PLAN B

Kitchen Talks

Kitchen Talks ist eine Reihe von Online Gesprächen zwischen Künstler*innen und anderen Akteur*innen der Performing Arts. Die Gespräche haben kein vorgegebenes Format, sondern werden von den Künstler*innen individuell festgelegt, von Interviews bis Präsentationen, Lectures, Diskussionen und anderen offenen Gesprächsformaten. In regelmäßigen Abständen finden diese Gespräche als Zoom-Webinare statt, die live über unsere Facebook-Seite verfolgt werden können. Anschließend verbleiben sie auf unserer Website mit weiterführenden Informationen und sind jederzeit abrufbar.  

Kitchen Talks möchte (Wieder-)Begegnungen zwischen internationalen und lokalen Akteur*innen der Tanzszene ermöglichen. Dabei versteht sich die Gesprächsreihe als eine Plattform für den Austausch von Wissen und Ideen, in der die Künstler*innen im Mittelpunkt stehen und Themen und Inhalte bestimmen, die für sie relevant sind. Davon ausgehend versprechen wir uns weiterführende Aktionen, die wir dann gemeinsam weiterentwickeln und realisieren möchten.  

Kitchen Talks entsteht in einer Zeit der Verunsicherung, in der Vieles nicht mehr so ist wie es mal war. Aber was bleibt sind die Künstler*innen, ihre Utopien und Visionen. Diese sichtbar zu machen ist das Anliegen von Kitchen Talks 

Ein Projekt von PLAN B – Creative Agency for Performing Arts. Unterstützt durch das NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ - STEPPING OUT, gefördert von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen der Initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz.

