Poetics of the sign and the détour This activity is part of the exhibition "MIRALDA MADEINUSA"
In the religions of the black Atlantic there are a wide range of gestures, signs and objects in the everyday texture of the practitioner: gestures and objects that weave affective relations with the deities and the community; words and dreams that reveal some worlds while disguising others; signs that arise from transcultural wars in colonial violence. Poetics, signs and masks are strategies that articulate these relations under other forms and guises, in a reference to what the writer Édouard Glissant described as ‘disguising beneath the symbol, to say without saying’, or ‘the practice of the détour or deviation’.
With a programme that combines conversation, performatic concerts, walks in the city and encounters around food, this seminar aims to activate the installation Santa Comida (Holy Food) by the artist Antoni Miralda, currently on display at the Capella MACBA, from two different readings. The first is set in the framework of the black or indigenous Atlantic world, for which candomblé, winti culture, the practice of vodou or santería are complex cultural and spiritual systems that arose in America as resistance strategies against colonialism, as a result of the African diaspora of ideas and people with indigenous knowledge. The second reading aims to explore these traditions from the perspective of the intimate and the everyday: from micro-practices such as storytelling, conversation, songs, potions and food, from which the mundane density of the ritual is woven.
The activity is part of the exhibition MIRALDA MADEINUSA.
Programme
FRIDAY 20 AND SATURDAY 21 JANUARY 2017
Venue: Capella MACBA
FRIDAY 20
7.00 pm Conch-shell song to the Orishas by Thurgot Théodat
7.15 pm Screening of Ojos para mis enemigos (Eyes for my enemies), 2014 (14 min), and Nocturne, 2014 (30 min), by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.
8.00 – 8.45 pmAlimento para cabezas selectas (Cooking for selected heads): presentation by John Mason
8.45 – 9.30 pmSuperstición / hablando bajo recuerdos (Superstition / talking from memory): performance combining words, action, objects and music, by Natalia Sorzano
SATURDAY 21
1.30 – 5.00 pmDiaspora and religion in the kitchen.
The kitchen is a laboratory of stories, history, spirituality and affections in the black Atlantic geography. It is a place where links between gods, practitioners, and history are created and cooked. This activity suggests the collective preparation and tasting of various dishes containing ingredients and elements that explain the diaspora and the circulation of people, food, and ideas throughout the Atlantic, throughout history and in the present, reflecting the processes of transculturation and resistance from which they result. The meal will be followed by an after-lunch conversation in which the participants will discus the issues raised in the work of Miralda Santa Comida—colonialism and slavery systems in the history of the Atlantic, diasporic recipes and food anthropology, Afro-descendant institutions and Santeria in Barcelona.
With Roger Canals, the team of Food Cultura, Alexis Hechavarría, Yonder de Jesús, John Mason, Karo Moret Miranda, Stephan Palmié, and César Trasobares.
Fee: 5 €, booking required. Capacity limited to 25 people. Simultaneous translation in English. Fully booked5.00 – 8.00 pm Ceremony in honour of Yemaya, by Yonder de Jesús in collaboration with Boris Benancio Reyes Montalvo, Clemente Raydel Medina Sibori, Aurelio (Piri) Morales. The ceremony is free of charge. Not booking required, limited space. It is recommended to dress with white or light clothes. Yemaya is the mother of all mortal beings on earth: she represents the womb in all species as a source of life, fertility and maternity, as well as intellectuality, knowledge and all changing elements, like the sea. Her symbol is the sea waves and her dance reflects their rhythms. She wears a crepe cloak and a blue dress with little bells sewn onto it and blue and white adornments, a fan and a wide cotton belt with a rhomboid shape over her belly. The protagonists of the ceremony are the Batá drums, a family of three drums – Iyá, Itótele and Okónkolo – which are played simultaneously to create polyrhythms, and the Aberinkula drums, which are profane and non-sacred. Further information on the participants here.
Public Programmes
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Tel: 93 481 33 68
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