Urban Interventions
The 2009 urban interventions, curated by Dioscórides Pérez, were performed throughout Bogotá, taking place from Parque de la Independencia to Plaza Bolivár and at various locations along la Séptima. This series provided a means of engaging with spaces and citizens in the urban context.
To see an extensive digital map of the various routes for the Urban Interventions and information about the artists, click here for the website created by Dioscórides Pérez and his team, and read his Crónica de Acciones Urbanas (in Spanish) as published in e-misférica.
Dioscórides Pérez (Pereira, 1950) studied theatre and visual arts in the Department of Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He has been a professor of drawing and engraving in the department since 1978. He completed graduate studies in engraving- with a fellowship from OEA- in the CREAGRAF at the Universidad de Costa Rica, and advanced studies in traditional Chinese art and Tai Chi at the Beijing Fine Arts Institute (1984-87). He is currently a professor and teaches courses in Body and Space, Performance, Land Art, Taichi, and Chigong. His work has received various acknowledgements, such as First Prize at the Bienal Latinoamericana de Grabado de Costa Rica and (twice) First Prize in drawing at the competition of the K.C.C. Art Gallery in New York. His creative work extends as well to the writing of short stories, articles, and chronicles. For many years he has been dedicated to the work of performance and land art, and also to pursuing the traces of indigenous cultures, especially shamanism and cave art.
The Ground in the Cities
This intervention, performed by Colombian students and volunteer artists, examines the tensions that exist between the inhabitants of the street and the local population within urban space. In this performance, the vulnerability of social ties becomes evident and daily interactions, pregnant with the informational excess of modern life and the common sense of extreme pragmatism and individualism, are given new significance.
Biography
Andrea Maciel Garcia is pursuing her PhD in Theater Arts. She has her MA in Theater, Performance and Culture from the Universidad Federal del Estado de Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), and a professional degree in Theater Arts from the same university. She is a choreographer, performer, and dancer. She coordinates introductory groups in the area of Performance and is Assistant Professor of Theater Arts at the Centro Universitário da Cidade.
Andréa Maciel García
This site-specific project took place at the Santamaría bullring in downtown Bogotá. A bull was drawn on the sand, and then set on fire after nightfall; the silhouette was then erased, but as more attempts were made to erase it, the more visible it became.
Andrés Sebastián Murillo: Monosabio
Kinesthesia Project
Concentrating on Bogotá's mass transport system, the Transmilenio, this performance proposes a symbolic subversion of public space through a series of absurd and out-of-context actions that will occur inside public buses. The actions will be recorded on video and published online, together with a record of all the required legal documents and permissions.
Biography
Carlos Andrés Rozo is a theater artist from the Estudio XXI school in Bogotá. He is a member of the Cámara Estudio XXI group, has written scripts, and has directed independent television as well as audiovisual experimental work.
Carlos Andrés Rozo
Extraordinary Girls
Chicas extra-ordinarias is an urban intervention in downtown Bogotá. This work emerges from the notion of the body in space, and is an exercise in observing the diverse relationships that are generated within the public sphere. The performance seeks to make visible the types of prostitution we engage in within our current religious-economic-financial model.
Biography
Chicas extra-ordinarias is a creative-research group that explores the dynamics of the body in dialogue with the city. The group was formed by artists trained in a range of artistic disciplines within the Interdisciplinary Masters program in Theater and Living Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Members: Liliana Martín, Alejandro Cárdenas, Lorena López, Eduardo Ruiz and Jaime Torres.
Chicas Extra-Ordinarias
Los Santos Mueren Antes
This is an artistic intervention in the Matadero Distrital de Bogotá (the district slaughterhouse). It is an effort to understand the pain of forgotten mothers who lose their children, articulated in the visual language developed by students and professors in the School of the Arts (ASAB) at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, in Bogotá. In that plundered, beaten and forgotten body, in these stumps that remain of the old slaughterhouse, we interpellate Colombian reality, here in what will be the future site of the Arts building of the University: the Aduanilla de Paiba.
Members:
María Teresa Osorio
Ignacio Rodríguez
Jorge Peñuela
José Assad
Rocío Méndez
Colectivo ASAB
The Cage's Limit
The performer travels through the city carrying a cage over her head. This image invites reflections on notions of the absurd, and different forms of liberty and limitation.
Biography
Daniela Kohn is a Brazilian artist who studied Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts at the same university and she is a member of art collective Opavivará in Rio de Janeiro.
Daniela Kohn
Bogotá Actions
Action in the most heterogeneous-crowded-heart-public-square of Bogotá:
#3: the two jars: water from clay to silver to clay from silver
Photographer: Felipe Ribeiro
Biography
Eleanora Fabião is a performance artist and theorist, and an Associate Professor in Theater Directing at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, in the School of Communication. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and a MA in Social History of Culture from PUC-Rio (sponsored by CAPES).
Eleanora Fabião
Portable Protest
An urban intervention that questions the power of mass media in the political sphere. From buildings located in strategic areas of the city, two video projectors transmit images of different protests from around the world. The video is edited so as not to expose the cause of the demonstrations, thus calling into question the difference between real events and their representations.
Performers: Pedro Bennaton and Luana Raiter
Biography
ErroGrupo was founded in 2001, in Florianópolis, Brazil. The collective arose from a need to explore art—from an interdisciplinary angle—as an intervention in the daily lives of people and spaces, exploring the role of the performer, the invasion of public space, and the dissolution of art in daily life.
Members: Ana Paula Cardozo, Julia Amaral y Priscila Zaccaron (Visual Artists). Luana Raiter, Luiz Henrique Cudo, Michel Marques y Pedro Bennaton (Performing Artists)
ErroGrupo
A Better World
An action in public spaces (the street and the internet) that compiles proposals in order to create a better world, and construct a community and a space for the exchange of opinion, that is open and accessible for all.
Biography
Fernando Pertuz is an artist, activist, and researcher. He conducts visual and performance actions that reflect on social ills and the human condition in order to raise community awareness in search of a better tomorrow.
Fernando Pertuz
Kokken
The artist will walk very slowly, holding a mirror in front of himself in which the passers-by will be able to catch a glimpse of their reflections and see themselves.
Gonzalo Carreño
Out-Doors
Out-doors is a dance intervention in urban space that developed from research on the "Plastic-Body-Object-Thing". The Zezas exhibit, disguise, manipulate, distort, and subvert advertisements for their "product-body," in the midst of traffic, monuments, buildings, and passers-by. The ever-changing behavior of these "Plastic-Bodies-Object-Things"—among the city's other bodies—places Out-doors in a position to challenge the complex configurations that are self-organized and constructed in the urban aesthetic.
Biographies
Grupo CoMteMpu’sis a contemporary dance company from Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Members: Sérgio Pereira Andrade (co-founder and general director), Iara Sales Agra (co-founder and producer), Eros Santos Ferrerira, and Natália Silva Da Matos.
Performers: Sérgio Pereira Andrade, Iara Sales Agra, Eros Santos Ferrerira, Natália Silva Da Matos, Aldren Lincoln Barreto de Almeida, Mariana Pereira Gottschalk Morais, Milianie Lage Matos,
Sérgio Pereira Andrade received his BA in Dance and is currently pursuing an MA in Theater Arts at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil.
Iara Sales Agra is an actress-creator, performer, art educator, and illustrator with a BA in Dance from the UFBA, Brazil.
Grupo CoMteMpu’s
Chabochi
Chabochi is the Tarahumara/Rarámuri (indigenous Mexican) word for Mestizo, the person who is different, who is not from here, the stranger, the foreigner, the other. The work presents performances that have emerged from an intercultural process between the Rarámuri and Chabochi (Western-Mestizo) cultures--from the coexistence with the Rarámuri culture in Norogachi, in the Tarahumara mountains (Sierra Tarahumara).
Biography
Gustavo Álvarez Lugo, also known by his alter ego Musgus, was born in México City in 1973, and now lives in Chihuahua. He studied social anthropology. Since 2007, he has led performance workshops in the Sierra Tarahumara with the Rarámuri indigenous peoples, and in the city of Chihuahua in indigenous settlements.
Gustavo Álvarez Lugo
Stitching
A newlywed couple posing in front of City Hall, in a wedding gown and tuxedo, is not a novelty. However, a newlywed couple, scissors in hand, cutting off pieces of their clothing, is shocking. It is moving. It generates questions. This action provokes a reflection on a subject both ancient and still currently relevant: the murder of women in Latin America, violence against women, death and disappearance.
Biographies
Huaira Basaber is an Argentine artist, actress, and professor of Visual Arts. She produces video art, urban interventions and installations. She is currently working in Management and Cultural Production at the Department of Innovation and Culture in the province of Santa Fe. She is a professor of Heuristics at the Universidad de Palermo.
