The girl who looked the other side

Reina Sofia National Museum and Art Center
Madrid, Spain
June, 2019

EVERY WRITING EXERCISE IS A FAILURE

What if what I tell you happened differently?
What if I just want to tell a love story?

This artwork begins with 39 footnotes written between Nuclear City and Havana during February and July 2018.

The footnotes were included in the book La bahía which, together with the audiovisual of the same name, are part of the actions of The bay, we were thinking how to perform a nuclear action. Artistic laboratory that addresses the poetic relationship of Yunet (film director, cosmonaut) with the failed project of the Juraguá nuclear power plant in the province of Cienfuegos, Cuba.

The exercise consisted of writing the 39 texts that accompanied these footnotes during the same days in which they had been conceived, but a year later while Yunet was in Madrid.

Thus the final text would be traversed not only by another temporality, but by a different city, a different love, another circumstance, another ocean, other «bays», other possible «nuclear actions» such as the materialization of an amusement park in the ruins of an island or in the ruins of a nuclear project…. And even, the incessant search for the Sea.

The sea in Havana, the sea in the Nuclear City, the sea in Madrid… the attempt to cross three cities with the waters and link them to an improbable, but not impossible, past and future. Hence, the project was also an invitation to think about this «impossible» as a place for action and change.

With the desire to intervene the island or the weight of the island, to give continuity to a process of work and life, to heal, to let go and also to dream of changing the course of things… All this together with archival images, historical documents, and a photographic exploration that addresses the relationship between the landlocked city and its longing to reach the sea.

After several months of work, the relationship between the new texts and their corresponding footnotes was suspect. The lack of rigor, the growing nostalgia, the incompatibility between the present and the past (both huge and distant) were decisive.

As a result, some texts did make it.
Others took their own paths.
Others remained (again) half done.
Still others were not even begun.

Instead, new footnotes saw the light of day. And those, the previously written ones, once again left alone, opened other spaces, links, giving rise to other relationships from a place that said goodbye to the temporary.

CREDITS

Performer
Alessandra Santiesteban

Text and direction
Alessandra Santiesteban

Mentoring
Rosa Casado

Photographic documentation
María Sábato
Romina Grisel

With the support of
Master in Performing Arts and Visual Culture (University of Castilla-La Mancha/ Reina Sofia Museum)
Artea – research and scenic creation
Reina Sofia National Museum and Art Center

Acknowledgments
Amaia Castañeda
Carolina Cedeño
José Miguel Neira
Paola López Zamariola
Romina Grisel
Ulises Vargas
Aitana Díez
And to all the people who in one way or another, beyond the distances, were part of the process.