[spectre] La Palabra de los Mudos by Jota Castro - documentation available

[Jose-Carlos Mariategui]

From: Jose-Carlos Mariategui <jcm at ata.org.pe>
Subject: La Palabra de los Mudos by Jota Castro - documentation available
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:13:35 -0500


Dear friends:

As some of you may know already, on the 15th of 
May, in front of a huge audience the action "La 
palabra de los mudos" was staged in Redondo 
Beach, in the district of Miraflores, Lima, as 
the first artistic project of the French-Peruvian 
artist Jota Castro in Peru after three decades 
away from his homeland. During the development of 
the V Summit of Heads of State and Government of 
Latin America, the Caribbean and the European 
Union, Jota Castro carried out this performance, 
which addressed the limits of communication and 
the problems concerning inclusion.

Before the event, there was a concentration in 
Bajada Balta, Miraflores, at 10.00 a.m., where 
participants (including a contingent of deaf 
people) from different points of the city 
gathered. From this meeting point, the 
participants started their way down to the shore 
towards Redondo Beach.

From a stage at the beach, Peruvian actor Sergio 
Galliani prepared the audience for the 
performance, which started when an interpreter 
delivered a speech in sign language. This speech 
was "echoed" at different moments of the 
performance by the participants, who had been 
previously taught slogans in sign language by 
Galliani. In a strongly symbolic and esthetically 
powerful scene, the responses of the audience 
were both in sign and oral languages.  After the 
sign language speech, Jota Castro disclosed the 
content of the sign language message, which dealt 
with the exclusion suffered by the artist because 
of his race, establishing a parallel with the 
pain that three quarters of the world have to 
bear. "They don't listen to us", Castro repeated, 
talking about miscommunication, lack of justice, 
indifference and poverty. "We are all dumbŠ we 
are only a long silence in history". Then he 
encouraged the audience to "dream with a better 
world, a common future", as the Summit was taking 
place.

The French-Peruvian artist's performance 
transformed autobiographical and political issues 
into a historic and emotional experience that 
joined the audience for the first time with one 
of the most celebrated contemporary artists in 
the international scene today.


You can read and watch more information on the 
project, including press info at: 
www.lapalabradelosmudos.org.  There is also a 
video of the action available 
at:http://www.youtube.com/lapalabradelosmudos

About Jota Castro:

Jota Castro is a Peruvian-born artist 
(Yurimaguas, 1965), based in Brussels, Belgium, 
who worked in the diplomatic service for two 
decades.  In the late 1990s he left his career as 
a diplomat at the United Nations and the European 
Union and decided to devote himself totally to 
the field of art. Through his different 
professional activities, Castro has gained 
in-depth knowledge of the world of international 
politics; moreover, he considers his university 
studies in Law and Political Science as his real 
training in art.  His works point to certain 
mechanisms at work in present day Western 
society, with its imbalances and weaknesses, 
which are skillfully highlighted by the artist to 
reveal the incongruities at work in political and 
social structures.  He is consulting editor for 
Janus magazine in Belgium and Nolens Volens in 
Spain. He is a lecturer at the European 
University of Madrid. His work has been 
extensively shown around the world. He has 
participated in the Venice, Tirana, Prague and 
Gwangju Biennales. He won the Gwangju Biennale 
Prize in 2004 in South Korea.


LA PALABRA DE LOS MUDOS ( www.lapalabradelosmudos.org)

Co-produced by Alta Tecnología Andina - ATA and 
supported by the Prince Claus Fund, Deliveri, the 
Miraflores City Council and the Spanish Cultural 
Center (AECID) in Lima.