«Conversas Diversas»

Until the end of its programme, COINCIDENCIA launched seven clips of diverse conversations: performers meet visual artists, sound art meets queerness, São Paulo meets Lausanne – online, edited, self–made & pixeled. 7 x 10 minutes samples of a much bigger exchange.

Conversas Diversas is a series of online conversations that establishes connections between artists, collectives and platforms which collaborated with COINCIDENCIA – Swiss and South American Cultural Exchanges in its three years of programme in both territories (2017 – 2020).

International collaborations raise a series of concerns, contextual differences and abysses. The aim of this video project is to disseminate ideas and develop discussions on diverse topics that have been of great importance for the programme. Conversas Diversas is a project that opens dialogues for artists to share their practices and experiences with a great sense of community and listening as essential aspects of exchange. It’s an experiment that keeps the door open for sharing questions, and building connections.

«QUEERNESS, PERFORMATIVITY, PLURIVERSITY»

For the initial episode of this series we invited Léa Meier (Switzerland) and Explode! Platform (Brazil) – represented by Cláudio Bueno and João Simões. The artists share their recent practices, major concerns and affinities while discussing the contextual differences between Switzerland and Brazil. Their encounter touches on issues of performativity, difference, self-care and freedom.

ARTISTS BIOS

Léa Meier (1989) lives and works in Switzerland. Léa Meier is an artist exploring the notions of dirtiness, desire, body and failure through performance, textile, text and drawing. She uses sexual energy as a fount of creativity, in order to create spaces and atmospheres propitious to intimate, feminist and political speeches. She made her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Bern (2012) and her Master of Fine Arts in Contemporary Artistic Practices at the University of Arts in Geneva (2015). In the past years, she created various performances in Switzerland; Les Mauvais Jours Finiront! (Les Urbaines Festival, Theater Arsenic), Lipstick Big Enough (Les Urbaines Festival), Ma maison est une maison sale (Theater Arsenic). In 2018, her first solo show was presented at Riverside, an independent art space in Switzerland. Léa has been also invited to participate to the residencies Watch and Talk during the theater festivals far° and Programme Commun (2016), Arc artistic residency (2017) and FAAP in São Paulo (2018). Léa Meier on Instagram

Explode! is a platform that operates in the fields of art and culture, also approaching pedagogy and social justice. It fosters and develops research and experimentation around practices that discuss the body and its intersections of class, race, gender, sexuality and its non-normative possibilities. Led by artists, researchers and curators Cláudio Bueno and João Simões, it is organized in the midst of a national and international network of collaborators. It organizes presentations and immersive meetings in different spaces and formats that emphasize coexistence, listening, debate and experimentation. It seeks to broaden the sense of artistic practice, of culture, of learning spaces, and, consequently, of how we will be able to imagine other ways of life less violent, freer and more diverse. explode.life

Cláudio Bueno (1983, São Paulo, SP) is an artist, researcher and curator. He participates in national and international exhibitions, residencies and awards. He has spoken in universities and cultural spaces such as: Whitechapel Gallery (United Kingdom), Humboldt-Universität (Germany), CUNY (USA), University of Cape Town (South Africa), FAAP (Brazil), among others. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from ECA-USP. Integrates O Grupo Inteiro, dedicated to artistic practices, with which he participated in exhibitions at MAM-SP; MASP; Sesc SP; 33rd Bienal de Artes de São Paulo – in collaboration with the artist Jorge Menna Barreto; far°/Pro Helvetia (Switzerland); Casa do Povo; among others. Together with Tainá Azeredo he realizes the Interval-School, which researches and experiences ways of learning from the field of art. with João Simões, he develops, the Explode! Platform, which researches and promotes artistic and cultural practices with emphasis on the intersections of social class, race, gender and sexuality. Part of his current research focuses on global technological infrastructures and their ways of operating alongside the dynamics of life and earth. buenozdiaz.net

João Simões (1979, Rio de Janeiro, RJ) is an artist, curator, researcher and educator. He develops, with Cláudio Bueno, the Explode! platform that researches and promotes artistic and cultural practices with emphasis on the intersections of social class, race, gender and sexuality. He is a member of the Extremidades Research Group/PUC-SP. He has participated in curatorships, public speeches and performances in several cultural institutions such as CUNY, Sesc-SP, CCBB-SP, Paço das Artes, MASP, PUC-SP, among others. He presented the performance Vera Verão, in collaboration with the artist Aretha Sadick in the exhibition “Agora somos todxs negrxs?” at Videobrasil (2017), and Arte Veículo at Sesc Pompeia (2018) and Sesc Santos (2019). In 2019, he mentored the ICA-Capetown Live Arts Workshop, through Pro Helvetia’s COINCIDENCIA programme. He is currently part of the “How free are the arts?” residency programme of the Goethe-Institut, between Brazil and Nigeria. João Simões on Instagram

