Who does the landscape belong to?

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In a vital dialogue, Roma Vaquero Diaz asks herself what happens to bodies – understood from a broad and not only physical concept – in different geographies, continents and even seasonal times, thinking about them through performance and the construction of the landscape. The idea is to experience how the link with space affects the sensory, proposing a non-binary approach to the body-landscape relationship.

María Lightowler – curatorial text excerpt

 

For a month in Madrid I worked with actions and scores. In this exploration, questions appear in relation to territories, food and the history of colonisation that creates links, ancestralities and tensions. 

I chose to create with:

• the temporality of the potato sprouts and lentils sold in the markets under the label Made in Argentina. 

• a sound mix that I composed by listening to the Parque de El Retiro, the Lavapiés neighbourhood and the Puerta del Ángel neighbourhood.

• the assembly and weaving of stones found on the paths and sweet prunus branches from the garden of Raquel – coordinator of the studio La Lavandería- 

• earth gathering.

• contact listening actions.

Through these rehearsed materialities I compose performance art: Who does the landscape belong to? The performance is developed by constructing a space with potato and lentil sprouts and the sound piece, unfolding a structure with woven branches and the blowing of earth that makes one think of the spine of a collective body. There I rest for a few minutes. Then I invite some of those present to join this landscape, to form a circle and make contact with those who are there. In the depths of closed eyes we inhabit the collective space. Then I hand out a handful of earth to each of them while I tell them repeatedly: to be born from a body, to be born from the earth, to become a landscape.

Finally, I place a flag in the centre of the action that says: Who does the landscape belong to? and I drop my handful of earth there. One by one of those present will repeat the gesture with the earth in their hands.

 

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The scores and objects activated in the performance continue to be present during the following days of the exhibition.

 

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PLACE AND DATE

R.A.R.O.’s Tesoros Felices, La Quinta del Sordo. Curated by María Lightowler. Madrid. 30 July 2022

REGISTRO FOTOGRÁFICO

Leandro Albani y Lucila Bodelón