The World does not end with the Walls of our Homes – An essay by Pia Krämer

Keywords
Columbian-Mexican Documentary Theatre; Migration Archive; Pandemic Project: Changing Spaces; Sound Register; STILL LIVE about food production; Sonoric Archive; Intimacy; Ediciones Sin Sentidos- a social experiment; Osikán: Vivero de Creación; Social Creation; Action Research; Knowledge from Aborigines; Rewriting the ritual space; Collective Germination; Living Away Network; Network of Affections for Cuban Community in USA; “Living Away Fest” - a social distance and domestic arts festival; La Chambre Ouvert; How to translate something that is not translatable; authentic voices; non-privileged spaces; Gender Warrior; The space of not knowing; What are you prepared to give up for me?; loneliness; precarity; re-invent yourself; todo lo que está a mi lado; creation of an international digital platform for curators with audiovisual film production for internationalisation; Projecto CASA - video art production; Festival Próximamente; Workshops at home; Todo mundo em paro; Festival Danza em Casa; Practicas de danza pensante; Temporada Alta - how to share videos online; Project La Fabrica; Tu Cuerpo el mio; Prática de vida cotidiana; Virtual infrastructure; Social programming; Hiper productivity versus paralysation; How to coordinate the virtual production; Project Tacto - platform for collaboration and co-production through exhibition of the creative process; ProChile - creative economy; Flexion o mia; Auto martónica; Pandemic as catalyst; Panorama Festival; Going backwards with Bolsonaro; Panorama Luto; Panorama Raft; Shoshana - online meetings USA and Latin America; Capacoa Canada; Cohorte; Living with 1 Dollar a day; Injustice; North/South injustice; “Staying with the trouble”; Art can open other books; domination by the North; Power connections; Connectedness;
What kind of changes are important for us now?
While writing this essay, Russia invaded Ukraine, launched an unprovoked war which has only escalated over the last couple of weeks. The IPCC approved its latest climate report, as millions of Ukrainians are driven from their homes by violence. The climate crisis is simultaneously displacing people, species, and entire ways of life. Again, we have to activate a strong bond of solidarity beyond our own needs for stability and security. The world is not a safe space but became a brave space. By this day, around 2 million refugees from Ukraine entered neighbouring states and need support and care. The practice of care is in the forefront of our times and we do better train our skills in it. While during lockdowns we could still care by being responsible of not spreading the disease, this war gives us the feeling of helplessness and despair but also a strong sense of courage and hope. Again, we are confronted with the questions, what is the role of the arts in all this and how can art make a difference? Crisis shows us new ways of social interaction, the value of international connectedness and collaboration and forces us to stay resilient, open-minded and care for each other.
One of these “care” initiatives is the online Kitchen talks, created and organised by Carmen Mehnert and Anne Schmidt from Plan B Hamburg. During recent lockdowns and the stand still of the performing arts scene, it felt like an urgency to find spaces for exchange, sharing knowledge and creating new narratives around the arts. With a focus on international artists, producers and organizations, the different episodes of the Kitchen talks showed us how enriching it is to hear different spoken languages, stories from other parts of the world and witness powerful actions which resist devastating moments and existential threats during the pandemic. Most of Latin American artists, for example, in contrary to European ones, remained with little or no support from governmental organizations. Nevertheless, there was no lack of innovative ideas and initiatives to transport artistic creations into online platforms, new formats for knowledge exchange, dialogue and discussions, even creating new partnerships and collaborations and finding new funding bodies. Watching these actions mentioned during the talks, made it clear that this was the moment to go inside, go deeper into subjects and themes since there was time for it. Re-think, re-organize, re-invent, re-everything. At the same time, we were strongly reminded that the world does not end with the walls of our homes but rather can be expanded and shared in a new and multifaceted way. The discovery of the virtual experience was necessary as a future tool, to complement and even enhance live arts and nourish the knowledge exchange, but not to substitute them all together through online formats. After sitting for months in front of our displays, we certainly feel how essential is is to come together in real physical places, where we can feel, smell, listen, resonate to energies, bodies, moods,landscapes and spaces.
By choosing the title Kitchen talks, Carmen Mehnert and Anne Schmidt suggested a sensorial, haptic and informal atmosphere which reminds us immediately of the smells, tastes, sounds and the togetherness in a relaxed talk while we are cooking, we care.
Mayfield Brooks and Bush Hartshorn embraced this idea in their talk about “vulnerability” and showed us how to transport intimacy into an online dialogue by creating a moment of ease and playfulness while talking about existential fears, grief, black lives, gender stress and how strength emerges from weakness, even trauma and how they deal with the unknown and again, how they can care for each other. They provided us with a metaphoric experience while cooking roasted pumpkin.
Suddenly, our doubts about the role of the arts starts to vanish and we can see very clearly what is it about. Connecting to other human beings and exchanging about the present moment experience is deeply satisfying and gives us a feeling of belonging and existing, even in dark times.
In other Kitchen talks settings, which where held in a webinar format, we learn about the impact of the art practice, and the characteristics and potential of the system that sustains it. It is about placing the emphasis on ideas, values, knowledge exchange, wisdom, tools for change, or as Domenico Dom Barra once said: “it is about shifting the focus from the art piece to the art practice and from the artist to the community, art can influence society with its practices. We should engage in those that can help nurture human values and positive thinking”. During the talks we were reminded of the duality between damage that can be done by European supremacy, while, on the other hand, recent Latin American online projects got support by European institutions and organizations. What can we learn from these projects?  What stands out is the strong connectedness of the artists to community work. The need to bring the work close to their communities and don’t wait for them to discover them through festivals and theatre programs but rather explore multi facetted possibilities to present their artistic work. The artistic practice enters seamless into a wider public with a wider angel. The capacity to adapt and to be humble about the place where you show your work, seems a vital step to reach out. But we can also learn of the power of innovation and resistance, creating new networks and alliances of strength, imagination as political tool, how to be true to yourself and how to transport this into your artistic practice, collaborations and actions. New ways of online publishing which bring emergent visionary worldview to the forefront and a sensitised position towards minorities, equity, gender discussion, knowledge from the aborigines and deep knowledge of embodiment of human values in society. And again and again about resilience and the infinite capacity of self-management in modus “auto-maratónica”.
Bringing care and respect to those who need it more. In the conversation of renown Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues with the Mozambican artist Panaibra Gabriel Canda, we can learn how deeply rooted their artistic actions are in their communities and how the care they provide for them reflects in their artistic practice.
In the last Kitchen talk between Faith Tan and me, the moment I asked her how she had felt the last two years, she first and foremost mentioned a community project which the theatre she works for had organised during the lockdowns. Artists engaged in a “care project” for seasonal workers from abroad, who had no chance to visit their families during 2 years of pandemic, while living in extremely small dormitories. Again, one more example of bringing artistic practice into the more vulnerable communities.
What stays?
All together we had to deal with the shutdown of theatres and festivals and the learning of new skills, to be able to place your work and ideas online and experiment. What will happen with all this boom? What stays? What will change? How did it impact the arts world, for better or for worse? And how does it feel now, in retrospective? Was it worthwhile? Or was it more a way to feel active and needed and keep our self-respect safeguarded? Fully we will never know. It keeps being an experiment how to provide space to deepen the dialogue and show care for each other.
The Kitchen talks are obviously an act of care for the artistic community who faced a traumatic shutdown of activities. The need to provide a space to connect voices from the global south with the wider arts community and further, create a platform of knowledge exchange, while we don’t travel easily internationally. Raise awareness for what is going on in other continents and kitchens where new initiatives are cooked and new recipes are tried out.
Johana Hedva, a Korean-American writer, musician and astrologer wrote: “What we’re watching happen with COVID-19 is what happens when care insists on itself, when the care of others becomes mandatory, when it takes up space and money and labor and energy. See how hard it is to do? The world isn’t built to give care freely and abundantly. It’s trying now, but look how alien a concept this is, how hard it is to make happen. It will take all of us—it will take all of us operating on the principle that if only some of us are well, none of us are. And that’s exactly why it’s revolutionary. Because care demands that we live as though we are all interconnected—which we are—it invalidates the myth of the individual’s autonomy. In care, we know our limits because they are the places where we meet each other. My limit is where you meet me, yours is where I find you, and, at this meeting place, we are linked, made of the same stuff, transforming into one because of the other.” -
How far can artists go in social transformation without renouncing their role as creators/artists and without being instrumentalized? I believe we find good examples for it in the talks.
I would like to finish with a quote of hope from the writer and journalist Rebecca Solnit. In her article published in The Guardian with the title, “What can Corona Virus teach us about hope” she wrote: ”When a storm subsides, the air is washed clean of whatever particulate matter has been obscuring the view, and you can often see farther and more sharply than at any other time. When this storm clears, we may, as do people who have survived a serious illness or accident, see where we were and where we should go in a new light. We may feel free to pursue change in ways that seemed impossible while the ice of the status quo was locked up. We may have a profoundly different sense of ourselves, our communities, our systems of production and our future”.
So, let’s wash the dishes,
Playlist of the Kitchen Talks by the participants:
Miriam Makeba: Maleika
Aretha Franklin: Holy
Charles Bradley: Changes
Childish Gambino: Feels like Summer
Hermanos Gutiérrez: Hijos Del Sol
Calle 13: Latinoamérica
Chancha via Circuito - Jardines ft Lido Pimienta
Hembrismo, Rich Music LTD
Johnny Colon & Orchestra.“Mi querida bomba”
Literature from participants
Adrienne Maree Brown: Holding Space
Dona Haraway: Staying with the Trouble
Octavia E. Butler: Parabel of the Sour
Poetry Books of Noticias del Mar
Marien Fernandez: La Masacre de las Palabras
Maria Galindo: Ninguna mujer nace para puta; No se puede Descolonizar sin Despatriacalizar;
Gabriela Wiener, various titles: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4601950.Gabriela_Wiener
MAGDALENA López: Failure. A Conceptual Proposal to Rethink the Caribbean.
Jean-Luc Nancy: 58 indicios sobre un cuerpo.
Frank B Wilderson: Afropessimism
Leiths Vegetable Bible (cooking book)
Luis Antonio Simas , Donna Haraway , Malcolm Ferdinand , Guimaraes Rosa, Edouard Glissant, Vincianne Despret, Isabelle Stengers Denetem Touam Bona

