El Caldo wants to make visible that which allows us to be united by being separated. Oceanic journeys, dissolution of communities, (self) imposed diasporas. On one side or the other of the ocean, or in the middle of the seas, people have known how to maintain communication and contact through waves, spores, winds, telepathies... in order to survive. The dead have been part of that communication network, informing people of the danger behind their back, of the abyss to come; they have taught each other that time is not linear, that the end is not coming, but has already been. People do not have to coincide in space-time to constitute themselves as a force.
Writing this program text in January 2020, how could we know the world would make these questions so literal? We were at work with the idea of how to hold each other at a distance, and then Covid came with all its stream of intensification of violence, of borders, with the increasing numbers of dead becoming our common planetary ground... Now working with distance and absence is not only an intuition or a concept, it is the “new normal”.
Some of the invited artists will not come to Europe because Europe has made it impossible. Some others have insisted on coming anyhow. Some were in Europe and decided nevertheless not to try and move closer. Some of the artists will not come to Europe because they just would rather not to. We had to harness our tools, and hold the quivering of not being able to travel, of being present in the flesh. We had to reshape the ways in which the work might be shared at a distance, received at a distance, be it 2 meters or thousands of kilometers. We fine-tuned our ears to listen to the different absences.
Since its conception El Caldo was an offering of time and space: a proposal to come and work one week, or two weeks or four weeks, with the Gessnerallee serving as a port, mixing languages and stories of travel and of non-arrivals. When we decided -or were forced to decide- not to move, the offering of time stayed, but the spaces became multiple. Papudo, Paris, Lisboa, Melcocho, San Isidro, Medellín, Berlin, Cros Bas, Cali, Užice, Novita, Zurich... became the places where artists found a time to advance a question, an idea, to nudge a work towards a certain direction.
El Caldo will be the space where we receive what comes from those paths, and we listen, with our ears and our skins. No ingredient of the soup will be served separate from others, each work will be presented next to another so we can hear the frequencies resonating between them, so we can taste the juices melting in the common water. The broth will be served in two parallel places: an online space and the rooms of the Gessnerallee. You are welcome to join as you feel and can.
With: Jota Mombaça, Iki Yos Piña Narváez, Slim Soledad LAB Junges Theater Zürich, Loup Rivière, Other Planes of There, Myriam Lefkowitz, Simon Rippol-Hurrier, MPA, Doña Ola, Camila Marambio, Ariel Bustamante, Barbara Saavedra, Carolina Mendonça, Noís Radio…
The detailed program will follow. Advance booking starts later.
