G: -The festival started with a parade along the Bulnes streets. Where a group of jugglers, floor acrobats, characters and duos toured the fair handing out flyers, inviting people to the festival, talking with the neighbors and with the children. Anticipating a bit of what was about to happen in the neighborhood. People were very surprised to see that the circus was coming to their work space, which is that of many of the families that live in Pueyrredón. Being the children the first to approach.
G: -The second day there was a performance of “The world did not stop” by the Company Puntos Suspensives. After a conversation that brought together cultural workers, ironically called “For the love of art: circus and job insecurity.”
During the week there were two functions of the Cía. Lightning Circus. The first to a full room at Merlina Trinchera. And the second in the JJ de Urquiza elementary school, which is located two blocks from the room. With the participation of both shifts, morning and afternoon.
Saturday the 29th was the closing of this festival. After the Parkour workshop in Trulalá square, the doors of the Merlina Trinchera room were opened to begin the Urgent Varieté. This event was presented by El Gurí García. And it had numbers of manipulation of objects by Laylita, acrobatics on cloth with Mar, clown-humor with Chamuyito and acrobatics in a duo by the Rosario Company, Vapaí.
How are you having finished the event?
G: -We are very happy with everything that this festival has achieved. We really feel that the ideas with which we projected “Desde La Trinchera” became concrete this week and that fills us a lot. We reached an audience that had not previously had access to circus shows or training in these practices. A public that is part of a sector marginalized by the policies of exclusion and criminalization of the state. And that he went for the first time to see a circus performance or to take a theater class, parkour, acrobatic poses or theatrical games.
This means a lot to us because we understand that the actions of governments not only have economic consequences, but also impose a great social ceiling on the right to dream about this life and to feel capable of realizing what one dreams of.
G: -Something magical happens with the circus, spectacularity generates desires, opens possible imaginaries, has the power to make many people ask themselves the same question, at the same time and without knowing each other: “what if I can be there too?” . On a flight, on a unicycle, paradx on the shoulders of another person, summoning to share the joy as a trench.
We feel that this happened in our neighborhood, and we did not want to leave anyone with the doubt: we can all do circus. And for that it is necessary that there are training spaces with teachers who share circus practices and manage care to learn safely.
In this festival, the artists who traveled from Buenos Aires and Rosario are also students of two of the three circus careers that exist in the country, UNSAM and EMAU Ellxs together with Renata Piacente, a theater teacher, who traveled from Punilla, they toasted Workshops for people with and without previous experience. Seeing children, adolescents and older adults sharing sizes contradicts the traditional perspective of acrobatic practices, which repeats that there are only a few (hegemonic) bodies capable of these disciplines. What happened in these workshops shows that the diversity of bodies and social backgrounds does not limit, but rather enriches learning in a comprehensive sense.
It is evident that for those who live in the Pueyrredón neighborhood this festival was very important, but what reception did it have for the makers of circus culture?
G: -We are aware that in Córdoba independent culture exists against the current of state policies. Who gives total freedom to the real estate business that threatens the existence of cultural spaces. While deregulating and making cultural work precarious.
This action is a policy of attrition because it forces us to put our energy into continuing to exist and not into expanding our practices, our work territory, our collective organization and access to culture. Which is precisely what is not convenient for governments to carry out their adjustment plans.
We understand that this explains why it is easier for us to generate a new neighborhood public, than to summon the circus public, which already exists, to come to the periphery of the city to support an event of these characteristics.
This festival would not have been possible without the support of all the people, spaces, companies and groups that were part of it. And we feel really grateful. But we also want to challenge our colleagues to echo this policy and add to the continued growth of this and new spaces for sectors whose rights are violated. To bet on the collective organization in order to free access to culture, to fight for the recognition of our work and the state financing that corresponds to us.
Where was born and how does this festival continue?
G: -This is the third edition, which began as a policy of the Merlina Trinchera room, to open its doors to the territory of which it is a part. Today, those of us who manage “Desde La Trinchera” are not part of the venue’s management team. But we build with this space, which is a reference in the neighborhood. And with all the others, who hosted this festival. It is very exciting to see how the links that we are generating in Pueyrredón are expanding, with the neighbors, with the children, with the schools, with those who work in the dispensary, in the sports center, in the dining room and at fairs.
We want this festival to continue to grow and that means for us that it be more and more typical of all these people, and that it be sustainable in the economic sense. That artists, workshops, designers and managers do not have to work precariously.
In this edition we had the extra work of self-financing because we still did not get any financial support from the different state institutions. But we do not stop betting that it is the state, in its role as guarantor of the right to access art and culture, who finances this festival.
We are projecting that the next edition will be in April. And in the meantime, keep fanning this flame, do shows in schools and invite the room’s workshops, such as the free circus workshop for children. We know that deep builds aren’t done with annual events alone, and we want what we started to continue to grow until the next festival. We invite everyone to be part of this.
2023-08-03 21:11:01
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