Links of mentioned projects and initiatives (not complete yet)

https://www.osikan.org/
https://www.artistsconnectivity.com/latinx
https://capacoa.ca/en/
https://sobrapublicas.wordpress.com
https://www.livingaway.org
https://t.me/edicionessinsentido
http://panoramafestival.com/2020-luto/
https://www.redesdamare.org.br

KITCHEN TALK #8: WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED TO ASK YOU – 5 questions / 2 female professionals / 2 continents
With: Pia Krämer – Germany/Portugal & Faith Tan – Singapore
28/02/2022
8 PM

Both, Pia and Faith, work in programming and artist development. Faith on a big scale in Singapore, since Esplanade is a huge theater. Pia in the independent scene and residency and research in a monastery between Portugal and Germany. Both worked for almost two years together in the development stage for the new dance house Tanssin Talo in Helsinki.
Inspired by the thinking of Adrienne Maree Brown (Pleasure Activism from the Emergent Strategies Series), they want to talk about how they experienced their working life as programmers and project developers for artist development. As a base serves the question: "When in your professional life did you feel that this is a good place to be?".
Pia and Faith will ask each other 5 questions: "What I always wanted to ask you...". Questions that have to do with the past, present and future of their professional work. Questions that emphasize how future working conditions could look like and which values should be installed to create a pleasurable work life.
Questions like: What is the difference between living in your head and living in your body? How to cultivate hope in times of hopelessness and what are we actually healing from? 
It is about placing the emphasis on ideas, values, knowledge exchange, wisdom and tools for change.
Pia Krämer worked as artistic director, programme director, programme team member, curator and lecturer in Germany, Portugal and Finland. From 2017-2019 she was president of the European Dancehouse Network EDN. Recently, she started to curate documentary films about Contemporary Dance with Accentus Music for ARTE TV and is developing a transition training programme for performing artists as a pilot project in Portugal.
Faith Tan has over 18 years of programming, producing, management and international networking experience in the performing arts. She was Head of Programme Development at Dance House Helsinki, Finland in 2020, where she co-initiated a commission programme for new dance productions by Finnish dancemakers. She is currently the Head of Dance and International Development, in Singapore’s national arts centre, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Under her direction, the Esplanade’s da:ns festival and series in Singapore co-produced productions by world renowned artists, commissioned and championed new work from significant Asian dancemakers, supported the practice of dramaturgs for dance, presented a large public participatory programme, as well as an artist lab and seminar workshops. She is a founding member of the Asian Network for Dance (AND+) and serves on panels for grants from the National Arts Council in Singapore. Tan holds a Masters degree in Arts and Cultural Management.

KITCHEN TALK #7: CRISIS UPON CRISIS – a conversation
With: Panaibra Gabriel Canda (Mozambique) & Lia Rodrigues (Brazil)
03/02/2022
8 PM

Everything was and is still urgent, we live under pressure and urgency, we are constantly in crisis and when one seems to pass, another one follows. Despite all crises, there is a life that must continue, and in its precariousness, life continues to be a source for other industries that grow and widen the inequality gap. We hope that this crisis we are currently experiencing can bring out another way of being; we need to walk together, care more for the body, both our own and the other´s. More than ever we need to overcome the Covid19 pandemic, the hunger pandemic, the malaria pandemic, racism and other inequalities, and rethink a new and contemporary "body" which allows  us to stay alive and to survive in a world turned upside down. How can we not give up, when every day we are confronted with the forces of chaos and haunted by disasters and atrocities… Lia will be speaking from Marés "favela", where she continues working, and Panaibra from Maputo, where his work is based.

