Correspondence #1 on the importance of time and place, the territory

Li Lorian & Marc Villanueva Mir

When thinking of “landscape”, the first idea that usually comes to mind is of a static and peaceful view on a territory. But when we think of the landscapes of the countries we come from (Israel/Palestine and Spain/ Catalonia) we have to see in them unceasing conflicts. Checkpoints, urban development prompted by racist agendas and/or attempts to contrive an urban utopia by means of demographic engineering shape our landscapes, through operations that demand and enact oppression. Recent events like the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem or the clashes during the Catalan referendum show the underlying tensions and the fragility of these environments. Always on the edge, the proximity of a breaking point constantly threatens the spaces that bear a reality that is already broken. Either Franco’s dictatorship in Spain or the Palestinian Nakba, our approach in this performance consists of tracing back the current struggles to their respective breaking point, in order to understand the present we inherited.

Correspondence #1 is a lecture-performance fruit of the collaboration between Li Lorian (Jerusalem) and Marc Villanueva Mir (Barcelona). What starts as a lecture on spatial conceptualization of utopian and dystopian thinking, transforms into a travel through personal archives, political statements, accents, screenshots, bookmarks, subtitles and voice-overs. The shared narrative we weave in form of a staged-correspondence aims to draw a visual and conceptual journey between Jerusalem, Barcelona and Gießen; a collage of memories, observations and representations of the multiple and complex realities we inhabit and that at the same time inhabit us. Using the performative power and discourse that both utopia and dystopia nowadays entail, we explore interferences between actual and ideal, politics and literature, reality and fiction, spaces and places, in order to revisit the cities and landscapes we come from and our concerns with them, and to question the role they play in constituting our sense of home and notion of belonging.

“The artists are engaged in a personally close and at the same time geographically distant correspondence, which opens up windows towards actual as well as imaginary landscapes and architectures, towards a complex weaving of countries and continents, self-images and successive approaches to each other. Their cultural and political backgrounds are revealed as shaped by power structures as much as by the potentials of a transformation which is initiated by the people that dwell in them.”
Ellen Wagner

By and with Li Lorian & Marc Villanueva Mir
Photography Annika Weertz
Video documentation Nora Schneider

With special thanks to Tal Haran, Sarianna Kankkunen, Danny Kronberg, Mireia Pérez, Martina Ruhsam, Ia Tanskanen, Aviv Tatarsky, The Mouth and the Foot, Navadei Haukaf

With the support of Festival der jungen Talente, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Gießener Hochschulgesellschaft and Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft

CAT/ EN/ ES




With
Li Lorian

Previous dates

Bremen | Outnow! Festival
8.6.19. 17h

Madrid | Teatro Pradillo
21.2.19. 21h
22.2.19. 21h
23.2.19. 21h

Budapest | FACT Festival
2.2.19. 21h

Frankfurt am Main | Frankfurt LAB · HTA-Werkschau
20.10.18. 17h

Frankfurt am Main | Festival der jungen Talente
4.5.18. 21h
5.5.18. 14:15h