Prometeo = Prometheus

This is a video documentation of the staging of 'Prometheus,' performed by the participants of the artistic creation laboratory lead by Mapa Teatro in collaboration with former inhabitants of the neighborhood Santa Inés del Cartucho, demolished during the gentrification process of Bogota's historic downtown. Along with the performance, this video offers documentation that helps to render the totality of a complex project: the collaborative process between neighbors of El Cartucho and Mapa Teatro, working together in the workshop, as well as a detailed perspective of the recollection of the participants' memories, and the final event that was the staging of 'Prometheus.' The minimal objects rescued by the participants from this erased space, such as chairs, tables, and beds, are in contrast with the open space of the illuminated city - an ironic horizon for stories of loss and displacement. Both through archive images and video, the inhabitants of El Cartucho tell their stories, individually and collectively, and the spectators can get a glimpse of memories that remain after being removed from a space of belonging. One of the most emotive stories is Juana Ramirez' - who walks through the ruins of what sometime was her house, recollecting little objects and intense memories. The video documentation of this performance suggests the many layers involved in the process of remembering and forgetting: the bodies of these Colombian citizens perform in a space that is not there anymore, neither for them nor for us. In the same way that their presence in a ghostly space activate living memories, Mapa Teatro's documentation project is an invitation to actively engage with the ongoing process of enacting memory, and to question the guidelines imposed in the name of a progress that intends to erase whatever it considers 'unacceptable.'

One of the foremost artistic companies in Colombia, Mapa Teatro (www.mapateatro.org) has been producing theater, performance and art installation projects since 1984. Founders and directors, Rolf and Heidi Abderhalden have created a wide ranging repertoire of theater, opera, mixed-media performance, and site-specific installation.Their work proposes richly textured visual metaphors in which they consider often complex psychological, social and political relationships. Committed to experimentation, and less interested in the actor as an 'agent of fiction,' they describe their project as 'a laboratory of social imagination,' that offers a space for presenting community issues and human concerns in media and performance. This combination of real-life situations and sites along with highly stylized aesthetic staging produces a tension between real action and (re)presentation. Mapa Teatro draws from live events captured on video such as the demolition of a neighborhood in Bogotá, ritual practice, and texts that explore the relationship of postmodern subjects, myth and metaphor. Mapa Teatro has performed by commissions, festivals and collaborative projects world-wide.