Panaibra Gabriel Canda, born in Maputo, Mozambique, is one of the most influential choreographers in Africa who reflects the country’s postcolonial upheavals as ambiguously as no other. He studied theatre, dance and music in Mozambique and Portugal. Since 1993, he develops his own artistic projects. His work has been presented all around the world and has won distinct prizes.
In 1998 he founded CulturArte – Cultura e Arte em Movimento, perhaps the first and only production space for contemporary dance in Mozambique. Panaibra´s dedication as artistic director and choregrapher lies in supporting and developing the local and regional dance scene, including creations, performances and training programmes. He also develops collaborations with artists in southern Africa and Europe as well as collaborating with artists of other disciplines. Panaibra has been working for 25 years as a dancer and choreographer in Maputo and the rest of the world. In his numerous guest appearances at European Festivals, one is always reminded that intellectually grounded dance does not necessarily have to be boring, but can be dynamic and humorous. Panaibra’s famous Marrabenta Solos  describe the political development of his country since its independence through body language, show the communist, the totalitarian, the democratic body either pure or as advanced mixed form. Panaibra was distinguished in 2017 by the prestigious German magazine TANZ together with 30 other international artists as “New Promise for the Future of Dance”.

Lia Rodrigues, born and raised in São Paulo, lived and worked in Paris during the 1980s (with Maguy Marin among others) before returning to Brazil where she founded in 1990 her company Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças and in 1992 the dance festival Panorama RioArte, today called Festival Panorama da Dança, which she directed until 2004. With her decision to move her company’s rehearsal centre to Maré, one of the toughest favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Lia made a political and artistic stand against racism and social segregation. Since 2004, her company has been based in the Maré favela, where she founded the Maré Arts Centre and the Free Dance School of Maré in partnership with the Redes de Maré association. Her pieces have toured extensively worldwide. Some would say she’s the head of the Brazilian dance scene.
In 2005, she was honoured Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres; she received in 2014 the Prince Claus Foundation Award, in 2016 the SACD-choreography Award and in 2021 the German Catholics' Art and Culture Award.
In 2021, the renowned Festival d’Automne in Paris granted her with her first “portrait”, a focus on her whole career. Powerful and committed works from her repertory, as well as a new creation, Encantado, dialogued with a series of brazilian artists who, in the eyes of Lia, constitute the richness of the country's choreographic scene
With the Covid-19 impacting particularly heavily on Brazil, the choreographer, committed to the democratisation of art in her country, asked herself the question of how we could “enchant our fears” in order to recreate a dynamic collective and bring individuals closer together. In doing so, Encantado is an invitation to return to natural sources of strength, in search of images, landscapes and movements which journey from one body to the next.

KITCHEN TALK #6: We are still here. Failing. Surviving. Sinking.
With: Yohayna Hernández González (Cuba), José Ramón Hernández Suárez (Cuba), Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas (Cuba) & William Ruiz Morales (Cuba)
25/01/2022
8 PM

The least indicated here. After meaningless editions and podcast readings, Osikán and its creation nurseries, the Living away festival and the Open Room, we, the least indicated, are still here. In a long present of fugitive creative projects, mutants, networking, alternative and interdependent production dynamics at the edges of the Cuban scene and its institutions. Of transgressions, impertinences, impurities. 
We are still here thinking about how to collaborate together how to build a community, how to care and take care of ourselves, how our gestures and artistic practices can generate links, how to disobey the rules, how to weave bridges between the Cuban inside and outside.
Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas | Martica Minipunto  (Cuba, 1991) is a writer and performer who studied at the Universidad de las Artes, ISA. Her Performing Arts processes enhance transdisciplinary and experimental collaborations. Some of her recent creations are: Una ópera china (2018), Las fundadoras (2019) and No soy unicornio (2019-201). She has published Días de hormigas (Ediciones Unión, 2018), Los vegueros (Colección Sureditores, 2019) and La puta y el hurón (Éditions Fra, 2020). She has participated in international programs as Experimenta Sur (Colombia, 2019), Panorama Sur (Argentina, 2019), Festival Sâlmon (Barcelona, 2020), Festival Poesía en Voz Alta, UNAM (México, 2021), Festival Santiago a Mil (Chile, 2021), Festival de las Letras de Bilbao (Bilbao, 2021), La Serre Art-Vivans (Montreal, 2018), Young Curators Academy (Herbstsalon, Maxim Gorki, Berlin, 2019) and Watch and Talk (Zürcher Theater Spektakel, 2020), among others. She is founder of the independent editorial „ediciones sinsentido“ and coordinated a scenic laboratory called Laboratorio Escénico de Experimentación Social, LEES from 2016-2020.   
William Ruiz Morales is a Cuban artistic director and dramaturg based in Miami. He graduated from Theater Sciences at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana in 2007 and in 2016 completed the Research Cycle at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. In recent years, his main interest is starting conversations with artists from different practices and disciplines to search ways of collaboration. As a result, William has developed creative partnerships with composers, choreographers, and theater-makers. Among some of the pieces that resulted from those exchanges are Nina Fukuoka’s Still Life #31 (2019), ∑2n Ensayo de Duración (2017), an immersive durational event with Gabriela Burdsall, and Sharing Home (2016), a cross-disciplinary installation with Naïma Mazic. William has created platforms for nurturing and presenting the work of other artists. Some of those are: Living Away (2018-2021), tubo de ensayo/Laboratorio Ibsen in collaboration with Yohayna Hernández and Espacios Ibsen, a festival whose last editions were co-directed with Martha Luisa Hernández. William has taught workshops and presented his work in Cuba, France, Mexico, Norway, Belgium and the US. 
Yohayna Hernández González is a dramaturg at Osikán – vivero de creación (a nursery of creation) and interested in the relationship between experience and language. Her work moves between research, creation and thought. She is co-coordinator of the networks for research-creation Tubo de Ensayo  (2006-2012) and Laboratorio Escénico de Experimentación Social LEES (2012-2020). In Cuba, her practice moved between teaching (University of the Arts of Cuba and International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba) and editing (editor-in-chief of Tablas, a specialized magazine for Performing Arts,  2010-2017, and member of the Tablas-Alarcos Publishing House, 2004-2018). Since her arrival in Montreal in 2019, she has participated in the Dramaturgical Clinics of the TransAmériques festival (FTA 2019 and 2021) and has worked as a dramaturgy assistant at LA SERRE-arts vivants (2019-2020). As  dramaturg, she is interested in the multiple crosses between reality and fiction and has accompanied several creations of documentary theater and Performing Arts (Luz:terre by choreographer Sonia Busto, Montreal, 2021; Granma, Trombones de La Habana by Rimini Protokoll, Berlin, 2019; I love Madrid by Osikán, Madrid, 2019; BaqueStriBois by Osikán, Havana, 2015). Currently, she works as editor of the critical notebooks dedicated to the Performing Arts in the art and politics magazine Liberté and as co-coordinator of the Dramaturgical Clinics of the FTA 2022.  
José Ramón Hernández, Afro-Cuban indiscipline creator, curator and cultural agent.  Artistic director of Osikán – vivero de creación (creation nursery). His creative research explores Afro-descendant rituality, personal and collective memory, peripheral bodies and the construction of living cartographies; in working with non-fictional documents, in the borders between reality and fiction and in the strategies of the sensitive to stimulate and mediate social processes and communities.  He has received important awards including the Villanueva Award 2016 of the National Union of Artists of Cuba UNEAC and International Association of Theater Critics and the Cold Air Award 2016 of the Association of young writers and artists of Cuba for the work BaqueStriBois. His work has been shown, among others, at deSingel, Antwerp (2020), Pumpenhaus Münster (2020), Naves Matadero Centro Internacional de Artes Vivas, Madrid (2019), Museo del Chopo of UNAM, México (2018), Festival Santiago a Mil, Santiago de Chile (2018), Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro Adelante, Heidelberg (2017), Maxim Gorki Theater Berlín (2019), Monument Montreal (2018) and in New York (2014 - 2016). 

