We are facing massive killings all over the world, with inexplicable forms of unseen and unimaginable horror in an overwhelming number of sites of violence. These are times of capitalist Necropolitics that dictate how bodies are to live and die.
As the other side of the coin to the omnipresence of death, the apparently “disenchanted” Western cultural context seems to have an issue with speaking or thinking about death publicly. And yet, the shared experience of many people around the planet is that the presence of the dead in everyday life is very real.
“The dead grow in stature as time passes. Their personality intensifies, becoming a scent. They seep into the faces of passers-by and emerge out of trees and restaurants in dreary new forms.” (Fanny Howe)
This happens through appearances in dreams, smells showing up abruptly, lively memories, conversations happening in our heads or hearts, and sensations on the skin. We know we are not alone in this.
Vultures Feast is a three-day programme that explores our relationship with the dead, beyond grieving as an individual, privately hidden moment. It proposes exploring the connection with them through the lenses of the celebratory and the collective—a celebration in the spirit of Día de los Muertos, deepening the complexities of celebration where collective rage, grief, and laughter can be sustained. It views the relationship with the deceased as a lively daily process that can be experienced by a community through performances, workshops, lectures, conversations and films.
Vultures Feast was imagined in conversation with Catalina Insignares, Carolina Mendonça, and Elisa Liepsch.
ABOUT
Carolina and Catalina met in 2014, and since then, they have been collaborating and maintaining a very close complicity in different ways of working together.
Carolina Mendonça is a choreographer, performer and dramaturge. Her projects include 'Zones of Resplendence' (2023), 'Sirens' (2021), 'Pulp-History as a Warm Wet Place' (2018), 'useless land' (2018) in collaboration with Catalina Insignares, and 'We, the Undamaged others' (2017). She develops practical, theoretical research that she shares in workshops dealing with telepathy, levitation, and deep listening. As a dramaturge, Carolina works with Carolina Bianchi, Marcelo Evelin, Marcela Santander, and Dudu Quintanilha, among others.
http://instagram.com/carolmendonca
CATALINA INSIGNARES is a Colombian choreographer based in Brussels. She’s interested in how to use the sensorial and fictional means of the body and touch to develop ways to communicate with the invisible. Her practice includes, among others, a duet danced with a participant over a few weeks ('us as a useless duet', 2015), a night reading addressed to sleeping bodies ('useless land', 2017), and sensory practices that listen to the connections we have with the dead ('landscapes of the dead', 2019; 'to know the vultures so well', 2022). She works through collaboration and long-term associations for choreography, dramaturgy, teaching and performance.
