Un Mundo Raro (A Rare World), 2015

Un Mundo Raro is a major project part of RijksakademieOPEN 2015, Amsterdam that includes a synchronized three-channel video projection and a performance in a separate space.

The work is inspired by a song by Chavela Vargas (Costa Rican born Mexican singer, 1919-2012) commonly known as “the rough voice of tenderness”. Vargas’ performances were emotionally touching and brought up questions about human nature. What makes us humans? What is the body capable of doing? How much of its behaviour is innate and how much of it is constructed?

The point of departure for this work is a study on the emotions following the lecture on expressions by Charles Le Brun (1688) and the third part of Spinoza´s Ethics (1677). Next to the idea that by understanding the emotions we gain self-empowerment and life enhancement, the voice has also been playing a key role in this work. What are the primal aspects within the voice and how do these influence individuality?

Altogether the performance presents emotional and physical landscapes where the idea of the inside of an outside (as the metaphor of the voice being an inside of an outside) is set forth by juxtaposing emotions with harsh and violent vocabulary. The atmosphere of the live work is intense, presenting to the audience a rare human-like being behaving, at times, as an animal that struggles to understand emotions while coping with a competitive and strange world. This animalized human being, dressed in fierce Adidas armor seems confused, sad, happy, fearful, trapped, insane. This internal conflict appears almost as a matter of survival.

Un Mundo Raro also presents a three-channel video projection as a composition of sounds and movements that use the voice and the body as potential tools. What are the boundaries of the contorted voice and body? Images on the walls are close ups of body parts, abstracting the idea of a unique, united body. There is a thin line between something provocative and something sad and uncomfortable at the same time. The spectator is surrounded by these images, giant close ups that deliver mechanical and guttural sounds bringing forth an absurd fragmented body.