KITCHEN TALK #5 : ARCHIVO MIGRACIÓN, UN BODEGÓN CONTEMPORÁNEO (MIGRATION ARCHIVE, A CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE). Sound portraits of diverse perspectives on our changing world in times of pandemic, through food.
With: Laura Uribe & Sabina Aldana from L.A.S. [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists]
20/12/2021
8 PM

The pandemic brought with it various questions and challenges for all humanity, as well as movement, mutations and migrations, literally and symbolically. What mutations, migrations or disciplinary expansions have some performing artists had as a result of the pandemic in Mexico?  Is it possible to imagine, act and sustain ourselves as a community? What forms of (re)existence emerged?  What was it that was broken and exposed? What needs to be rebuilt in these times? Did the pandemic open the need to reinvent oneself in the search for autonomy of creation?
Moved by these questions, we summon artists who, as a result of the pandemic, had to mutate, migrate or expand their activities to the production of food, to be part of MIGRATION ARCHIVE, A CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE, with the aim of presenting a testimonial landscape about these migrations. The project seeks to trace the expansion or migration of artists to other activities during this health and economic crisis. What were the means to keep creativity alive and to be able to generate a livelihood to resist the situation we are going through?
These are the sixteen artists who make up the testimonies of MIGRATION ARCHIVE, A CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE: Mariana Villegas, Héctor Luna, Paullete Caro del Castillo, Belén Aguilar, Mauricio Rico, Fabiola Uribe, Sabina Aldana, Gabriela Ornelas, Laura Uribe, Mónica Jiménez, Abraham Jurado, Natalia Fuentes, NawXoxitl Ximena Rodríguez, Josué Cabrera, Rosa Landabur and Ilona Goyeneche. 
Laura Uribe is a director, playwright, performer, stage researcher and teacher. She is co-founder of the L.A.S. [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists] together with Sabina Aldana. Her work is characterized by experimenting in the contemporary scene with a transdisciplinary and documentary approach which moves between the intimate micro-political sphere and the macro-political sphere. She has developed various community theater projects in different contexts and taught over 20 workshops and labs of scenic experimentation in Mexico and abroad.  She has participated as a director and playwright in more than 20 stagings at national and international festivals. Among her works are: MARE NOSTRUM (2017) which was presented at the Münchner Kammerspiele, Festival Theaterformen Hannover (2017) and Festival Politik im Freien Theater in Munich (2018). From 2019 to 2021 she is invited as a playwright to the International Playwrights Laboratory of the Berlin Literary Colloquium, the Maxim Gorki Theatre, the New Institute of Dramatic Writing and the Robert Bosch Foundation.
Sabina Aldana is a Colombian-Mexican interdisciplinary artist and visual designer graduated from the Lasalle College Bogotá. She studied Visual Arts at the National University Institute of Arts in Argentina. Together with Laura Uribe, she co-founded the company L.A.S [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists]. She works as costume designer, scenographer and stage director. As costume designer, she has worked with different scenic languages, from children's plays, comedies, adaptations of classical and experimental works to transdisciplinary projects in the Performing Arts and contemporary dance pieces. From 2014–2016 she was costume designer for the resident dance company of the Jorge Eliécer Gaitán theatre in Bogotá and from 2016-2018 costume coordinator for the national theatre company of Mexico. She has worked with many contemporary directors such as Pedro Salazar, Fabiana Medina, Fernando Montes, Carlos Sepúlveda, Carmen Gil Vrolijk, Edén Coronado, Laura Uribe, among others. She has participated as costume coordinator in more than forty works and as costume designer in more than twenty pieces.

