In 2019 ¡n[s]urgênc!as evolves in the form of an orientation program for a single artist: Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez (Honduras), facilitating his arrival in Berlin and residency for 9 months enjoying the Fellowship-Program “Weltoffenes Berlin”. Under a specific strand of research: “Ecologies of protest”, the objective of the mediation program curated by Paz Ponce is to depart from workshop practice and artistic research as a context of collective encounter and learning, connecting it with local professionals and other artists through the organization of panel discussions, participatory workshops, professional dinners, interviews and studio visits. Gabriell Vallecillo’s stipend span betweens March – November 2019. Resulting from a cooperation between Agora Collective e.V. & ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Márquez is currently a fellow at ZK/U Residency, coordinated by Lotta Schäfer and Ece Pazarbasi.

During the period at ZK/U, the artist will be developing the augmented reality artwork titled “The river told me so”, inspired by the cosmovision of the indigenous land and by the social activist Berta Cáceres, assasinated 3 years ago for defending our natural resources. The immersive digital artwork parts and re-interprets ancestral indigenous knowledge in order to construct its poetics and aesthetics. The artwork will be developed in a very flexible way, in order to adapt it to different scenarios: from video projection onto the waters and river rocks to 360º dome projection mapping. This piece will be co-produced by Agora Collective e.V. under the frame of ¡n[s]urgênc!as 2019 “Ecologies of Protest”, supported by Paz Ponce as conceptual advisor.

esegabbo@gmail.com

gabrielvallecillo.com

zku-berlin.org

Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez (Honduras). His work includes several discilplinas: poetry, video poetry, video art, live audiovisual, videomapping and documentary film. Gabriel has published four books of poetry, has been included in several anthologies and his work of video art has been exhibited in art biennials in Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras, as well as exhibitions in Cuba, Italy, USA, Spain, Italy and Honduras. He has written and directed the documentary Liberating a Prison for the AlJazeera network. He has worked as cultural manager of several cultural festivals, editor of the magazine Gargantúa and written several essays in specialized academic journals.

As an artist, I am interested in investigating current political-social phenomena and linking them with ancestral elements that give an account of the historical struggle of the peoples to whom these actors belong. The murder of Berta Cáceres inspires this work, its sowing – as they popularly call it – and not her death, is the one that speaks here, she converted into a nature that reminds us: “Awake humanity. There is no time to lose.”. “The river told me” is the voice of the earth asking for healing, stop the ecocide in which we are blindly submerged. Through computerized resources and audiovisual experimentation I seek to merge and echo ancestral knowledge, covered with poetics of protest to make that call, we are beings born of water and land.

Curated by Paz Ponce
A cooperation between Agora Collective e.V. & ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
In the frame of the Fellowship Program “Weltoffenes Berlin”
Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe

Meeting #1

“Memory, Refraction & Time” (Videoinstallation, Berlin 2019)
Presentation of an artwork by ¡n[s]urgênc!as 2019 Artist-in-Focus: Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez (Honduras)

23.05.19 / 19h-22.30h *Artist guided tour at 20h
ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Siemenstr.27, 10551 Berlin)

In the frame of: Openhaus PLUS @ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
With artists and researchers-in-residence: Pablo Alboreda, Samâ Bekirović, Kate Fahey, Noa Heyne, Pawel Jankiewicz, Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez, Elena Mazzi, Yasemin Özcan, Cha Ji Ryang, Karl Ingar Røys, Byungseo Yoo, Laura Yuile.

More information:
Curatorial Text (by Paz Ponce_ EN)

Meeting #2

“ENTREVISTA | INTERVIEW” with Gabriel Vallecillo – Artist – Honduras
by Sebastián Eduardo [Dávila] – Critic, researcher – Guatemala

Berlin, July 2019
ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
Translation to German by Nele Bilo

Meeting #3

“ENCOSTALADO | SACKED” (Videoinstallation / performance, Berlin 2019)
Presentation of an artwork by ¡n[s]urgênc!as 2019 Artist-in-Focus:
Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez (Honduras)

22.08.19 / 19h-22.30h *Artist guided tour at 20h
ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Siemenstr.27, 10551 Berlin)

In the frame of: ZK/U Openhaus Speisekino @ZK/U Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
With artists and researchers-in-residence: αGOAT – die Berliner Ziegenbande, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Semâ Bekirović, Jan van Esch & Nicolás Concha, Julia Grybos & Barbora Zentková, Fatma Hendawy, Pawel Jankiewicz, Silke Riechert, Sophia Schultz, Mu Tian & Nu Li, Gabriel Vallecillo, Jonas Vansteenkiste, Andrew Wilson, Aiwen Yin, ZK/U Fact-Finding Committee #04 (Stadtfrauenküche), Zona Sessions.