«SUSTAINABILITY, NATURE AND TERRITORIES»

For the second episode of our new series Conversas Diversas we invited Séverin Guelpa (Switzerland) and Fabian Wagmister (Argentina) – a collaborator of «Practicas de Periferia». The artists share their concerns and interests upon ecological issues, bio construction, and mobility. Their encounter touches on issues of sustainability, cartography, nature, and territories as they share project images as well as on-site examples of their work methodology.

ARTISTS BIOS

Fabian Wagmister is associate professor at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Televisionand is the founding director of the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP). He created and directs the Centro Hipermediático Experimental Latinomericano (cheLA) in Buenos Aires Argentina, an innovative research, experimentation and production project exploring the intersections of culture, community and technology. His work focuses on alternative technological modes for collective interpretive creativity. He collaborates with diverse communities to generate reflexive media systems emphasizing cultural and locative specificity. In this context technology and culture converge into a performative social practice of investigation and expression. Fabian’s recent projects consider mobility as a defining factor of individual and collective identity. Inspired by a situationist and Deleuzian theoretical framework he seeks to defunctionalize movement in a diversity of urban and rural environments and transform it into a tool for creative research and creative expression. He combines extensive derive processes with interpretive cartography tools to generate collective works merging investigation, experimentation, and exhibition into a synchronous experience. Among his related projects are Imageability (2006), a participatory cognitive mapping installation about the history of Los Angeles, Engage Ludicity (2009), a collective urban détournement experience, Memoria Barrial(2012), a navigable media cartography installation in a Buenos Aires subway station and Bicicletas Blancas(2018), a situationist derive performance and installation about motility in the city.

Séverin Guelpa is an artist and curator. He lives and works in Geneva (1974). Séverin Guelpa is interested in the extreme territories from which he draws his inspiration, seeking to reveal the forces, movements and energies that are found there. His work combines building materials, construction techniques, vernacular knowledge and raw materials to translate the different states of a constantly changing environment. He transforms, weighs or moves materials in large immersive installations that often translate the links between human action and nature, questioning the fragile balances in which the world finds itself today.

In a permanent dialectic between the field and his studio, Séverin Guelpa inscribes his work in the experience of the regions he explores around the world and the expeditions he leads with MATZA, in contact with the territory and its inhabitants. By confronting arid climates, regions with limited resources or the living conditions of the communities that live there, he is interested in what nature can teach us but also in our capacity to adapt. The experience of these places becomes a way for him to address today’s ecological, economic or social issues and to reflect on the radical changes that await our society. guelpa.ch

«SWISSNESS, FICTION AND (IN)STABILITY»

For the third episode of «Conversas Diversas» we invited Adina Secretan (Switzerland) and Guerreiro do Divino Amor (Switzerland/Brazil). Both artists relate to the problematics of swiss identity, its fictions and the (in)stability enacted by the country. With practices that comes from different backgrounds, dance and video, their conversation focuses on understanding power relations and internationalization in a context of exchange.

ARTISTS BIOS

Born in Geneva in 1980, Adina Secretan trained in classical, contemporary, and dramatic dance at the Geneva Conservatory. Along with a master’s degree in philosophy and modern literature, she continued her training in contemporary dance at the Collectif du Marchepied, in Lausanne. In 2009, she completed training in animation and theatrical mediation at the Haute Ecole de Théâtre de Suisse Romande, and in 2010, training in dramaturgy and performance of the text. Since 2008 she has been working in Switzerland as a choreographer, director, dancer, assistant, playwright, and mediator, for theater, dance, performance, and community dance projects. She has also been a research assistant, has published for journals of philosophy, literature, or the performing arts, and was educational manager for theatrical mediation (HETSR). In 2014, she completes the course of the first batch of students of the Master of Arts in Theater delivered in French-speaking Switzerland, specialization in staging. Since then she has pursued research, both artistic and activist, on the right to the city and to space, and the drive to close. Resulting from this research, the pieceSQUAREwas presented at the Urban Festival in December 2014, then co-produced in 2016 by the Arsenic-center for contemporary scenic art, the Théâtre de l’Usine, as well as the ABC cultural center. She is also pursuing research with performers Simone Truong, Eilit Marom, Anna Massoni, Elpida Orfanidou, around eroticism and strangeness, whose work is produced in 2016 at La Gessneralle, at the Spring Festival, at the Choreographic Meetings, at the Unfair Festival. With the sculptor Florian Bach and the playwright Anne-Laure Sahy, she is currently working on a piece dedicated to the limits of space. Since 2016, she has been an associate artist of far °, Festival des arts vivant – Nyon, where she works around non-spectacular and non-representational forms, associating artists, inhabitants.