Episode #4: The imaginary and the reality of production models and desires for cooperations between Mexico and Germany
With: Arturo Lugo, Ilona Goyeneche, Laura Uribe und Yolanda Gutiérrez
13/12/2021
8 PM

An informal talk – like those improvised in any kitchen – ends up showing things as they are, since it is during those uninhibited conversations that everybody talks bluntly. In this particular kitchen, four creators and cultural managers from Mexico will seek to dismantle the existing imaginary image of creating projects and cooperations in, from or between Germany and Mexico. We need to think about production models that are really viable and fictionalize their possible scenarios. It is imperative to recognize the scope they have, how they can be sustained and what responsibility they entail. Because postcolonial micro practices interfere creatively and cultural policies do not always allow synergies. Thus, exchanges are generated from a desire that often crashes between conviction and reality. But if we are honest, the results can be very tasty.

Arturo Lugo / Futuro Lujo, artist of image and movement, is a researcher of aesthetic dramaturgies from the choreographic point of view. He generates a constant dialogue that intertwines various disciplines of the visual arts and the performing arts. He was a fellow of the Akademie der Künste to be part of the Young Academy program 2017-2018 in Berlin.
In 2013, he creates, manages and co-directs the project Amplio Espectro, an undisciplined project that explores the possibilities of the body, space and movement. His works have been presented in spaces of national and international artistic diffusion such as the Aura Festival in Lithuania and the Museo Jumex and Museo del Chopo, both in Mexico City. Since 2014 he directs tun_projekt studio where he works as an art director, costume designer and scenographer for different projects. He is an active member of the companies cuatroxcuatro (MEX), La FleuBB (FRA-CIV), mmmmmmmm sonido.escena (MEX), Gintersdorfer/Klaßen (DE) and Arte Nómada (USA).

Ilona Goyeneche is a journalist, cultural manager and curator for Performing Arts born in Chile and currently living in Mexico. From 2008 to 2019 she worked at the Goethe-Institut in charge of Performing Arts projects, first in Chile and since 2012 in Mexico. Subsequently, and until 2021, she was programme coordinator at the Casa del Lago UNAM in Mexico City. In 2014, she was a member of the Jury of the Guillermo Arriaga National Dance Prize in Mexico and curator for the Festival of Contemporary Dramaturgy HEIDELBERGER STÜCKEMARKT 2015, in charge of the selection of works and productions from Mexico as  guest country. In 2016, she was curator of the Mexican Theater Festival entitled ENDSTATION SEHNSUCHT which was held at the Münchner Kammerspiele. In 2019, she was part of the Jury for the selection of national works for the International Festival of Performing Arts FIDAE in Uruguay. She is curator of the Ibero-American Theatre Festival ¡ADELANTE! in Heidelberg. She was curator and coordinator of the project Guadalajara Revealed Spaces 2019-2020 of the Siemens Foundation, which is carried out together with the Goethe-Institut Mexico and the Ministry of Culture of Jalisco. 

Laura Uribe, is a director, playwright, performer, stage researcher and teacher. She is co-founder of the L.A.S. [Laboratory of Sustainable Artists] together with Sabina Aldana. Her work is characterized by experimenting in the contemporary scene with a transdisciplinary and documentary approach which moves between the intimate micro-political sphere and the macro-political sphere. She has developed various community theater projects in different contexts and taught over 20 workshops and labs of scenic experimentation in Mexico and abroad.  She has participated as a director and playwright in more than 20 stagings at national and international festivals. Among her works are: MARE NOSTRUM (2017) which was presented at the Münchner Kammerspiele, Festival Theaterformen Hannover (2017) and Fstival Politik im Freien Theater in Munich (2018). From 2019 to 2021 she is invited as a playwright to the International Playwrights Laboratory of the Berlin Literary Colloquium, the Maxim Gorki Theatre, the New Institute of Dramatic Writing and the Robert Bosch Foundation.

Yolanda Gutierrez, born in Mexico City and living in Hamburg for over 20 years, is a choreographer, vídeo artist, curator and producer. Since 2010, she cooperates with Kampnagel Hamburg. Her projects have been presented at international festival like Theater der Welt, JULIDANS, Membrane Festival, Find the File, among others. She works with dancers, actors, wrestlers, musicians, DJs, composers, amateurs, scholars, costume and stage designers from Asia, Europe, Latinamerica, USA and Africa. Since 2017, she realizes regularly decolonizing audio-walks with dance interventions in public spaces under the title URBAN BODIES PROJECT and DECOLONYICITES. She has recently founded a new platform dedicated to expand artistic structures called SHAPE THE FUTURE. A main focus of her work is the question of what political role the body plays in art, and how an artistic movement can become a political one.

