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ALWAYS COMING HOLE, 2021

 

 

Always Coming Hole is part of a long term research about choreographies of water and about the transformation of water landscapes in South America. 

 

Always Coming Hole is a choreographic reading space that navigates through lake Poopó, a disappearing body of water located in the Bolivian Andes plateau. As such, the performance starts with an end, and with the following question: if the lake would be a fictional character in a novel, how would its next life be? 

 

Two bodies on stage perform an audio guided choreography. They embody imaginary and real future lives of Poopó. They are bodies of water being conducted, molded, re-shaped. They navigate a space created out of the negative of the lake: that which is left behind, that which has served as a vessel for its lifetime. From above, such as Google would capture it: a remnant of its life gets excavated as an image and transformed into banners of memories, as banners to be used to demonstrate for the rights of water(s).

 

Always Coming Hole travels between the virtual and the real through the practices of listening, writing, reading, and imagining, relating to the lake’s disappearance as a docu-fictional choreography. 

 

“Bodies need water, but water also needs a body. Water is always sometime, someplace, somewhere. Even in our aqueous connections, bodies and their others/worlds are still differentiated. The question, then, of ‘what is’ is never sufficient. How is it? Where is it? When is it?. (…) If we are all bodies of water, then we are differentiated not so much by the ‘what’ as by the ‘how’”. Astrida Neimanis

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Concept and choreography: Paula Almiron

Space Creation: Eliane Bertschi

Choreography and performance: Ines Marita Schärer & Paula Almiron

Voices: Paula Pacheco, Alan Calle, Saul Apaza Chambi, Paula Almiron. 

Video Mapping: Eliane Bertschi & Ruben Vandermeulen

Text: Paula Almiron

Lights: Dorian Stevens

Technical support: Jan Berckmans & Ruben Vandermeulen

In conversation with Simon Asencio, Eliane Bertschi, Sabine Cmelniski, Wouter De Raeve, Fabrizia Fluhler, Caroline Godard, Lili M. Rampre, and Louise Vanneste.

With the support of La Bellone Maison de Spectacle, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Louise Vanneste Rising Horses, Villa Empain (Fondation Boghossian), Bâtard Festival – workspacebrussels – Kunstenwerkplaats.

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Video Version

Videographer: Ely Chevillot, Camille Sultan & Carol Van Hemelrijck

Video editing: Eliane Bertschi

Video sound correction: Enrique Paredes

With the support of De Vlaamse Overheid and Bâtard Festival

  

 

Excerpts from interviews: 

Paula Pacheco is the regional coordinator in La Paz of “Agua Sustentable”, a Centre for the Support of Sustainable Water and Environmental Management .

Alan Calle is a rural teacher and activist living in the proximities of the lake.

Saul Apaza Chambi is the president of "Cuenca de Usuarios de las aguas del Desaguadero Mauri" (W ater Users' Basin Desaguadero Mauri) . He grew up on the shores of Lake Poopo. 

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Online première: Batard Festival, Brussels, 2021 

Live première: Veem House for Performance, Amsterdam, 2021