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| Thamé of the Artisans Theatre in a performance on day of the return of Saint Biritute |
By Cristian Levi.
We could well say that the theories of homo sapiens or homo erectus are ideas within a media debate today that are almost comical as clichés added to the new generation about the theory of homo cyborg, of which many could be included because of the perfumed WI FI air (who can avoid breathing it) added to this the mythical and forgotten story that Latin Americans do not have an identity and yes, less belonging to it compared to other first worlds that have centuries of history and cultural work for better and for worse.
That we live in an amnesiac culture is unquestionable and this does not only apply to globalization and the unbridled living of disposable information and communication; forgetting after turning the corner is daily bread; local creative work is tied to an endless number of complaints, approvals and disapprovals in vain and intellectual treaties that, like Russian roulette, make it seem that this or that artistic process or tendency is pertinent to the present. For example, touching on modernism and indigenism as a valid process within Ecuadorian history produces countless geriatric ghosts as well as long-lived ones in their practice of whether they are or are not effective in our history.
And not far behind is the forgotten and sad outcome of our former inhabitants of the coast of Ecuador by Spanish hands and the sad thing in this note is because of the falsehood within the collective conscience, where the myth of Abdón Calderón is approved, which seems more like a performative creation included within educational sociology, than a mythical reality to brainwash weak people of yesteryear…. Perhaps that is why it is easier to assimilate busts of illiterate military men and strategists, heroes of the conquest, than the vain attempt to recognize an ancestral legacy at the hands of the imagination of GUAYAS and QUIL, in short.
Guayaquil, a city that has yet to emerge in creative work, has its first universities of visual and performing arts, museums and avant-garde cultural centers. For about 10 years, these have been the sites of great fierce battles to validate their positions for or against, comparable only to the genocide of the Spanish conquest of 1492.
Process that assumes a certain time to create actors within the creative scene.
A New Dawn/The Return of the Gods.
To assume that the JAMA COAQUE culture were possibly the first graphic designers in America (for their thousands of stamps and zoomorphic and anthropomorphic imprints) or that LA TOLITA/TUMACO was one of the most important and sophisticated religious centers of yesteryear (Tola Island), may sound like a pretension; that goes hand in hand with a countless number of imaginaries that embrace it, in any case these last 2 years there has been an explosion of the search for creative practices by local avant-garde artists hand in hand with the ancestral, it is easy to see dancers, photographers, actors, cultural groups, visual artists looking over their shoulder and rummaging again like archaeologists and anthropologists for a lost message or a new jargon within visual communication, it is valid to note then that the madness of the communication element is no longer as valid as the click! Of the mass media (it is easier to talk to a friend in Holland than to chat with the neighbor across the street).
Within the Visceral creative scene, Pina Bausch, Graham, St. Denis, Artaud already spoke of the fragmentation of art and of returning to the union of mind and body to anthropologically shed light again on that missing link of creativity, a curious case that the mythical religious processes of the temazcal are similar both in the process and end.
There is still much to understand and investigate within the ancestral Ecuadorian history, which spans around 10,000 years and it is from there that a new, simple and open legacy must be built, of which the most pleasant thing is that, unlike archaeological cultural projects, creatives can see the imaginary as a possibility and give free rein to hypotheses not accepted by academics and the orthodox…. The debates will continue eternally, the museums will be there for many more years, many will continue to forget, others will die… but it is clear that the ancestral legacy will continue as an intermittent light that will each time manage to create the best moments for the city in pursuit of our ancestors who have been resting for centuries… but who were never allowed to sleep.
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