Episode #3: Journeying towards vulnerability in the face of unprecedented changes
With: Bush Hartshorn (UK) & mayfield brooks (USA)
17/11/2021
8 PM

Their conversation will focus on journeying towards vulnerability in the face of unprecedented changes as a result of Covid, Climate Change, the Black Lives Matter uprisings and other world events. The personal is indeed political and brooks and Hartshorn hope to explore the more tender side of dealing with a crisis driven world. mayfield brooks and Bush Hartshorn will be speaking from their kitchens in Brooklyn NY and Edinburgh Scotland respectively. While chatting, they will prepare and cook Roasted Butternut Squash and invite you to join them at the kitchen table! 
Bush Hartshorn (UK) graduated from Dartington College of Arts in 1982 with a degree in Theatre Language. From that time onwards Bush has pursued a career as a community artist, dramaturge, performer, theatre programmer and artistic director in UK, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark where he was the Artistic Director of Dansehallerne Copenhagen. In 2009, he qualified as a coach in Relational Dynamics which has informed his work in mentoring dance artists. Since January 2015, Bush has been mentoring/coaching artists in Australia, Cyprus, UK, Spain, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. Currently he is Head of Artist Development at Dancebase, Edinburgh, Scotland. This has all been underpinned by a lifelong commitment to Liverpool Football Club.
mayfield brooks (USA) improvises while black and is based in Brooklyn, New York, on Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer. They are, on the faculty at Movement Research NYC, Editor-in-Chief of Movement Research Performance Journal, and the 2021 recipient of the biennial Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. brooks teaches and performs practices that arise from their life/art/movement work, Improvising While Black. www.improvisingwhileblack.com/

Episode #2: Challenges for the Performing Arts: Voices from Latin America 2
With: Carla Estefan (Brasilien), Nayse Lopez (Brasilien), Shoshana Polanco (Argentinien/Mexiko), Vera Garat (Uruguay), Dianelis Diéguez (Kuba/Spanien)
13/10/2021
8-10 PM

The discussion continues to address some of the topics from the KITCHEN TALK #1 and give an overview of new possibilities in the Performing Arts as well as discuss the challenges in maintaining exchanges and networks and developing projects in a pandemic context from the perspective of Latin American women working in the cultural field.
Carla Estefan graduated in Performing Arts and Cultural Production. Since 2002 she has directed Metropolitana Gestão Cultural, an agency for management, production and distribution of contemporary Performing Arts. For 12 years, she managed the production of several award-winning projects and plays by Brazilian artists and theatre companies that toured nationally and internationally. Since 2014, her work has mainly focused on promoting Brazilian theater worldwide, collaborating in the implementation of national initiatives such as MTbr-Brazilian Platform and BCA Encounter, presenting associated artists to the international network, creating opportunities for artistic residencies, co-productions and touring, coordinating workshops and participating in discussion panels on curation and internationalization of the Latin American performing scene. In 2020, during the pandemic, Carla started Sala Aberta #REC (Open Room #REC), an independent project that began under the premise of social isolation and aimed to reconnect artists and audiences during confinement to explore new possibilities for artistic expression in the digital world.
Nayse Lopez is a journalist, scriptwriter and performing arts curator. Since 2001, she also became curator and general director of Panorama, one of the biggest performing arts festivals in Brazil, where she developed several expertise in curating and organizing small and large events with international guests. In 2018, she was one of the curators and artistic directors of the project riofestiv.al, the first entirely online arts festival in Brazil, where different new formats of online artistic presence were created, including the live streaming of six performances. In 2020, she directed the project Panorama Luto, a live tribute to the victims of Covid-19 in Brazil that lasted 51h live on YouTube and brought together more than 300 artists, activists and people of all professions, from Alto Xingu to Stockholm, reading texts about mourning, hope, solidarity, art and freedom. In 2021, she took on the artistic direction of the international platform Panorama Raft, which will create 10 unreleased performances created to be seen online in pandemic times. 
Vera Garat is a choreographer, teacher and contemporary dance performer. Graduate in Visual Arts, Master in Art and Visual Culture, IENBA, UdelaR. Specialist in Artistic Education, Culture and Citizenship, Center for Higher University Studies, CAEU, OEI. Co - Director of the Artists in Residence PAR – Initiative that aim to support and promote research and creation in contemporary performing arts. The program is committed to the creation of a network of artists and national and foreign institutions to energize the local environment and promote the development of culture in Uruguay, created in 2010  and Co - Director of the International Contemporary Dance Festival of Uruguay FIDCU.
Shoshana Polanco is a creative producer with international exposure and work experience in Buenos Aires, New York, and Mexico City. She has worked for major festivals such as the Cervantino in Mexico, FIBA in Buenos Aires, and TeatroStageFest and Lincoln Center Festival in NYC. As a consultant, she worked for Southern Exposure (Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation), Made in Scotland (Creative Scotland), Music Theatre Now (ITI Germany), Rolex Mentor and Protege Program (Rolex Foundation), CAPACOA (The Canadian Association for the Performing Arts), and The Fringe Society (Edinburgh) among others. In NYC she worked at BAM, PS122, Under the Radar, and The Builders Association. In Mexico, she works for La Teatrería and Teatrix MX developing new productions and long-term strategies for the company. She was part of the curatorial committee of festival ESCENICA in Mexico 2019 and she is currently a member of the curatorial committee for the Festival Internacional Cervantino. She is a mentor to young artists and producers in Buenos Aires at Incubadora / DGEART. Polanco is an ISPA board member and fellow grad. She holds a Magna Cum Laude BA from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program in Women in Performance.
Dianelis Diéguez is trained as a stage critic and researcher at the University of the Arts in Havana, she has worked mainly in the field of management and the activation of multidisciplinary projects and live arts. As part of the Laboratorio Escénico de Experimentación Social (LEES, 2012-2019) and the Osikán experimental scenic nursery (2016-2019), she encouraged the work of Cuban artists who focus on alternative creative practices and has been researching the notion of community within the sociability that emerges from the relations between neighbourhoods and artists. She is a member of the Vulnus Association. For the next two editions of the festival SÂLMON in Barcelona, which is embarking on a new cycle of shared curatorship, she will be in charge of artistic and organisational coordination.

