Iberescena
IBERESCENA 2023
In 2023, Central Elétrica continues to be part of the Iberescena Program, an Ibero-American Cooperation network in Performing Arts, formed by 16 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador , Spain, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal and Uruguay.
Training Activities: Dramaturgy Workshop – July 17th and 20th
Director, playwright and actor Alexis Moreno, from Teatro La Maria (CH), directed the dramaturgy workshop “Five approaches to a scene”. Through the exploration of a dramatic situation, we sought to discover the potential layers of reality, understanding it as a range of possibilities. What is written will be subjected to an exercise of contradiction, taking a “concrete” situation to a “collage of ambiguities” that will present us with a final body, ready to be put to the test in a creative process of universes of theatrical history.
Guest artists: Watts 2023 – July 21st and 22nd
For Watt 2023 – Ciclo Sonoro, the artists Christian Galarreta/Sajjra (PE) and Tomás Tello (PE) were invited through Progama Iberescena. Christian Galarreta/Sajjra, artist with extensive experience in multimedia art, musical composition and electroacoustic composition. Since 1998, he has been presenting his work in Latin America, Europe and Asia with different projects and bands such as DiosMeHaViolado, Evamuss, Sajjra, Chrs Galarreta and currently as Sajjra. Tomás Tello, artist with work inspired by the traditional music of his country and the sounds of the environment, interested in the possibilities that a musician has to multiply himself, using a varied set of instruments that include DIY electronics, cassette walkman, AM radios, remote controls, cameras, guitars, samplers, voice, flutes, bells, among many other things.
Residence: August 14th to 29th | Final Show: September 1st
The call for the Residency Program – Central Elétrica 2023 – IBERESCENA was open from March 20th to April 9th and two artistic proposals from the countries participating in the Iberescena program were selected. The projects FUCK HER, by Ludmilla Ramalho (BR) and REMINISCÊNCIA, by Coletivo La Insolente Teatre (CH), were selected, which were in residence from June 14th to 29th with a final public presentation included in the program at the 23 VOLTS performing arts meeting, from August 31st to September 2nd, 2023.
In FUCK HER, the performer’s body, naked and lying on the floor, is covered with food and fifty chicks run around it pecking to feed. “Fuck her”, in free translation, means “fuck her” or “eat her”, an expression with a sexual connotation with a hint of violence. The fury of the English term, however, is disarticulated by the play with the term “pinto” which designates, in Portuguese, both the male phallus and the simple chicken chick, which we discovered to be the true agent of the consumption of the female body.
In REMINISCENCE, using an archival methodology, the collective and personal memory of Chile is explored, through the story of the author’s grandparents, Malicho Vaca. The work unites the personal with the collective, making the story of the Vaca family a metaphor for the history of the country. Malicho uses the city as a stage and resymbolizes spaces to talk about their physical and symbolic transformations over time. The work uses digital platforms to convey the narrative, which brings it closer to the limits of the performative conference. Likewise, its fragmentary aesthetics and collage of collective memories invite us to reflect on the construction of memory and its relationship with the present.
IBERESCENA 2022 / Histórico
In 2022, the program presented was structured into two major cycles – residencies for invited artists (Iñaki Alvarez i Ariadna Rodríguez – Nyamnyam/ES & Francis Wilker/BR) and residencies through open calls (New Artists) – reinforcing our aspect of hosting artists in residence.
For director Francis Wilker (BR), space is a dynamo from which he creates his dramaturgies, performances and encounters. In this residence, he carries out a site-specific investigation interested in the scars and multiple layers of time and meanings that architecture can offer. From the sensitive link between his body and the body in room L of the Power Station, he produces sparks of reflections on walls, aging, skin, floor, time and death.
Residence: May 30th to June 17th | Final Show: June 15th, 8:30 pm
In INERT?, by Iñaki Alvarez i Ariadna Rodríguez – Nyamnyam (ES) the space becomes a large tapestry in which audiovisual projections, textual and sound fragments are combined with objects reused from old exhibitions and materials recovered from warehouses in each context where it is developed the proposal. It becomes a performative installation to rethink our relationships and interdependencies with objects. What if the distinction between subjects and objects is just a fiction to justify the hierarchy of humans over non-humans? How can we relate more horizontally to objects, considered inert?
Residence: June 13th to 30th | Final Show: June 25th, 3pm
The call for the Residency Program – Central Elétrica 2022 – IBERESCENA was active from March 10th to April 10th and aimed to support two original projects in the creation phase, in the area of performing arts, proposed by individual artists from the countries members (except Portugal), guaranteeing air transportation, accommodation, food, rehearsal space, financial support and artistic consultancy, for a residency to be held between August 15th and September 3rd, in Porto, Portugal, with a final public presentation included in the program at the 22 VOLTS performing arts meeting, on September 2nd and 3rd, 2022.
The selected artists were: Ramon Lima (BR) & Pilar Mackenna (CH).
IBERESCENA 2021 / Histórico
The program held in 2021 was also structured in two major cycles – residencies for guest artists (Azkona & Toloza/ES-CH and Josefina Gorostiza/AR) and residencies through open calls (New Artists) – reinforcing our aspect of welcoming artists in residence.
The call for the Residency Program – Power Station 2021 – IBERESCENA was open from March 1 to 31, 2021 and selected the projects:
CADELA FORÇA, Carolina Bianchi (BR): investigation into cases of femicides that have taken place in different parts of the world from the 90s to today.
YO SALVO LA MUERTE, Nicolás Lange (CH): delves into interviews with LGBTQ+ people born before the dictatorship in Chile, in which homosexual relationships with high officials of the Chilean army between 1973 and 1990 are reported.
The residencies were held between August 16th and September 5th, in Porto, Portugal, with a final public presentation included in the program at the 21 VOLTS performing arts meeting, on September 2nd and 3rd, 2021.
Josefina Gorostiza is a director, choreographer, performer and teacher. His quest focuses on movement work, understanding the body as an enormous creative power. The residency project at Central Elétrica, SUCUMBO, focused on the investigation of being on stage to generate tension between tenderness and brutality, between the beautiful and the monstrous, between the minimal and the excessive. Generate friction between sweetness and exhaustion, cracks in the spaces between immobility and irrepressible vitality. Try different textures to install and uninstall images.
Azkona & Toloza have dedicated themselves, in recent years, to the investigation of a series of archives that focus on the close relationship that exists between the barbarism of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, their territory and people, the development of neocolonialism and the various forms of expression of contemporary culture. At Central Elétrica, they devoted time to the third part of the research project in ethnographic and anthropological photography, “La Colección”, which seeks to understand how photography has radically transformed the way anthropology studies the human being. A true contribution to the reinterpretation of our cultural history and, ultimately, to the decolonization of our gaze and the memory of our bodies.