Subalternas
Some of the questions raised are: how do we understand the politics of the border both outside the territory and within it? How do these politics intersect with the histories of forced or unforced migration and exile, of women and dissidents (LGBTQIA+) of first, second, third generation? How does the organisation of the city, urban design, intersect with the good-living of migrants in dialogue with subalternity, understanding the concept in relation to the context of colonisation?
The LASTESIS Collective proposes a crossover with colonial history, both as a colonising country and as a colonised country, and the extractivist logics that are perpetuated to this day in these diverse territories.
The artists will open to the audience her different creative processes including a Q&A after their presentation.
LASTESIS: Daffne Valdés Vargas and Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem, both from the performing arts area; Paula Cometa Stange, from the field of design and history, and Lea Cáceres, from costume design, organized and gave life to the interdisciplinary group of feminist artists colectivo LASTESIS.
The name lies in the fact that the objective of these four women is to take theses of feminist authors and translate them into a performative format in order to reach multiple audiences. Using the collage technique, the work of colectivo LASTESIS links performance, sound, visual and textil experimentation, with the aim of generating a graphic, visual and scenic appreciation of this theoretical essays that address gender issues from a feminist perspective.
LASTESIS premiered in the fourth version of the Festival de Teatro Porteño de Mujeres GESTA (Women's Theater Festival) Valparaíso (August 2018) with Patriarcado y Capital es alianza criminal, a platform that seeks to promote and disseminate the scenic creation of women in the region of Valparaíso. El violador eres tú was premiered in Valparaíso (2020) and afterwards have been programated in the Santiago a Mil Festival and in the HAU Heber am Ufer theater in Berlin. This year they premiered RESISTENCIA o la reivindicación de un derecho colectivo, a collaborative performance in the public space with the participation of about 80 women and LGTBQIA+ dissidents of different ages and backgrounds, after having worked together in a creative laboratory process. RESISTENCIA is a co-production between Fundación Teatro a Mil FITAM, Parque Cultural Ex-Cárcel de Valparaíso and the HAU Heber am Ufer. They are also the creators of multiple collaborative video-performances and of the street performance un violador en tu camino, that was replicated in more than 50 countries on five continents.
Maryam K. Hedayat is an Iranian visual artist, curator, dramaturg and writer living in Brussels. She graduated with honours as a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Antwerp and went on to study film directing at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels.
In 2019 she was selected for a screenwriting project by The Flemish Film Fund, and is currently writing a screenplay for her first feature film. She is also the city curator for ARGOS, centre for audiovisual arts.
Hedayat is also a founding member of Wanda, an independent action group for female directors in Belgium.
She has worked with theatre maker Sachli Gholamalizad for her play Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season, which premiered at KVS in May 2019. She has worked with David Helbich on the art integration project Nieuwland. She was also part of the European creative film project ENFEM. Her video-installation Genderless successfully toured in Belgium from 2016 to 2018.
A side project of Genderless, A Tale of Memories, was selected for the Antwerp Queer Arts Festival and exhibited at MAS and during Zoveel Many Trees>
Hedayat was also selected as one of the fourteen artists to take part in PUSH, a 2-year project funded by Creative Europe exploring gender/sexual identity, migration & (over) protection in theatre and dance.
Hedayat is also working on two other film projects, a documentary on the Iranian diaspora Sultans of Love and First Day of Spring, a film that revolves around the lives of a group of twenty something friends living in Molenbeek in the aftermath of the Brussels attacks.
She is furthermore a member of the arts and culture magazine Rekto:Verso, a founding member of Cross Critique, and a member of SectieMoFo, a think tank for diversity in the arts.
She was a participant of the KVS project Rise Up, a poetry project led by renowned poet Sukina Douglas.
She made the film Deburkinastion for theatre maker Rachida Lamrabet, in collaboration with KVS and The Goethe Institute.
Her first short, White Maze, has been screened at several expositions in Antwerp and Brussels, namely at Semaine d’Art expo in Brussels, Made in Berchem travelling exposition, the Kortgeknipt film series and experimental film expo Bewegend Beeld in Antwerp.
In 2013 she collaborated on the short Nazomer which was part of the Follow Gent film project. It was screened during The Ghent film festival.
Lucila Guichon, born in Buenos Aires, is an artist, artistic producer and teacher based in Berlin. She creates performances, video-installations and collaborates on theater projects. Moving between diverse collaborative partnerships, she researches the contemporary urban environment as a laboratory and stage for artistic creation. She designs, produces and coordinates projects with theatres, museums, cultural institutions and individual artists. Since 2010 she works as a freelance member of the artistic team of the Mestizo Arts Platform (Belgium) . (MAP www.mestizoartsplatform.be) She is the founder of MESTIZX in Berlin.
She worked in projects such as Proximamente Festival, Mestizo Arts Festival, BRAINS, Mijn Dagelijkse Portie Kunst, Studio Urbanization, MAFfe Vrijdagen, MURAL, MAPping Antwerpen, De Mensen Maken de Stad, WIPCOOP, Versus,…
Jennifer Baez Matos (Santo Domingo - 1987) is a Belgian spoken word artist of Latin American origin. Her work investigates power relations in society and decolonising narratives. https://www.jenniferbaezmatos.com/
Credits
A residency developed in Belgium between Mestizo Arts Platform and Proximamente - KVS, and also held with BOCA Biennial (Portugal), Cádiz Iberoamerican Arts Festival - FIT (Spain) and HAU Berlin (Germany)