Conceived in response to the upcoming presidential election \u201cas an act of intervention,\u201d the audio pieces explore grief, climate disaster, connection to land, protest, and more. Each is deeply informed by Castro\u2019s Puerto Rican identity. \u201cThat\u2019s the real origin story of this project,\u201d she says. \u201cThe place of my birth\u2014its relationship to the United States, and its lack of self-determination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Castro and her team, a canary torsi, worked with mostly Puerto Rican artists on the project, which can be accessed both online<\/a> and through the many posters, banners, and signs throughout the three locales Exorcism = Liberation<\/em> calls home, each chosen for its significant Puerto Rican population. Castro will also be hosting \u201cactivations\u201d in each city<\/a> through early November, including dinners, performances by dancers Martita Abril and devynn emory, and a storytelling event featuring local teens.<\/p>\n Castro spoke about Exorcism = Liberation<\/em>, and the impact she hopes the project has ahead of the election.<\/p>\n What is the origin story of this project?<\/strong> Most people will be engaging with this project wherever they encounter it, while others will have a more collective experience at the activations. How do you imagine the work landing differently in those two settings?<\/strong> I\u2019m curious to hear more about your interest in exorcism. Do you see weeping\u2014as in the slogan \u201cI came here to weep\u201d\u2014as a kind of exorcism?<\/strong> In Puerto Rico, right now especially, there\u2019s a lot of tension around the American presence on the island. It\u2019s very fraught. So this idea of expulsion is also something that\u2019s in my mind when I\u2019m thinking about exorcism.<\/p>\n How do you see this project speaking to the current election?<\/strong> All of the materials in this project are election-type materials, like stickers and pins and lawn signs. Those are some of my favorite objects, because they\u2019re movable, so the public can decide where this project goes. In that way, the project is being carried through time and space to others that I can\u2019t possibly know about. The public isn\u2019t just listening to the work, but they\u2019re taking it out and dispersing it.<\/p>\n One of my favorite things is thinking about these lawn signs, right next to these election signs, and people just taking a moment to stop and have a contemplative five-minute experience, and think about how we are deeply connected, and how deeply our choices matter. What world do we want to create and live in?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The post Yanira Castro\u2019s <i>Exorcism = Liberation<\/i> Is a Public Art Campaign for Divided Times<\/a> appeared first on Dance Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stroll through New York City, Chicago, or Western Massachusetts in the next month and a half and you might encounter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/bigrecipes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Yanira-Castro-headshot-by-Josefina-Santos-courtesy-Castro_web.jpg\")
Coming from a place where the people are colonized and don\u2019t have access to the vote, it is important for me to be thinking about what that means, that a community gets together and makes decisions about its future. But we don\u2019t really talk about it that way. We talk about it as an individual event\u2014\u201cmy vote.\u201d So this idea of communing around election time and thinking about what the community is and how we want to support one another is really critical for me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I think when we attend performance, there is a temporary community coming together, and there\u2019s something very powerful about that. The audio scores offer very simple gestures; maybe it\u2019s opening your hands on your lap. So seeing a group do it, and being a part of a group that\u2019s consciously doing this thing together is one kind of experience. But if you\u2019re listening to one of the scores out in public\u2014let\u2019s say you\u2019re riding a bus, and it asks you to open your hands, and then it asks you to look around and see if anybody else has their hands open. You might see people who have their hands open and wonder, Are they listening to what I\u2019m listening to, or do they just have their hands open? But the idea is that this is a community, this is your neighbor, and you might be thinking or doing the same thing. It\u2019s trying to make that connection.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been research done that when we have a real weep session, there is a relief and a letting go inside of our bodies that then allows us to be more open to something else. So in that way, for me, it\u2019s an exorcism. In Puerto Rican culture and in other Latinx cultures, we have this word \u201csacude<\/em>,\u201d and it means cleansing. But like many problems with translation, it\u2019s more than that. There\u2019s a spiritual connection to that word and an exorcism connection to that word.<\/p>\n
For me, the election is very superficial. It often sounds like, What do we need to say to get that individual voter to feel invested enough in order to vote for me?\u2014as opposed to thinking about what we want to create for the future, or, even more importantly, a recognition that what happens in the United States affects so many people outside of the United States. We\u2019re not asked to consider our effect on one another.<\/p>\n