Guerreiro do Divino Amor (1983), lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Guerreiro do Divino Amor is a Swiss-Brazilian artist master of architecture. His research explores Superficções, hidden forces that interfere in the construction of territory and the collective imagination, taking the form of films, publications and installations. His work was shown in several national and international exhibitions and festivals, in addition to being a finalist in the Grand Prize Vivo do Cinema Brasileiro 2009, with his work “Clube da Criança” (2008), winner of the award for best short documentary at the Transgender Film Festival 2015 by Kiel, Germany, finalist at the Geneva Biennial of Moving Image in 2016 and twice finalist at the Swiss Art Awards (parallel to Art Basel). Guerreiro Divino do Amor has participated in exhibitions at the Iberê Camargo Foundation (Porto Alegre), at the France-Brazil house (Rio de Janeiro), at the Gentil Carioca gallery (Rio de Janeiro), MAR (Rio de Janeiro) and at the Vilnius Contemporary Art Center (Lithuania). guerreirododivinoamor.com

«COLLABORATIONS, ETHICS AND SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE»

For the fourth episode of «Conversas Diversas» we invited two collectives Knowbotiq (Switzerland) and Mapa Teatro (Colombia) to discuss ethical collaborations, cosmologies and systemic violence based on a series of projects. The work “Many are holding: mercurybodies” by Knowbotiq was realized with the support by COINCIDENCIA at the Atrato River in Colombia and is a process of recognizing nature as subject. The work “The Moon is in the Amazon” was created by Mapa Teatro; the trans-disciplinary collective from Colombia deals with the construction of Ethnofiction and recently presented its work at the 11th Berlin Biennale.

ARTISTS BIOS

Knowbotiq (Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Huebler) has been experimenting with forms and medialities of knowledge, political representations and epistemic disobedience. In recent projects they are investigating and enacting political landscapes and inhuman geographies with the focus on algorithmic governmentalities, libidinous and affective economies and postcolonial violence. In various installations, interventions and performative settings knowbotiq are exploring molecular, psychotropic and derivative aesthetics. They have exhibited at the Biennials of Venice, Moscow, Seoul, Hong Kong, Shenzen and Rotterdam, as well as at the New Museum New York, Witte de With Rotterdam, MOCA Taipei, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg, Skuc Gallery Ljubljana, NAMOC Beijing, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Museum of
Contemporary Art Helsinki, Hamburger Kunstverein, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Oslo and Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Yvonne Wilhelm and Christian Hübler hold professorships in the Master of Fine Arts program of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). knowbotiq.net

Mapa Teatro is an Artists laboratory dedicated to trans-disciplinary creation. Based in Bogota since 1986, Mapa Teatro was founded in Paris in 1984 by Heidi, Elizabeth and Rolf Abderhalden, theatre and visual artists from Colombia. Since its inception, Mapa Teatro has built a cartography within the milieu of the Live Arts, a propitious space for transgressing – geographic, linguistic, artistic – boundaries, and for staging local and global issues through various “thought-montage” operations. A space of migration, were myth, history and topicality exist continuously; intimate and public spheres; artistic languages (theatre, opera, cabaret, radio, sound and video installations, urban interventions, actions and performatic conferences); authors and epochs (Aeschylus, Müller, Shakespeare, Sarah Kane, Antonio Rodriguez, Händl Klaus); geographies and languages (La Noche/Nuit in French and Spanish; West Dock in Russian, A Very Old Man with enormous wings in Tamil; De Mortibus in English, Spanish and French; voice, image and movement (4:48 Psychosis, simply complicated); memory and city (Project Prometheus, The Cleaning of Augias Stables, Witness to the Ruins, Cartographies in Motion); voice, music and live electronics (Simply Complicated, Love Story, The Magic Flute, Orpheus) simulation and reality (Exxxtrañas Amazonas, Trans/positions); document and fiction, poetics and politics (Horatio, The Holy Innocents, Discourse of a decent man and The Unaccounted: a triptych). Hence Mapa Teatro’s interest in the creative processes and events “in vivo”; in the translation and transposition of writings and scenic scores; and in the operation of putting together documentation, archives and fictions. In recent years, Mapa Teatro has focussed particularly on the production of poetic-political events through the construction of ethno-fictions and the ephemeral creation of experimental communities, Mapa Teatro generates processes of artistic investigation and research, which are developed in diverse spheres and scenarios of a Colombian reality. They are laboratories of social imagination. mapateatro.org

«EXPERIMENTATION, COLLECTIVITY, PROVOCATION»

For the fifth episode of «Conversas Diversas,» we invited Augustin Rebetez (Switzerland) and Etcetera (Argentina) represented by Federico Zukerfeld. The artists share short excerpts of recent videos from installations, plays and film, these works provoke and evidence the problematics of the international art context, public limitations, and the need for art to reach and touch more people. Confrontation is used as a tool to intertwine the artistic and political realms. The artists share their dreams and desires for collective discussion.

ARTISTS BIOS

Augustin Rebetez (Switzerland, 1986) works in various media including painting, photography, video, sculpture, music, installations, and theatre. The Swiss artist constructs a multifaceted body of work that defies categorization. Since 2009, he has exhibited his work all over the world including the Sydney Biennale, the Rencontres d’Arles, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Daegu Photo Biennale, the MBAL, the Tinguely Museum in Basel or the Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale. He received different awards, including the Vevey International Photography Prize, the Swiss Art Awards, or the Prize Fondation Latour. In 2019 he did two major solo shows in São Paulo and Milano, alongside curator Adelina von Fürstenberg. In his vibrant exploration of total art, he collaborates with many performers, punks, models, musicians, and friends, as well institutions such as Théâtre de Vidy in Lausanne, where he created three different pieces, or the NGO Art for the World, amongst others. In 2018, he released a series of twelve stop-motion shorts with director and clown Martin Zimmermann, entitled Mr. Skeleton. And in 2019, his first DIY feature movie called La Grande Lune. He has published several art and photography books (RVB Books, Actes Sud) and also different artist books. He is part of the band Gängstgäng and the music collective Chruch. Often abroad, he is based in a small village in the Swiss countryside, where he uses his big house as an atelier and an open art residency. Since 2020, he is working on a site-specific project in the region of Neuchâtel. augustinrebetez.com

Etcétera is a multi-disciplinary collective created in Buenos Aires in 1997. It is made up of artists with a background in poetry, theater, visual arts, and music. Its original purpose was to bring artistic expression closer to places of social conflict and shift these problems to cultural production spaces. These experiences take place at contemporary art venues such as museums, galleries, and cultural centers, but also in the streets, at festivals, during protests and demonstrations, using different strategies including contextual and ephemeral public interventions. In 2005, together with other artists and activists, they founded the International Errorist movement an organization that seeks to consolidate error as a life philosophy. The co-founders of the collective, Loreto Garín Guzmán, and Federico Zukerfeld, are responsible for coordinating all activities, archives, and other initiatives since 2007. Etcétera on Instagram

«CONNECTIVITY, HERITAGE AND POWER»

For the sixth episode of «Conversas Diversas» we invited Marsha! Collectivity (Brazil) and Bonaventure – Soraya Lutangu (Switzerland / Congo) to an encounter where they share their experiences, practices and concerns. Marsha! is a trans collective based in São Paulo represented in this conversation by Audre Verneck and A Transälien, its title is a homage to Marsha P. Johnson, their work empowers, informs and builds a creative economy strategy for this community. Soraya is a DJ and musician, developing upon the uses of music as a research tool and sonic weapon to confront oppressive structures of power, through the conversation she mentions her latest project ‘Taking care of god’ developed in Kampala (UG) produced by Arsenic Theatre (Lausanne) in partnership with the Uganda Museum.

ARTISTS BIOS

Bonaventure uses music as an identity research tool along with practical and speculative initiatives to connect her African and European roots. With a background in graphic design, Bonaventure has shifted her attention using both club and institutional spaces as a primary place of artistic research and experimentation.

Her debut single “Complexion” was released on NON Worldwide in 2016, and features a remix by label co-founder Chino Amobi. That same year, Bonaventure teamed up with artist and writer Hannah Black and textile designer Ebba Fransén Waldhör to create the ever-growing piece “Anxietina” (at first commissioned by DIS magazine and BCR Radio), that have quickly earned the recognition of major art institutions such as ICA & Chisenhale Galery in London, MoMA PS1 in NYC, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Centre in Geneva.

In 2017, Bonaventure released on the New York label PTP her debut EP “FREE LUTANGU”, followed the next year by “MENTOR”, released by UK label Planet Mu. Based in Kampala since November 2019, she is now developing a hybrid theatre/dance piece called “Taking Care of God” and produced by the Arsenic Theatre (Switzerland) in partnership with The Uganda Museum. in 2019, She was awarded a “Swiss music Prize” for the body of her work. Bonaventure on Soundcloud

MARSHA! is a sociocultural collective composed of trans people who have been enunciating restitution and prosperity of transgender LIFE, building affirmative actions for the LGBT community since 2018. In this pandemic context, the collective has held online festivals, the first of which took place on the 4th and 5th of April, and with that 42 thousand reais were collected through a collective financing campaign, with the purpose of distributing basic food baskets to the LGBT population, in a situation of social vulnerability and guaranteeing subsidies, for more than 50 LGBTQIA + artists, and the production of the festival. To date, more than 100 artists have passed through MARSHA! and more than 80 thousand reais of capital were redistributed among the LGBT population. portalmarsha.com

«PERMANENCE, BORDERS, ASYMMETRIES»

For the final episode of «Conversas Diversas» we invited Tamara Cubas (Uruguay) and International Institute for Political Murder (IIPM) – represented by Eva-Maria Bertschy (Switzerland / Germany) to an encounter where they share their perspectives and experiences working outside of their local contexts and dealing with political issues. Tamara Cubas shares excerpts of her piece «Multitud» enacted in Sardegna, Italy working with a cast of mostly all African immigrants and what kind of questions this raises for a South American choreographer. Eva shares her experience in developing «The New Gospel» created in partnership with Milo Rau and refugees also in the south of Italy. This conversation unfolds issues that were discussed in almost all of our conversations, ethical collaborations, integration, invisibilities, and exchange.

ARTISTS BIOS

Eva-Maria Bertschy (born 28.01.1982, in Düdingen, Switzerland) works as a freelance dramaturge at the intersection of theatre and political activism in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, D.R. Congo and Brazil. With the Swiss director Milo Rau / International Institute of Political Murder she has conceived and realised numerous productions, international theatre and documentary film projects and political interventions amongst others „The Congo Tribunal“ (2015-2020), the „General Assembly“ (2017), „La Reprise. Histoire(s) du Théâtre 1“ (2018) and „The New Gospel / The Revolt of Dignity“ (2019-2020) and „Antigone in the Amazon“ (2020-2021). She also works regularly with the Berlin director Ersan Mondtag, the Congolese choreographer Dorine Mokha and the Swiss musician Elia Rediger. Her projects have won numerous awards, been invited to the most important international theatre festivals such as the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d’Avignon and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts and have been shown in more than 20 countries. international-institute.de

Tamara Cubas Artista uruguaya que desarrolla principalmente su producción en la escena, accionando en otros soportes como la performance y la instalación aunque su trabajo opera siempre sobre el cuerpo y las relaciones.

En las prácticas escénicas podemos hablar de dos líneas de investigación, una que ahonda sobre el cuerpo performático en una constante búsqueda por la autonomía del cuerpo basándose en conceptos propios como la Estética de la Precariedad. En esta línea indaga sobre la potencia de los cuerpos latinoamericanos dotados de memorias, historia y vivencias particulares y su constante búsqueda descolonizadora. (Serie Canibal 2019 / Trilogía Antropofágica 2017-209 / Puto Gallo Conquistador 2016)

La segunda línea se refiere al Otro, donde desarrolla proyectos con poblaciones y comunidades no artísticas. En este camino los temas recurrentes son la Historia, La Patria, El poder, Lo político, las relaciones interpersonales, la heterogeneidad y el disenso. Actos de Amor Perdidos 2011 / Multitud 2014 / La Brisa 2016 / y los actuales proyectos Trilogía del Tiempo y Sea of Silence.

Se interesa y explora la palabra y el relato personal propio y ajeno como estrategia que contraste y resista el Relato Oficial, trabajando para ello en colaboración con dramaturgos como Gabriel Calderón (uy) y otros escritores.