House of Desaparecidxs

(House of Missing People) “There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born” (Frantz Fanon) A hooded character named La ChicaScratch embarks on a transgenerational trip to uncover the hidden story of her mother as a young militant activist in 1970’s Colombia. Through it she reflects on her own journey: the dark reasons that led her to escape Colombia into political exile in the Netherlands ten years ago. Paula Chaves Bonilla’s new performance House of Desaparecidxs is her testimony among thousands of other Colombians who fled their country in order to save their lives. People who had no other choice than to leave their homeland after being threatened for their political affiliations, for being sexual dissidents, community leaders or for seeking justice for criminalized, disappeared or murdered loved ones. House of Desaparecidxs opens its doors to these censored stories; we enter a utopian space in which we travel through non-linear memories of the present, future and past – narrowing the border between the realm of life and death. Resistance in exile House of Desaparecidxs traces a lineage and space of belonging through communities, people and stories that resist the voracious necropolitics of capitalism and dignify life through solidarity and collective actions. The performance emerges as a technology of resistance in exile, and devises a way to reestablish dialogue with origins and histories. It refuses the destruction of memory (memoricide) so common in conditions of exile and the neoliberal contemporary subject.