-shown at Pulqueria Insurgentes, at CICO in Mexico City in January and Galleri Ekdahl in Karlstad in May 2019.

The performance is the outcome of a research trip in Mexico, the US and Brazil by choreographer Carima Neusser, visual artist Per Huttner. In Mexico it is staged with the participation of Mexican journalist Pierre Lister.  It is a development and a logical progression from a performance shown in 2018. The performance has been translated into Spanish and Lister recounts the experiences of the two artists with the intention of “giving back” some of that which they have learned in Mexico and especially in dialogue with Mexicans. The performance also includes newly composed music, choreographies, slideshows, smells, tastings and videos. Inspiration is taken from from baroque churches, Mexican soap operas, research on bats, meetings with representatives of the Apache nation, street food modernist Brazilian literature. The work includes something called “baby creatures” that the audience borrows throughout the performance and which allows them to grow as human beings.

The work is like the journey it describes: it that can not be understood rationally, but has to be experiences with all five senses – just as you cannot seize the magic of the night without allowing madness to enter your mind. The artists synthesize an experience for the audience by extracting four moods or situations. Based on these, they create collages where different impression merge into new constellations. In each part, the artists start from impressions, feelings paradoxical and interconnected phenomena instead trying to recount what they experienced rationally.

The performance at CICO is realised in dialogue with the students at the school. They are invited to remake and appropriate the performance in their own way. In the work Huttner and Neusser focus on translation of experiences between genres (from visual art to dance and back again) as well as between senses (from a spiritual experience to a sculpture and back again.) The workshop and the performance therefore is an in depth investigation to how the two artists meet Mexico and Mexican culture as well as how the students can experience their own surrounding through the eyes, minds and bodies of foreigners.

The project is supported by the Swedish Arts Council.