30 anys, un acte poetic de resistència – story of a trip TONI COTS & ESTHER FREIXA
Dates: 13 – 26/09/2021
Synopsis:
30 anys is a stage work that seeks, among other things, to bring to mind the poetic writing of an era that narrates the illness that plagued the events of the 1930s. An ice age in which there are no possible new universes without a new language, because through the words that have survived it, ignominy can be reborn at any time. In art, one can only progress when vertical slips are made in the language of reality, a process that always requires re-initiating.
30 anys also seeks the ‘truth’ in the flesh, not in the deeds or words that translate them. She seeks to snatch a confession from the flesh, like an Antigone before Creon and the facts that condemn her. It can be understood as a funeral prayer, in which the altars are raised in anticipation of the sacrifice, while humanity remains buried by funeral rites and its liturgy of grief. So, it seems that today, evoking memory has become an inhuman ‘gesture’. We live in a world where we cling to habits for fear of freedom, in which thoughts seem to dissolve, annihilating any goal.
Finally, 30 anys is presented as a question in the face of this time that passes in a linear way, waiting for life to lead to freedom, a freedom that, despite loving it, we betray every day; whereas life escapes us, we remain silent and silent, hearing the call.
The creative process has been structured from textual elements (Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina and Toni Cots' God-Dog), filmic (Denis Villeneuve's Fires - based on the work of Wajdi Mouawad), and poetics (No sé de ningún mundo major Ingeborg Bachmann).
30 years is part of a research process, started in 2007 with Medea (a la carta), on how the body can reveal, open or suggest different approaches to the poetics of a language characterized by intimacy, and that is confronts the viewer’s gaze. At the age of 30, the public is located in a space close to the theatrical action, and is witnessing the trial that takes place against acts of denunciation and resistance.
Errancia – relato de un viaje:
The stage proposal is part of an imaginary and texts, largely poetic, which have originated in their own if a disproportion between the experience and the story that we make of it. During the creative process, the gaze has been directed towards the memory and imagination of two bodies, which over time have been transformed by producing furrows that permeate them and calluses superimposed on the skin, in the tissues, nerves, emotions ...
We invite the public to walk through landscapes, visions and memories, in which to reflect on the same uprooting, the loss of the heritage of which we are custodians and loneliness, which creates a gap between the past and the future that it is renewed at every moment.
It is a journey that takes place in the encounter and separation of two lonely beings, unpredictable in their conduct, who are adrift in exile from any context, immersed in a continuous time.
The story is structured from texts whose sources have their origin mainly in Matsuo Basho, Mahmud Darwish, Paul Celan and Toni Serra. A story that points to the mystery that our human condition does not reveal in the course of our own lives, but that interrogates us in every act that we carry out and in every encounter that makes us feel that we are part of another.
Errancia – relato de un viaje is the third part of a trilogy, the result of a continuous dialogue between Esther Freixa and Toni Cots that began in 2007 with the process and creation of Medea (a la carta), in which follow 30 anys – un acte poetic de residència, and which now culminates with this work. Each proposal, in its own way, generates a space of intimacy and relationship with the public to share the various themes, which the contemporary revision of the myth questions from the legacy of its memory.
Biography:
Toni Cots and Esther Freixa i Ràfols have been collaborating since 2007 and have been in constant dialogue ever since. Together they create an artistic language that confronts the viewer's gaze from different approaches to the body and the text characterized by a poetics of intimacy, looking for ways in which the theatrical act can become a shared place.
Their first creation Medea (a la carta) (http://www.medealacarta.org/) has been presented for 12 years in private homes, galleries, theaters and festivals in Europe, Lebanon, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina, with 144 functions. 30 anys, un acte poetic de resistència is the continuation of this research process started in 2007. From 2011 to 2015 they share a regular laboratory on collaborative practices based on the body with other artists and interested people. They also collaborate in the field of cultural management with the CRA'P project and space (http://www.cra-p.org/) through which they work on different proposals for research, creation, training and production.
