Sun At Night: Flamenco, Feast, and Politics

The Württembergischer Kunstverein is glad to finally announce the long-planned and often postponed program Sun At Night, which will take place as part of the exhibition Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead: Una forma de ser from July 2 to 4, 2021 in the Kunstverein's new and temporary open air platform, the Shared Space #Park Side. With a dense program of flamenco music and dance, performances, films, lectures, and a workshop, a central theme of the exhibition, the feast, will be reflected not only thematically but also as a practice. The program deals with the manifold relationships and interactions between flamenco, the transgressions and debauchery of the feast, and the political struggle of marginalized groups such as the Sinti and Roma. The entire outdoor program at the Kunstverein will be streamed live.

With Georges Didi-Huberman, a renowned art historian and philosopher participates, who has been dealing with the influences of flamenco on the avant-gardes of the 20th century for a long time. In his book Le danseur des solitudes (The Dancer of Solitudes), for example, he dedicates himself to the exceptional flamenco dancer and choreographer Israel Galván, who, together with Niño de Elche, performed last October at the Stuttgart State Opera as part of Una forma de ser.

Didi-Huberman's lecture, British artist and Roma activist Delaine Le Bas's online performance in a remote garden, flamenco musicians Tomás de Perrate and Marco Serrato's piece on the graphic cycle Días de Ira (Days of Rage), created by Helios Gómez in 1930 during the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War, and the German premiere of Gonzalo García Pelayo's film Nueve Sevillas (Nine Sevillas) kick off the three-day program.

The psycho-geographical flamenco film spectacle Nueve Sevillas (2020), whose screenplay was written by Pedro G. Romero, can be read as a kind of prologue to the entire program, which brings numerous figures central to the film onto the stage, such as the eco-feminist and Roma activist Pastora Filigrana, the musician duo Proyecto Lorca or the dancer Leonor Leal. Also participating in the program are the emerging flamenco guitarist and singer María Marín, who approaches Francisco de Goya and the music of his time in her piece, the writer Evelyn Steinthaler, who interprets various passages of text from books by the artist, Romni, and Holocaust survivor Ceija Stojka, as well as a number of artists in the exhibition, who will speak about their contributions. Curator Victoria Sacco will present the flamenco project Canciones de la Guerra Social Contemporánea (Songs of Contemporary Social Warfare), which will close the program on Saturday evening with a mixture of protest songs, flamenco and new music.  

The event will conclude on Sunday, July 4, with a four-hour workshop by artist Joy Charpentier on the political, anti-normative, and cross-gender strategies of counterfeiting.

The Shared Space #Park Side is a new temporary outdoor platform of the Württembergischer Kunstverein, which will be used by the association itself (WKV #Park Side ) and other partners (Shared Space #Park Side) for various events until the end of September 2021. It is funded by the impulse program "Art Despite Distance" of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg.

–– Friday, July 2, 2021
7:30 pm – 1 am +

7:30 pm
Iris Dressler, María García Ruiz
WELCOMING REMARKS + INTRODUCTION, 15’

Delaine Le Bas
ONLINE LIVE PERFORMANCE  
Modern Witch Part II, 20’
As part of the British Roma community, Delaine Le Bas explores the experiences of intolerance, stereotyping and displacement that this community continues to face. For Sun At Night she created a new performance within an installation of works in the garden of the house she shared with her late husband, the artist Damian Le Bas. This work is site specific and will be filmed live from the garden in Worthing Sussex U.K on July 2, 2021, via the internet travelling through space and time.
With references to Rasheedah Phillips [Dismantling The Master(s) Clock (Work Universe), 2016] and Silvia Federici (In Praise Of The Dancing Body, 2020).

8:15 pm
Georges Didi-Huberman
LECTURE, 45’ + Q&A
The renowned art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman has written extensively on flamenco and published various texts and books on the subject, including Le Danseur des Solitudes (2006), a philosophical reflection on the flamenco dancer and choreographer Israel Galván, or his textual contribution in the catalog of one of the most comprehensive exhibitions to date on the relationship between flamenco and the modern avant-gardes of the 20th century, which was on view in 2008 under the title The Spanish Night at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

9:30 pm
Tomás de Perrate, Marco Serrato
MUSIC
Helios Gómez, Días der Ira (Days of Rage), 40’
Tomás de Perrate and Marco Serrato present a musical piece reflecting Helios Gómez's graphic series Dias der Ira (Days of Rage) from 1930, which opposes the violence of the Spanish Civil War.
Tomás der Perrate comes from an influential family of musicians from Utrera and Lebrija. He is one of the most important contemporary interpreters of flamenco, having translated Hugo Ball's caustic poem The Caravan into flamenco and renegotiating this art form on a spectrum between Gregorian and New music. Perrate has contributed to numerous pieces by Israel Galván. Marco Serrato is part of the mythical band Orthodox, the avant-garde of doom metal in Seville.

