Thirst For Revenge

IMPORTANT:

Under no circumstances do we claim to belong to any aboriginal community. We are mestizos, and by being immigrants in Europe we recognize the privilege of being here, talking about this, while the surviving victims of the ravages caused by the multiple businesses of Colonialism and Capitalism are still resisting if they haven't desisted, fighting and dying if they can't be forcedly submitted to this imposed system. We are a channel, we are communication, we are miscegenation, we are bastards, we are rage, we are DECOLONIZATION.


The performance HUMAN ZOOS presents the untold history of European Ethnological Exhibitions (19th - 20th Century). Thousands of native people from America, Africa and Asia were kidnapped to be displayed at these popular events. They were victims of exploitation, abuse, rape and even experimentation for medical research.

Through installation, audiovisual material and imaginatively playing the roles of “savages” in eternal captivity making imposed “shows”, we reveal deplorable historical facts performing a psychomagic ritual of revenge and liberation on their behalf.

We know that by studying, exposing and representing this hidden history we make ourselves somehow accomplices of this aberrant facts which provoke a mix of fascination and horror, but it’s a burden we accept to carry as the cost of the truth.

The only real death is oblivion, and we are not willing to forget them; that's why we make this performance “despite everything”, because no matter how brutal and inhumane this show can be, it will never reach the cruelty of reality.

What is forgotten can be repeated, and this should never happen again.


ABOUT THE PROJECT:

This is a work of investigation and interpretation, with no lucrative intentions, totally self-managed and in constant evolution and modification; therefore every representation has been different to the former ones, and each time it exists the necessity of investigating and digging more and more.

Human Zoos was already presented in “Festival Annulé” Toulouse, France; “La Feria de los Monstruos” Madrid, Spain; “Queer Mutante Panik Party” Brussels, Belgium; and in “Queer Take Over, KÖPI’s Birthday Gala” Berlin, Germany.

In current presentations we are making emphasis in the genocide of the Selk'nam people from Patagonia, South America, which led to the extinction of their race and their traditions, as well as in the current Chilean situation, where lands are being exploited and nature destroyed by the same heirs of this ethnic cleansing's authors, while the few remaining natives are still fighting for their lands and the survival of their cultures, like most of the aboriginal communities worldwide which have not been yet annihilated.

Now the performance has evolved into a gruesome hybrid between “Human Zoos”, “Forced Syncretism” and “Fuck the Fascism” - three art projects connected by history, abuse and Maria Basura - which was premiered in October at the Berlin PornFilmFestival as:

“Thirst for Revenge: The Pornographic Side of Colonialism's Hidden History ”

For more information, videos, fotos, reference links and news, please be welcome to explore this blog we are building for you.

Open Lettrer: Macro And Micro-Fascisms Working Until Today

BERLIN, Feb 2016.

On what happened in KÖPI (Queer Gala) on February 25th and on how those who carry no oppressions need to make them up or thrust them upon others.

"This performance is racist!" Some people in the audience cry out, very upset and “moved” (funny, those affected were all white European Germanic people) exposing as their only vital argument, the fact that the colour of our skins is relatively light and does not respond to the Walt Disney imaginary these people have regarding what a South American person must be and look like, to them. Absolutely lost in the likeness of Pocahontas, they try to invalidate our position, research work, love, anger and hatred, which those abhorrent, but true events raise in us. The discrimination and abuse that we get from this Eurocentric system seemingly not enough, we must also get it from Anarchopolice, invalidating our experiences and visions, based on their sensitivities regarding this white moral supremacy. What colour should we be in order to talk, discuss, express our views on the humiliations of colonialism? Or is it that the mestizo being is so deplorable that we are not even considered within the chromatic political chart for these European white people (actually white) who enjoy hundreds of privileges?