More information:

Research file ENCOSTALADOS | SACKED (ES) *Warning: some of the images in this file contains references to and imagery of explicits forms of violence

Curatorial text: ENCOSTALADOS | SACKED (ES | EN) By Paz Ponce

Meeting #4, #5, #6 Two days of talks & micro actions to share artist-led research projects from Latin American artists in Berlin dealing with environmental activism

Public Program by AGORA at UFER_STUDIOS
12-14 SEPTEMBER

Thursday 12th – Friday 13th of September 10:00 – 18:00
__ Workshop / “Subversive Architecture”. Facilitated by GA Estudio (Tomás García de la Huerta, Xaviera Gleixner) and POPTICUM Collective (Berlin).
*Spaces for 15 people, free. Sign up via email: hola@insurgencias.net

Friday 13th of September
__ 8pm / Opening of “The Screen Air Pavillion”. Presentation by Paz Ponce (Curator)
__ 8:15-8:30pm / Videomapping “The River told me so” (work-in-progress by Gabriel Vallecillo, Honduras).
__ 8:30-9:00pm / Performative Ufer-walk “Wake up Humanity”. Homage to environmental activist Berta Cáceres (Honduras, 1971-2016).

Saturday 14th of September
__ 14-15pm/ Community Lunch (Organic, Regional, Papa-based prologue menu to PAPAKUNA) 
__ 15-16pm / Screening of Agrotheater Musical Play: “PAPAKUNA” (Yama Collective, Ecuador). Skype talk with YAMA Theater collective (Ecuador) & researcher Paola Ospina (Colombia).
__ 16-18.30pm / Panel discussion “Ecologies of protest”. Moderated by Paz Guevara, with invited artists: Julia Mensch (Argentina), Michelle-Marie Letelier (Chile) and Gabriel Vallecillo (Honduras). Presentation by Paz Ponce (Spain). 

Summary:
Agora & insurgencias.net present during Berlin Art Week a two-day public program facilitating a workshop, a video mapping artwork, a collective lunch, a theatre screening and a panel discussion to share artist-led research projects from Latin American artists dealing with environmental activism.

We invite to the stage artists: Gabriel Vallecillo (Honduras), Julia Mensch (Argentina) and Michelle-Marie Letelier (Chile), in conversation with Paz Guevara (Chile). As remote guests: YAMA Theater Collective (joining from Ecuador), Paola Ospina (joining from Colombia). As workshop facilitators: GA Estudio (Tomás García de la Huerta & Xaviera Gleixner, Chile).

With the desire to open spaces of possibility, the practices highlighted by this event are works-in-progress that research, resist and formulate new questions around the hegemonic extractive logics of consumption and control. Divided in 4 subtopics: Extra(a)ctivism / Alternative Narratives / Artistic Operations / Ethics, the panel discussion “Ecologies of Protest”offers an opportunity to give visibility to a vast but fragile cartography of social concerns which often remain at the periphery of our attention, transversed by the consequences of a neo-liberal economic model brought by colonial history.

The architecture of this encounter is embraced by “The Screen Air Pavilion”, a creation by GA Estudio (Chile) in collaboration with Popticum Collective (Berlin), specially designed to host Agora Collective at Ufer Studios. Born from the precarious circumstances that our organization is going through (within a Berlin context of struggle for production spaces for the independent art scene), the architects responded to the contingency of not having space with a pavilion sustained by air, presenting architecture as a tool of resistance, sensitive to social issues and serving the minorities.

The “Screen Air Pavilion” will be built through a 2-days participatory workshop “Subversive Architectures”, facilitated by GA Estudio, where references and tools will be shared towards designing an itinerant project of social nature, capable of breaking the hegemony towards an open-source and instantaneous urbanism.

“Ecologies of protest” is curated by Paz Ponce (Founder and director of insurgencias.net) and produced by Agora Collective e.V. in collaboration with ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik as project partners. The program is Funded by Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe in the frame of the Fellowship-program “Weltoffenes Berlin” and hosted by Uferstudios Für Zeitgenössischen Tanz.

More information:
Artist research references & collaborators (EN, ES)
Flyer program

Documentation “Screen Air Pavilion”
07’50” (EN)
Video by Renato Pérez Arancibia

Designed by GA estudio (Tomás García de la Huerta & Xaviera Gleixner) with POPTICUM Collective (Erik Vogler, Maxie Schneider).
Assembled during the workshop “Subversive architectures”, Uferstudios 12-13 September 2019, in collaboration with artists: Andressa Cantergiani, Paula Elion, Manuela García Aldana, Melanie Rivera, Gabriel Vallecillo, Roberta Vaz.
Presentation of the video mapping artwork for soft architecture “The River told me so” – by Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez (Honduras), Berlin 2019.

Recording of the panel discussion “Ecologies of protest”
Transcription panel Ecologies of Protest (English)

Documentation of the public program “Ecologies of protest”
_ Photography workshop process: by Paz Ponce
_ Photography Architecture Screen Air Pavilion: by Renato Pérez Arancibia
_ Editorial design: by Paz Ponce