We are Here: 17 – 20 October 2024

In communities of the diaspora, music can be a powerful tool for collectively preserving memories. Along with storytelling, traditional languages, and dancing, songs can represent a living home for stateless nations. Yael Bartana’s new work brings together two groups from two different diasporas: Coral Tradição, a Jewish-Brazilian choir born from the now-destroyed Yiddishland (a nation whose borders were defined by the reach of the Yiddish language itself), and Ilú Obá De Min, an Afro-Brazilian Street music ensemble that stems from Candomblé culture. In an exercise of weaving new possible alliances, Bartana’s video is an invitation to imagine the emergence of collective bodies beyond fixed identity labels.

The work was produced in the Teatro de Arte lsraelita Brasileiro (TAIB), which was built in the basement of the Casa do Povo in 1960. The TAIB was created for a future that never fully happened: the return of the Yiddish language. Nevertheless, it became the dream theatre of the experimental performing arts scene in São Paulo in the 1960s and 1970s, only to fall into a crisis in which it still finds itself today. It is in the ruins of this legendary theatre that Bartana imagines a time to come – between past and present, memory and pre-enactment, the sung word and collective choreographies.

One-channel video and sound installation, 11.35 min.