By calling us racists, you have done nothing except proving that you are infected by micro-fascisms and colonialism, placing your morals as a judging actor. You thus expose your absolute ignorance in regards to Abya Yala (Abya Yala, the name given by the Kuna people to what is better known, colonially, as America ). Taking into account that it is hard work to leave behind the filthy prejudices with which we are poisoned when we begin our education and integration into society, regarding our indigenous roots, you come to invalidate our empowerment.
We are the bastard children of the systematic rape inflicted on Abya Yala since the Spanish invasion, we are fed from the leftovers of your looting. Under no circumstance we accept being compared to you and your privileges, just because our skin tone does not answer to your imaginaries on what we, South Americans, are supposed to look like.

Human Zoos has not only meant going into a gigantic labour, but rather an abortion of all the colonialist education we got thanks all the History books coming from Europe, where key topics like this have been completely avoided. We are shaped by indigenous and colonialist blood, that is why we are mestizo and it is our right, and our right only, to become empowered by the histories of those who are not able to speak anymore, because they have been exterminated, or those on whom oppression is so great that indeed stage performance is not their priority. Is it that you do not realize that you are only reproducing that which you assert to hate as you try to boycott our work (work with no monetary compensation)? Or is it that I, a Sudaka, should be careful with the way I stand on stage not to hurt the sensitivity of a white ass? Well, no, I reject your lack of reflection. We will not stop presenting this performance or change it to stop making you uncomfortable, because I am not here to entertain you.

Do you, moral judges, know the number of mestizo people who starve or waste their lives working to pay high prices, only because they exist and to be able to sustain your European comfort systems? Did you know that in Chile, in our schools, homes, media, the native is considered a terrorist? That the language imposed on us was Spanish, losing the wonderful opportunity to learn since innocent childhood these exquisite languages and cultures belonging to the lands where we were born? In order to be here, I had to go through humiliating processes in which I was even asked for medical tests to prove I did not have any infectious contagious disease through which I could make a good European ill (ironic, isn’t it?), as well as endless documents showing through economic means, that I was “somebody”. Once here this does not stop, I became an illegal alien, the infinite immigration proceedings do not cease and it is almost like you have to offer thanks when given the permission to walk these lands. And, not happy with everything I must endure, there are still people, calling themselves pro-feminists, thinking libertarians and anarchists, who pinpoint the debate on the colour of our skins, taking everything to white and black extremes, thus annihilating all of us who exist within the range of greys in between, not even informing themselves on the context, intending to censor and outlaw our discourses.

As a good friend once told me, we are racialized because our race is a mixture operating along with other oppression dynamics…. No, we are not like you, functioning, living, and judging through thousands of “First World” privileges, being natives from this area, as well as white (actually white). In this “First World” it is very so easy to pose as an anarchist, becoming a squatter, an activist, and eating good quality products practically for free. It is very easy to let loose your tongue and conjure oppressions out of thin air. I don’t want to live in a world where political and anarchist thinking is developed in a judgmental scenario which is almost circus-like, where even the nudity of bodies is questioned. (Do we know that clothes were imposed to indigenes? Do we know that we live under bodily colonizations where the least empowered thing we have are our own bodies?) We are covered under clothes by the cold and Christendom.

I don’t want Anarchopolice individuals judging the intentions of someone whose only desire is to expose brutal history through stage representation, and who play down the central fact of the abduction and rape of thousands of natives coming from Abya Yala, Africa, and Asia. It saddens me to see them waste energy and intelligence judging and fighting against the wrong enemy, when it is clear that the real enemy is making amusement parks in their heads. I hope with all my heart that they are able to burn their moral prejudices and privileges, kill their inner police, those anarchomoralists, suicide their selves and be born again, and, above all, focus the fight on the correct side.

Proud of my llama face and heart, and empowered from all the Abya Yala spirits of the High Plains, and wishing you a prosperous death and swift resurrection,

Maria Basura - Mary Trash (Trash before Mary)

PS: We deeply thank all the party technicians, who didn’t allow these people to plug off our performance music and video feeds.


* Photos by Marti Pau

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