Performance programme “El bicho" (The Bug) by Dora García

• Days: November 17 and 18
• Time: 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
• Space: Exhibition Hall A and Aljub
• Free entry with prior registration 

“El bicho” (The Bug) is one of the projects that includes the exhibition “Romeos, luchadorxs e insecto” by Dora García, which can currently be visited at Es Baluard Museu. This work will be activated through a program of performances, over two consecutive days, with the intention of promoting its collective construction with the participating public.

As a starting point, “El bicho” (The Bug) takes the work The Bedbug by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The plot fictionalizes a trip through time: a visitor from the past arrives in a future that is our present. In Mayakovsky’s work, a Soviet revolutionary is accidentally frozen in 1929 along with an insect that parasitizes him and both are thawed and brought back to life fifty years later, in 1979. The socialist paradise, the original goal of the Soviet revolution, It is very different from what the protagonist had imagined. Mayakovsky wrote the work months before committing suicide. “El bicho” is a funny and at the same time bitter satirical comedy, critical of the expectations of the revolution. From today’s perspective, however, we must be aware of the Russian imperialism that permeated Soviet culture, and that is responsible for a war today.

Let’s imagine a collective author who analyzes questions like: What happens in fifty years? Who evaluates and values the importance of the events and how they are told, with what words? Who writes and who reads? Who speaks and who listens? If history repeats itself cyclically, in this eternal return there is a recurring failure, a parasite, an insect, something that prevents the repetition from flowing without victims. “El bicho” is a group performance that seeks to analyze our present in terms of repetition, melancholy, and action. To “capture the bug” it is necessary to break all hierarchy between who speaks and who listens, who writes and who reads, who acts and who is a spectator.

This performance takes place in two consecutive parts of approximately two hours, one per day of performance, each part being a consequence of the previous one. It is recommended, although not strictly necessary, that the public be present both days. Depending on whether one or both parts are viewed, the role of the spectators and the nature of the work will vary.

Performers: Dora García, Castillo, Marnie Slater, Persis Bekkering, Krõõt Juurak, Michelangelo Miccolis and Adriano Wilfert Jensen