Episode #1: Challenges for the Performing Arts: Voices from Latin America
With: Carla Estefan (Brasilien), Cecilia Kuska (Argentinien), Karin Elmore (Peru), María José Cifuentes (Chile), Paola Irún (Paraguay)
29/09/2021
8-10 PM

As the pandemic accelerated the process of digital transformation around the world, the Performing Arts were not left behind in this process: artists, producers and curators plunged into virtual territoriality, creating new formats, projects and methodologies. We now see new channels of artistic expression that have come to stay.
The discussion aims to give an overview of new possibilities in the Performing Arts and discuss the challenges in maintaining an exchange and network to developing projects in a pandemic context from the perspective of Latin American women working in the cultural field.
Carla Estefan graduated in Performing Arts and Cultural Production. Since 2002 she has directed Metropolitana Gestão Cultural, an agency for management, production and distribution of contemporary Performing Arts. For 12 years, she managed the production of several award-winning projects and plays by Brazilian artists and theatre companies that toured nationally and internationally. Since 2014, her work has mainly focused on promoting Brazilian theater worldwide, collaborating in the implementation of national initiatives such as MTbr-Brazilian Platform and BCA Encounter, presenting associated artists to the international network, creating opportunities for artistic residencies, co-productions and touring, coordinating workshops and participating in discussion panels on curation and internationalization of the Latin American performing scene. In 2020, during the pandemic, Carla started Sala Aberta #REC (Open Room #REC), an independent project that began under the premise of social isolation and aimed to reconnect artists and audiences during confinement to explore new possibilities for artistic expression in the digital world.
Cecilia Kuska (ARG) is a creative producer and independent curator. She currently lives between London and Brussels. She is particularly interested in projects that contribute to collaboration and collective creation in all its forms. Currently she coordinates a network between South America and Southern Italy and the EU and is producer and co-curator of the multidisciplinary arts festival CASA London and the Festival Próximamente of the Royal Flemish Theatre Brussels KVS. Previously, she was general producer and artistic assistant of the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires FIBA, production director of FAENA ART and FAENA Festival, guest curator of Mid Atlantic Arts (USA), Santiago a Mil Festival (Chile) & Carlow Arts Festival (Ireland). She is also artistic associate at Brixton House London.
Karin Elmore (PER) is a choreographer, research artist and project manager. Master in Cultural Management and professor in the Dance Specialty and Master of Performing Arts at PUC Peru and member of the ARTEA research group. Karin was trained as a dancer and choreographer in New York (80’) at the Merce Cunningham School and with Alvin Nikolais. She has lived and worked in Lima, Rome, Mexico and in France. Her research and artistic creations have been supported and included in the programming of leading museums, theaters and festivals around the world.
In 2015. she founded the yearly international festival INDISCIPLINADOS which she directs since then. She is currently the Director of Cultural Affairs at the Alliance Francaise Lima.
María José Cifuentes (CHL) is a PhD candidate in History at the PUC of Chile. She has a master in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture from the University of Alcalá, Spain (2009) and works as a historian, teacher, researcher, manager and curator in the field of performing arts. She has participated as a programmer and curator in festivals in Europe and Latin America and has also held conferences in different countries. She is author of the books Social History of Dance in Chile 1940-1990 (2007), Independent Dance in Chile, Reconstruction of a Scene 1990-2000 (2009) and editor of the book Rethinking Dramaturgy, Errancia y Transformación, Centro Parraga (2010) . She is also a member of the ARTEA Research Group (Spain), a research group led by José Antonio Sánchez. She has directed MOV-S Chile (2015), a project by Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona and curated Espacios revelados, a project of the Siemens Foundation of Germany (Chile, 2016). Currently, she works as Artistic and Executive Director of NAVE, Center for Creation and Residence in Santiago de Chile. In 2020, she has led several projects around NAVE’s creative industries, including the NODO de Artes Vivas and the co-production platform for dance, TACTO.

Paola Irún (PRY) is an artist and producer, Bachelor of Communication (UCA -Paraguay) and Master of Fine Arts in Multidisciplinary Theater (SLC, New York). Paola has a 20-year theater career as a manager, director, dramaturge, actress and theater teacher. She lived in New York for 8 years and worked Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway. In 2009, she created EN BORRADOR_teatro en construcción (THE DRAFT theater under construction), an experimental project in which she creates, writes and directs projects, plays, installations and interventions in unconventional spaces. Based on a collaborative dramaturgy, she collaborates with professional and amateur artists in each project, exploring themes of identity, migration, gender and social issues developed at a national and international level.
EN BORRADOR was declared a project of cultural interest by the National Secretariat of Culture of Paraguay in 2012. Due to the pandemic, she moved part of the project to the virtual environment.