10:15 pm
Gonzalo García Pelayo, Pedro G. Romero
FILM, GERMAN PREMIERE + TALK
Nueve Sevillas (Nine Sevillas), 2020, 156'
This psychogeographic road movie represents a kind of flamencology on feet that takes us through the streets of Seville, accompanied by nine different characters. The Chilean dancer Javiera de la Fuente, the poet David Pielfort, the Roma lawyer and feminist Pastora Filigrana, the dancer José Jiménez "Bobote", the Hungarian singer and dancer Rudolph Rostas, the African dancer Yinka Esi, the bullfighter Vanesa Montoya, the actress Rocío Montero and the filmmaker Gonzalo García Pelayo acquaint us with nine out of a thousand possible Sevillas and nine out of a thousand possible philosophies of flamenco. The nine episodes are structured by intertitles that introduce a tenth voice: that of artist Pedro G. Romero, who wrote the film's screenplay and whose series of posters for the 2018 Flamenco Biennial was the starting point of the same. The episodes are also interwoven with performances by Israel Galván, Alfredo Lago, Inés Bacán, Rocío Márquez, Raúl Cantizano, Leonor Leal, Tomás de Perrate, Niño de Elche, Rocío Molina, Silvia Pérez Cruz and Rosalía.

–– Saturday, July 3, 2021
1 pm – 12 am

1 pm
Iris Dressler, Pedro G. Romero
WELCOME + INTRODUCTION, 30'
Spanish-English

1:30 pm
PANEL / CONVERSATIONS, 60'

Francesco Careri / Stalker, Sébastien Thiery / PEROU (Online), María García Ruiz
Conversation about two collective projects by the groups PEROU and STALKER that approached Roma communities to generate a singular spatial proposal. These concern, on the one hand, a Roma settlement in Ris-Orangis, near Paris, and later in Grigny, and, on the other hand, the construction of a Savorengo Ker, a "house for all", on the outskirts of Rome. In both cases, these are sensitive forms of collaboration with communities pushed to the margins of the city and society. How do the spatial practices of these "invisible" communities challenge the hegemonic space of the city? To what extent do they challenge prevailing notions of community?

Robert Gabris, Iris Dressler
About forms of artistic and political appropriation of space, their respective limits and possible points of connection.

2:30 pm
Evelyn Steinthaler
LECTURE, 30’
The artist Ceija Stojka (1933-2013), who belonged to the Lovara Rom*nja community, processed her childhood memories of various concentration camps in the form of drawings, paintings and texts, among other things. She has thus made a significant contribution to the recognition of the systematic persecution and extermination of the Roma during National Socialism, which was kept silent for a long time. In her contribution, the writer Evelyn Steinthaler approaches various texts but also film recordings of the artist singing and talking. The multi-layered biography of the painter, singer, author and survivor of the Porajmos enters the correspondence with memories that belong to Steinthaler long time after their collaboration: “Abundantly suffused, absorbed, carried in the process – impossible to let go. In all the opulence of life, with the long shadow of unimaginable horror” (Evelyn Steinthaler)

3:15 pm
Leonor Leal, Antonio Moreno
DANCE / LECTURE PERFORMANCE
Alegrías / Conferencia escénica ¡Ahora bailo yo! (Now I dance!), 80'
A dance piece and staged lecture about the 1976 dance piece Camelamos naquerar (We Want to Speak) by Mario Maya and his Teatro Gitano-Andaluz, in which Andalusian Roma speak for the first time publicly about their centuries of oppression and discrimination. "'I dance because you exist!'. This is how the dance piece Camelamos naquerar begins: or rather, this is how I thought that it starts. How to research, rewrite or rework a piece I never saw live? How to create something from the material I have (which is incomplete and confusing)? How to filter it through my own body or even through my own life as a dancer in order to expose it? Could I talk about it? Could I have a voice of my own besides my feet, my hips or my arms?" (Leonor Leal).

5 pm
Daniel Baker, Delaine Le Bas, Moritz Pankok
ONLINE / ONSITE CONVERSATION, 30' + Q&A
About the different positions and methods of the artists Daniel Baker and Delaine Le Bas.

