Residencies

• 21.08 > 25.08.2023

The cre­a­ti­ve pro­cess of Invisible cities begins as a reflec­ti­on on the artist migra­ti­on from Buenos Aires to Brussels. And it is fol­lo­wed by the sub­se­quent dis­pla­ce­ments to other cities he has gone to for work rea­sons. These (un)forced move­ments depict the par­kour made by a Latinx artist living and sur­vi­ving in Europe as an entry point to re-sen­si­ti­ze the way we think of Migration. The City is read as a pro­ject of moder­ni­ty and a con­ti­nent of soci­al conflict.

We inha­bit the cities, and they inha­bit us. As we migra­te, we car­ry our iden­ti­ty, nar­ra­ti­ve, cul­tu­ral back­ground, and his­to­ry. Geographic bor­ders and body limits gets stret­ched by migra­ti­on to an extent in which it see­ms pos­si­ble to be simul­ta­neous­ly in two dif­fe­rent cities.

What hap­pens bet­ween dis­tant cities when they sound together? How do they get along? What are the con­flicts bet­ween them? This way, cities beco­me dyna­mic sub­jects that chan­ge and tran­si­ti­on in dif­fe­rent moods.

Invisible cities is a solo pie­ce that pro­po­ses a synaes­the­tic expe­rien­ce whe­re Migration, as its cri­ti­cal the­me, gets embo­died in the audien­ce’s flesh. 

Departing from his fami­ly migrant back­ground Echegoyen uses field recor­dings from the urban con­texts of five dif­fe­rent metro­po­li­ses to cre­a­te, first a per­for­ma­ti­ve sound instal­la­ti­on whe­re urban sounds­ca­pes coha­bit brin­ging together dis­tant pla­ces, and then turning the instal­la­ti­on into the set design of an expe­ri­men­tal per­for­man­ce whe­re cities are the main charac­ters. He cre­a­tes ambien­ces and moods for the sto­ry­tel­ling to come across during the pie­ce, brin­ging together a crow­ded Sunday mar­ket and peo­p­le figh­ting back the poli­ce in a demon­stra­ti­on or per­haps a silent cor­ner of the dar­kest street and the mys­tic rever­be­ra­ti­ons of a silent and open-sky temple.

As the pie­ce unfolds, it will beco­me the spa­ce whe­re the over­lap­ped cities trig­ger a re-sen­si­ti­za­ti­on on the way we per­cei­ve and appro­ach them, whe­re dis­tan­ce can fold and sca­le down, making time bend, and whe­re migrants’ sto­ries will con­nect life expe­rien­ces from dif­fe­rent cor­ners of the globe.