Sebastián Dalla Costa is a cook and professional pastry chef. He began performing in 2008 when Stitching was presented in Argentina and Perú.
Huaira Basaber and Sebastián Dalla Costa
Making Memory While Walking
The aim of this project is to enable multiple participants to re-invent an ancient indigenous path that crosses over Bogotá by walking. The process explores the interconnections between walking, collective memory, and notions of cartography.
Biography
Luis Carlos Sotelo was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He now lives in London. As a performance scholar and artist, Luis C. Sotelo was trained at New York University.
Luis Carlos Sotelo
Mourning
Mourning is a street performance in which the artist circulates through the city, acting as a counterpoint to the urban landscape. A human figure, all in white, rides her bicycle around the city at an extremely slow pace, generating a rupture in the public's notion of space and time.
Biography
Maicyra Leão is a perfomer, professor, and a cultural mobilizer/producer. She is a graduate in Theater Arts from the University of Brasilia and completed her MA at the same university. Most recently Leão has dedicated herself to both independently and collectively producing performance in public spaces in addition to other visual art projects, and continually developing theoretical reflections in relation to these experiences. Currently, she is a professor at the Theater Nucleus of the Universidad Federal de Sergipe.
Maicyra Leão
Strange Body
Strange Body is an interactive performance that tackles the confluence of artistic practices, technological experimentation, and critical/political/social reflection. The artist, using a technological sound apparatus adapted to make himself into a strange body/foreign object, walks through the streets of the city, seeking ephemeral connections with passers-by and exploring testimony, contact, and reaction.
Biography
Marcus Vinícius is an artist/performer, researcher, and independent curator. A graduate in Visual Arts from the Center for the Arts at the UFES in Brazil, he is currently pursuing his doctorate in Contemporary Latin American Art at the Academy of Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. He lives and works in La Plata, Argentina.
Marcus Vinícius
Outdoor Performance Series - Body Geographies
Transmission
This action is conceived of as an exercise in which what is transmitted is not in the form of a drawing, but is rather a corporal sensation, intended to be transferred from one medium to another. While this is parallel to an electric current that travels throughout a cable it is also a group exercise to promote linkages and unification.
Written Body
This is a walk that takes people's silhouettes and shadows by storm, leaving the ephermeral footprint as an essential record, writing that the body leaves behind like a memory-book.
Making Way
The group members begin their walk through the streets with a water container and white rags; they collect footprints, and clean the feet and hands of everyone they encounter along the way.
Biography
Creative-research group led by Adrián Gómez. Affiliated with the Art department of the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá (ASAB) at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. This collective connects with other groups in bringing together academic endeavors, such as the university creation and extension committees, and their desire to bring languages and disciplines into dialogue with urban spaces.
Members: Adrián Gómez, Ginna Alejandra Vélez Carrasco, Edgar Alexander Rodriguez Rodriguez, Juana del Mar Jimenez Infante, Jorge Enrique Bernal Aguilera, Johana Andrea Martínez Ospina, Juan Pablo Beltrán Hilarión , Jennifer Rugelis Charry, Juan Fernando
Okan
This action will include 300 women, the majority of whom are victims and survivors of violence. Together with theatre and dance artists, they will create a living, active and poetic presence, staging an aesthetics of resistance. This event will help make visible to Colombia and to the world the disappearances and forced displacements, the systematic assassinations of political leaders in the country, and the youth who are presented as "false positives."
Patricia Ariza: Where are they? Living Memory. Women in the Public Square
Untitled
This performance begins with the act of eating grass as an allusion to hunger. By the end of the piece, an offering remains—an installation in the name of all the people who have died or who have suffered in some way as a result of famine.
Biography
Quetzal Belmont received her BS in Communications from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She has produced public interventions at various venues including: the Museo de la Ciudad de México, the Ex-Teresa Arte Actual Museum, the Chopo Museum, the Academy of Medicine and Political and Social Sciences at UNAM, among others.
Quetzal Belmont
Exodus
This project proposes an embodied reflection on forced displacement in Colombia; the machete evokes the body's dissapearance, the communal graves, and the slaughter.
Biography
Yorlady Ruiz is a poet and a visual artist from Pereira, Colombia. In 2002, She won the National Poetry Prize at the 7th Festival of Poetry in Medellín and she won the Carlos Drews Castro Art Award in Pereira. Her creative work, in the form of performance and installation, focuses on issues of gender and violence in Colombia. She has published two books of poetry, Versos para tu fresca Alborada (1998) and Novela Inconclusa (2001).