5:45 pm
Pastora Filigrana
LECTURE, 80’ + Q&A
Pastora Filigrana is a lawyer specialized in labor and immigration law and ecofeminist from Seville. In her talk she proposes to retell the story of the Roma communities in Spain from a feminist and class perspective. The history of the Roma in Spain is a history of 500 years of persecution by the political power. This persecution has had two main objectives: the disappearance of Roma culture and the regulation of Roma labor. For 500 years, more than 250 regulations have been issued, mainly aimed at forcing Roma to abandon their trades and to take the most precarious jobs with the worst social and salary recognition. They have historically been forced to work the land as serfs, and to forced labor in the mines and as oarsmen in the royal galleys. Roma have devised vital strategies to escape this fate of economic exploitation and continue to maintain their autonomy and ways of life. The punishment for this daring has been centuries of persecution, torture and genocide.

7:30 pm
María Marín
MUSIC
Music and songs from the time of Francsico de Goya, 40’
Francsico de Goya adored the music and festivities known in Madrid at the end of the 18th century as majismo, which shortly before his death in Bordeaux, began to be called flamenco. María Marín's interpretations of  the music and songs of Goya's time include not only musicological exercises, but also appropriations of the line and density of Goya's paintings and engravings.

8:15 pm
Victoria Sacco
LECTURE
About the project Canciones de la Guerra Social Contemporánea (Songs of Contemporary Social Warfare), 30’ + Q&A
In the late 1970s, after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, Guy Debord made numerous trips through the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain and France, he was in contact with groups of the autonomy movement. It was in this context, usually referred to as the Spanish Transition, that he composed in 1981 a songbook titled Canciones de la Guerra Social Contemporánea. The project of the same name by Pedro G. Romero is conceived as a musical reinterpretation of Debord's songbook, in which numerous contemporary flamenco artists are involved. Additionally, Romero’s project includes the presentation of historical documents. Victoria Sacco assisted Romero in the research of material associated with the songbook, which comprises books, magazines, press clippings, reports, photographs, letters and musical sources of the time, which we will be presented during her lecture.

9:30 pm
Tomas de Perrate, María Marín, Leonor Leal, Antonio Moreno, Juan Jiménez, Marco Serrato
MUSIC + DANCE
Canciones de la Guerra Social Contemporánea, 60'
A selection of musical contributions of the project Canciones de la Guerra Social Contemporánea, in which the songs from the Spanish Civil War and Resistance are deconstructed between flamenco and new music.

–– Sunday, July 4, 2021

1 pm – 5 pm
Joy Charpentier
WORKSHOP
Chourave (Theft)
I define my identity and my work as political claims: rom, faggot, effeminate, sex worker, proletarian. I grew up in a caravan in the Manouche community, my family traveled from fairs to evangelical convoys. My practice question the phenomena of domination and violence induced by social and sexual marginality.
Chourave means  “to steal” – it implies diverting the rules at our advantage to get something we need more than his previous owner: money, materials, pictures, laws, or history. Chourave can be considerd as a strategy of survival, or resistance.
For this workshop we'll play around  the figure of the counterfeiter who makes fake money or ID papers, jewels or paintings. We will chourave pictures from different sources and try to divert it in a series of prints. Furthermore, we will experiment a work protocol that forces us to make quick choices and to deal with accidents and the unforeseen. The result will take the form of a Black and White fanzine made out of posters.

Sun at Night. Flamenco, Feast, and Politics
Music, Performances, Lectures, Films, Talks, Workshop ...
July 2–4, 2021

Outdoor Live Program + Live Stream
in the context of the exhibition
Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead. Una forma de ser
(October 17, 2020 - July 11, 2021)

Curators
María García Ruiz, Pedro G. Romero

Registration, contact, info
zentrale(at)wkv-stuttgart.de
Fon: +49 711 22 33 70

Admission free

Venue
WKV #Parkside
Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
Schlossplatz 2 / Entrance

Supported by
Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg
Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart
Baden-Württemberg Foundation
Foundation of the State Bank of Baden-Württemberg
Marli Hoppe-Ritter Foundation for the Promotion of the Arts
Prolab Fotofachlabor GmbH, Stuttgart
Impulse Program „Kunst trotz Abstand“ (Art Despite Distance) of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg

Partners
Spanische Kulturtage Stuttgart (Spanish Culture Days Stuttgart)
State Opera, Stuttgart