints and blurs statements, quoting and cross-fading words from Shakespeare, Müller and contemporary authors with images, drawings and maps of Colombia. In a both brief and intense painting-act textures and nightmarish interactions evolve and fade away again. These links are much more than just mere associations between the literary-historical material and Colombian present times.

MIL SANTOS
Concert on April
Literally translated Mil Santos does not only mean thousand saints, it also stands for a unique fusion of Latin beats, Salsa, Soul and Hip Hop. The Colombian musician Mil Santos is from Cali, but he has been living and working in Berlin for some time now. His music comes straight from life, and the fellow members of his band come from all over the world. Just recently he released his CD "Creo".

LOS INFORMANTES / Die Informanten
Book presentation and reading with Juan Gabriel Vásquez
26 April at the Instituto Cervantes
"Die Informanten" (2004) by Juan Gabriel Vásquez is considered to be one of the most important Colombian novels of the past 25 years. The book which was now published in Germany by Schöffling & Co. leads back to the country’s dark years immediately following World War II. It is about how tensions within a family can affect the society as a whole, and vice versa. It is a passionate story about betrayal in private and public space, a journey back to the chapter in Colombian history that some prefer to forget about, and at the same time it is a testimony of how forgetting can poison present times.

In co-operation with Instituto Cervantes and the publishing house Schöffling & Co.

FREKUENSIA KOLOMBIANA
Documentary about Colombian HipHop
by Vanessa Gocksch and Walter Hernández
followed by a lecture and discussion with Walter Hernández
26 April
Colombia’s HipHop-scene was shaped in the Afro-Colombian neighbourhoods, featuring strong political implications. A main inspiration is the folklore tradition of improvised antiphons. Filmmaker Vanessa Goksch and musician and DJ Walter Hernández follow these traces and give a portrait of social reality, cultural identity and political articulation of teenagers who transform their feeling of being excluded through music into a vital movement.

In co-operation with Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

LA MIRADA DEL AVESTRUZ / Der Blick des Vogel Strauß
Choreography: Tino Fernández/ L’Explose
28 and 29 April
Tino Fernández and his company "L’Explose", founded in the early Nineties, have become the most important protagonist of the Colombian scene in dance theatre, touring the world’s international festivals. "La Mirada del Avestruz" was already produced in 2002, the same year when one final big attempt towards national reconciliation and failed peace negotiations with the FARC were followed by hardliner Uribe taking office. This work probably remains Fernández’ most straightforward commentary on the present circumstances in Colombia. Along with his dancers he found both poetic and disturbing images to illustrate the violence, the ongoing war and the resignation. Comparable to an ostrich who in dangerous situations refuses to look ahead and puts his head into the sand the individuals also try to retreat to the remains of their abused intimacy. The stage, covered by earth, is similar to a dead field, but instead of being buried the dancers try to revolt in sometimes raw rituals of resistance and resurrection.

SIMPLEMENTE EL FIN DO MUNDO / Einfach das Ende der Welt
by Jean-Luc Lagarce
Director: Manuel Orjuela Cortés/Los Ojos del Hermano Eterno
28 and 30 April
Director Manuel Orjuela relates that he intended to produce Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play as if it was the story of his own family. "Simply the End of the World" is about the homecoming of a lost son, Louis, in his mid-thirties. Years ago he had disappeared from one day to the other, leaving no note at all, and travelling around the world. His surprising return results in a both comic and agonising family situation. Underneath the surface of consideration and goodwill a large quantity of mutual criticism, offense and aggressions has accumulated. Vanities and trivialities are being debated in great detail, but the most important thing remains unmentioned: Louis is going to die and he has returned in order to "announce by himself his approaching and incurable death". Orjuela’s focused and atmospherically dense production is an outstanding example of modern Colombian contemporary theatre.

VERSUS
Director: Rodrigo García / La Carnicería Teatro (Spain)
29 April until 01 May
The encore at the end of the Colombia-programme: "Versus", a production which was directed by the Argentine Rodrigo García on the occasion of the "Bicentenário", the 200 year festivities concerning the independence of most of the Latin American states: "I was assigned to come up with a production about the war for independence, and that is exactly what you are going to see. A series of comments, images and actions that deal with the war for independence, somehow with the attempt to make the people independent from their bank; from their children when these have reached the unsympathetic age, pretending to be the judges of their own parents; from a life that gets more ridiculous and at the same time more demanding by the minute; from the oil price and from the permanent exposure to TV. It is also about the lost battles for customs and traditions, about quiet animosities during breakfast, and the dust-cart war. But in the end the message of this production is directed at the private battle with which we try to become independent from the opinions that other people ruthlessly afflict us with… Let’s see how we can organise ourselves to live together in peace." (R.G.)

"Libertad y Desorden" is sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung and the Goethe-Institut
Presented by zitty and radioeins.

Image: Carlos Motta, Six Acts

Public Relations
Kirsten Hehmeyer Tel +49 (0)30 259004 38 k.hehmeyer@hebbel-am-ufer.de

Opening Reception 22 April 2010, 7:30pm

Hebbel am Ufer HAU 1
Stresemannstr. 29, 10963 Berlin

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