AGUSTINA MUÑOZ (AR, 1985)
Residency period: January-March 2020
For my last works I have worked on language, voice and collective speech, the stage as a mental space where the absent, the “no-longer” and the lost can exist in the here and now, shared with and within the contemporary bodies of performers and the audience. I have worked with lost indigenous languages, lost books and fragments of texts that have survived various historical threats. I have worked with various layers of knowledge and sources underpinning the many historical lines and chronologies that build up our experience of the present, from medieval tales to religious gospels, biology texts of birds adapted to life in big cities and descriptions of southern constellations by European travellers in the 16th century. I have used imagination and history as a way to understand and foresee other ways of living together.
My current project addresses 18th and 19th century texts by European travellers (mostly women) in South America that depict nature and indigenous life, the twofold character of the adventurer and the settler, the traveller and the conqueror, and how language brings back a landscape and a life that exists no more. At La Becque I did some research and wrote first drafts of a possible text. I then tested it with teenage performers from the Burier high school. I was interested in working with a group of teenagers, exploring a time in life that is pure future, while also filled with fear and doubt about the same future they long for.
A native of Buenos Aires, Agustina Muñoz develops her work in the fields of cinema and performing arts. Addressing notions of corporeality, desire, heritage and memory, her approach to text unfolds through writing, directing and solo as well as collective stage plays. Rewarded with several dramaturgy prizes, her projects have featured in theatres and art centres in Argentina, Spain, Chile, the Netherlands and Cuba.
Un conte pour les jours perdus (“A Tale for Lost Days”)
Reading-performance at La Becque on the 11 March 2020
Featuring Alyssa Fonjallaz, Eléonor Bürki, Daniela Dias, Mathilde Krenger and Rotem Salomon (Drama students from the Gymnase de Burier)