juan betancurth - Maraña #2

Installation at Espacio El Dorado, Bogotá, CO

This installation is the result from a Residency Program that took place in the Territorial Area for Training and Reincorporation (Espacio Territorial de Capacitación y Reincorporación - ETCR) Amaury Rodríguez in the town of Pondores in La Guajira, Colombia.

The ETCR Amaury Rodríguez is one of the 24 spaces of this type that were established around the country as part of the peace agreement signed between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia on November 24, 2016. These provisional settlements were established in order to provide training and assistance to ex-combatants for their reincorporation into civilian life. The ETCR where HAWAPI 2018 took place is located in the Pondores locality in the department of La Guajira and has approximately 250 inhabitants, most of whom are ex-combatants of the FARC.

Maraña # 2 is an installation that recreates a traditional Colombian bar, where the signing of the final Colombian peace agreement is celebrated with the speeches of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the former leader of the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Timoleón Gómez aka Timochenko.

The whole country celebrated the peace agreement, its staging, the grandeur of its discourse but is facing now the ineffectiveness in its implementation. A peace agreement and elaborated speeches like others that seek to fan the masses; in which they bring out these qualities of the Colombian people: their passion, patience, struggle, and their history, a whole bunch of ornaments aimed at enhancing a national pride, but which in turn are only intoxicating adjectives that transform the truth in mirage.

In Maraña #2, the speeches are reproduced in two black and white television screens located on the side of a bar table, reproduced at low speed (0.5v) and synchronized in time so that both discourses are heard in unison, like two old drunks sharing promises in a bar.

As a background in quadraphonic sound is heard in loop and slow speed (0.5v) the FARC song "Así es el 25" by Lucas Iguarán, to create a more immersive experience.

The installation is reactivated by "Coperas", women who work as waitresses and companions of old bars (a habit already disappearing), they accompany the speeches of Santos and Timochenko and visitors who want to sit down for a while to decipher the tangle in which the peace agreement talks have become. Photos: Performance by "House of Tupamaras".

Info about A.I.R. program here

Installation view

Juan Manuel Santos & Timochenko

"Coperas", performance by House of Tupamaras