MAR DE ISLAS performance encounter of the Caribbean
A sea unites us and names us Caribbean, the same sea that our ancestors wove between islands creating spaces for communication, exchange, encounter, culture and community.
Nowadays, since the invention of the “nations” imposed by the colonizers, the Caribbean Sea is a deadly border. The Caribbean is colonized as otherness; as a racially invisible, fragmented, exoticized and eroticized Caribbean that serves the global North as a tourist paradise, as junkyard, and as experiment of social, economic, scientific, agricultural and military exploitation. We write from that Caribbean, which is isolated from itself, able to reproduce colonial practices from the epicenter of its body-house. These archipelagos share a same open wound. But most importantly we write from that rebellious Caribbean, which reinvents and reinforces itself daily, sowing seeds and sisterhoods.
We are inspired by the idea of a mar de islas (sea of islands) developed by the thinker Epeli Hau‘ofa (1993), who from the Pacific’s colonial perspective invites us to transform that vast ocean of small isolated islands into a sea that is HOME TO HISTORICAL NETWORKS formed by systems of cultural and commercial exchange.
Situated from within the Caribbean, we raise the following question: is it possible to imagine a Caribbean community that allows free and accessible mobility of people between islands and the joint coordination of economic, environmental, social and cultural decisions? From our bonds, roles, and professions, how can we take the chance to look inside and strengthen a network that would allow us to recognize ourselves?
One same Caribbean Sea, one same shout:
May the paths be opened towards the union of the Caribbean sisters and brothers!
Pedagogues MAR DE ISLAS: Violeta Luna (Mexico) and Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya (Puerto Rico)
Dialogue MAR DE ISLAS: Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Roberto José Thomas Ramírez and Helen Ceballos
Direction: Marina Barsy Janer, Helen Ceballos and Isil Sol Vil
Production assistant: Myriam Ramos Ortiz
Artist assistants: Ali Petru Gerena
Kitchen: Candy’s Kitchen
Space accessibility nomenclature: Miguel González Cordero
Image: Isil Sol Vil
Kreyòl open call translation: Chandi González-López ak Jean-Ourdy Pierre
French open call translation: Christine Brault
Production: Plataforma Eje
Co-producers: Northwestern University, Open Society, Institut Français, Amnistia Internacional PR and Institut Ramon Llull
Collaborators: Mezcolanza, Pública espacio, MATERIC.ORG -espacio de creación y pedagogía radical, Taller Libertá, Vueltabajo, Casa Cruz de la Luna, Rescate Playas Borikén, Universidad de Puerto Rico, INIM, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico
