ʜᴏᴜꜱᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴇꜱᴀᴘᴀʀᴇᴄɪᴅxs
(House of Missing People)
“There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born” (Frantz Fanon)
A hooded character named La ChicaScratch embarks on a transgenerational trip to uncover the hidden story of her mother as a young militant activist in 1970’s Colombia. Through it she reflects on her own journey: the dark reasons that led her to escape Colombia into political exile in the Netherlands ten years ago.
Paula Chaves Bonilla’s new performance House of Desaparecidxs is her testimony among thousands of other Colombians who fled their country in order to save their lives. People who had no other choice than to leave their homeland after being threatened for their political affiliations, for being sexual dissidents, community leaders or for seeking justice for criminalized, disappeared or murdered loved ones. House of Desaparecidxs opens its doors to these censored stories; we enter a utopian space in which we travel through non-linear memories of the present, future and past – narrowing the border between the realm of life and death.
Resistance in exile
House of Desaparecidxs traces a lineage and space of belonging through communities, people and stories that resist the voracious necropolitics of capitalism and dignify life through solidarity and collective actions. The performance emerges as a technology of resistance in exile, and devises a way to reestablish dialogue with origins and histories. It refuses the destruction of memory (memoricide) so common in conditions of exile and the neoliberal contemporary subject.
“A beautifully designed, multi-layered performance: an engaging and appealing tribute to those individuals that dare to speak out, and also as an ode to those who cannot or could not – open and moving.” – Theaterkrant
www.theaterkrant.nl/recensie/house-of-desaparecidxs/paula-chaves-bonilla
“The work went beyond the limits of queerness, or the limits that have grown around queerness, towards paying homage to the armed fighters, workers, peasants, peoples, and organisations that have resisted a genocidal system, and proposed organised anti-capitalism as a form of activism needed for the emancipation of not only queer people but all those who are oppressed. Considering how ‘queer’ has developed in capitalism into a bourgeois frame of identity, Chaves Bonilla’s performance was a powerful statement.” - Maurício Ianêz - TQW Magazine
www.tqw.at/en/can-a-utopian-experience-survive-within-institutional-constraints/
Credits
Concept & performance
Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla
Research
Natalia Chaves Lopez & Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla
Dramaturgy
Ogutu Muraya
Scenography
Nadia Bekkers
Scenographic Painting
Rasureitor
Somatic Movement research guidance
Lux Sauer
Outside eye
Natalia Sorzano
Light design
Mathisse Coornaert
Technical support
Nadia Bekkers
Political Cartel compilation and Rap Selector
Rasureitor
Graphic Exhibition Design
Lina Bravo Mora
Production Assistance
Alejandra Zabala
Video Animation
Ro Buur
Music by
Naturaleza Suprema, La Farmakos and Indus
Produced by
Veem House of Performance and ICI - Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier