INTERDEPENDENCE (AT)
Ignacia González Torres, Lorenzo Morales Lobos, Pablo Garretón
In 2019, Chile experienced one of its largest social outbreaks. The protests were mostly peaceful. President Piñera declared “We are at war against a powerful enemy.” The media referred to the protesters as “vandals,” “terrorists,” and “un-patriots.” Police fired at civilians with riot bullets. There were more than 400 victims of eye trauma.
Some people consider “the blow” as the physical moment that defines violence. Others point to economic and legal structures as “violent,” since they operate on bodies although they do not always take the form of physical violence. How much power do words have in legitimizing the use of violence against an “other”? Who is this “other”? Who defined this “other” as my enemy? Is it possible to reconstruct the interconnections that broke the violence through audio description?
In “The Force of Nonviolence” (2021), Judith Butler says that “nonviolence requires a critique of what is considered reality (…) that opens possibilities of belonging to a new political imaginary.” In “Interdependence” we investigate how to produce this critical gaze from a blind perspective, in order to transfigure scenarios of violence from our imagination. It is a sound performance for blind and non-blind audiences that crosses contemporary theater, sound art and audio description. The narrative is guided by voices speaking in Spanish, English and German, describing real images of violence, biographical memories and speculative futures.
Is it possible to reconstruct the interconnections that broke the violence through audio description? Can connections that have been broken by violence be re-established with words? An attempt at processing through our imagination.
Cast & Credits:
By and with: Ignacia González Torres, Lorenzo Morales Lobos, Pablo Garretón
Guest performer: María F. Giacaman Hasbún
Lighting design: Nicolás Russi
Sound design: Pablo Garretón
Costume Design Consultancy: Gabriela Torrejón Becerra
Mentoring: Johanna Freiburg
About the artists
Ignacia González Torres is a performer and theater director based in Köln. She studied acting and completed a master’s degree in Theater Studies in Chile. In 2015 she founded the theatre group Compañia de Teatro PERSONA to dispute perceptual normativities and research the role of sound in theater. Since 2021 she has been part of the collective what about: fuego participating at festivals as Politik im Freien Theater (Frankfurt) and Performing Arts Festival (Berlin).
Pablo Garretón is a composer interested in chamber music with live electronics, multimedia and sound art. He studied composition in Chile and completed a master’s degree in electronic music and a concert exam at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne. In 2018 he received a composition prize for electronic music of the Acht Brücken Festival in Cologne. Since 2019 he has been member of the board of the Kölner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (Cologne).
Lorenzo Morales is a telecommunication technician. He became blind in 1981 as a result of retinitis pigmentosa. He collaborated with the audiovisual production company Almada Media specialized in accessibility, advising more than 15 Chilean documentaries on the production of audio description. Since 2017 he is working as a light painting photographer and is part of the theatre group Compañia de Teatro PERSONA.
