An action by Jota Castro, envisaged to gather several thousand people on one of the beaches of the district of Miraflores, the modern commercial and leisure city-centre of Lima, for a setting that has all the characteristics of a political rally, with a stage, a speaker, and a screen projection of the speaker in close-up.
On May 15th, Jota Castro is carrying out an action envisaged to gather several
thousand people on one of the beaches of the district of Miraflores, the modern
commercial and leisure city-centre of Lima, for a setting that has all the
characteristics of a political rally, with a stage, a speaker, and an on-stage
screen projection of the speaker in close-up. The particularity of that it will be
carried without utterance of a single (spoken) word. The performance will involve
the use of Sign Language exclusively. The whole action or performance is a
statement, a symbolic statement. This event will coincide with the V Summit of
Heads of State and Government of Latin America, the Caribbean and the European
Union, which is set to promote a stronger and more effective partnership and closer
political dialogue between both sides of the Atlantic.
Jota Castro is a Peruvian artist, living in Brussels who worked in the diplomatic
service for two decades. In the late 1990s he left his career as a diplomat at the
United Nations and the European Union and decided to devote himself totally to the
field of art. Through his different professional activities, Castro has gained
in-depth knowledge of the world of international politics; moreover, he considers
his university studies in Law and Political Science as his real training in art.
Conjuring up the political scene of today in European countries, often through
oblique manoeuvres; the critical social issues that are (or should be) the
conundrums for political leaders, with his brand of humour that gets the acid best
of apparently trivial situations; his acutely developed and directed, politically
incorrect sarcasm; and a wide range of social and cultural references, with or
without specific historical relevance. He has participated in the Venice, Tirana,
Prague and Kwangju
biennales. He won the Gwandju biennale prize in 2004 in Korea.
Alta Tecnologia Andina – ATA [ http://www.ata.org.pe ] is a non-profit cultural
organization, created with the objective of helping the development of a new
critical and dynamic culture based on the use and growth of the relations between
art, science and technology in Latin America. Based in Lima, Peru, it encourages and
supports projects and activators in every field of human endeavour, committed to the
use and exploration of technologies, media and culture as we seek to develop areas
of communication and dissemination of knowledge to contribute to our
societies'development through an understanding the use of technology in a critical
way.
Co-produced by Alta Tecnología Andina - ATA
Supported by the Prince Claus Fund, Deliveri and the Miraflores City Council
May 15th, 2008, 11.30
Playa Redondo. Miraflores City
Lima, Peru