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On Earth
documentário instalação documentary installation
Cabula6 (AT) Jeremy Xido (US) + Claudia Heu (AT)

2 Nov / 18h30 / inauguração 2 Nov / 6:30pm / opening
3 Nov / 17 Nov / Seg - Sáb, 10h00 - 19h00 / exposição
3 Nov – 17th Nov / Mon - Sat, 10am - 7pm / exhibition
Armazém warehouse, Pátio Alfazema, Torres Vedras


On Earth é sobre viajar e sobre o encontro com mundos diferentes.
Mais especificamente, é um trabalho sobre as histórias por trás das viagens: os caminhos que cada um de nós toma para chegar até este preciso momento em que nos encontramos. Como é que cheguei aqui? Como é que aqueles que me rodeiam chegaram aqui? Como é que as nossas vidas se cruzam com a desta cidade neste preciso momento? As pessoas que conhecemos, as suas histórias de vida, coisas que nos acontecem por acaso, temas que surgem, pequenos e grandes. Encontrar uma zona de contacto onde pessoas diferentes com vidas diferentes possam cruzar-se realmente.



Conceito, Ideia, Apresentação: cabula6
Com: Claudia Heu, Jeremy Xido, Amanda Piña, Daniel Zimmermann, Mani Obeya, Zoe Knights, Fabrizio de Pasquale, Laurent Ziegler, Michel Villalobos, Ramon Villalobos, Nino Villalobos, Andrea Seewald, Jens Classen, Jorge Rojas, Carlos Rojas e convidados.

Biografia

Cabula6 (AT)
A Cabula6 foi fundada por Jeremy Xido em 2000 e é, actualmente, co-dirigida por Xido e Claudia Heu. Sedeada na Áustria, a Cabula6 foca o seu trabalho na fronteira entre a realidade e a ficção, no difícil diálogo entre o sentido pessoal de identidade e a sua interacção dinâmica com o contexto social: “Esta companhia procura espaços não convencionais para apresentar os seus trabalhos, que tornem possível caminhar nesta linha, entre o que é “real” e o que é construído, procurando que a audiência se confronte com as suas dúvidas e expectativas sobre quem são. “Dedicamo-nos aos princípios do divertimento, humor, investigação e adrenalina. Gostamos de jogar.” www.cabula6.com

Jeremy Xido (US)
Cresceu em Detroit, mas foi em Nova York que fez os seus estudos de actor e bailarino. Praticou capoeira de Angola com o mestre João Grande em Nova York e com Mestre Morães em salvador da Baia, Brasil. Tem feito inúmeros trabalhos como performer nos Estados Unidos e na Europa em teatro, dança, cinema e televisão. Escreveu e dirigiu várias peças de teatro e curtas-metragens para cinema. Em 2000, fundou a companhia Cabula6, da qual é co-director com Claudia Heu, desde 2003. A companhia tem levado a cabo performances por toda a Europa e Estados Unidos.

Claudia Heu (AT)
Vive em Viena, Áustria, é directora, performer e professora de dança, teatro experimental e performance. Fundou o teatro ONNO e desde 2003 divide a direcção artística da Cabula6 com Jeremy Xido, tendo apresentado várias produções em toda a Europa e nos Estados Unidos. Para além do seu trabalho artístico, tem passado vários anos da sua vida envolvida em trabalho comunitário. Passou uma ano e meio a trabalhar numa favela nos arredores de São Paulo, Brasil, trabalhou, também, em campos de refugiados e em prisões na Áustria.


On Earth is about travelling and the meeting of different worlds.
More specifically, it is a piece about the stories behind travelling: the pathways that each of us take to arrive to this very moment where we are right now. How did I arrive here? How did those surrounding me arrive here? How do our lives intersect in this moment with this city? The people we meet, their life stories, things that happen to us by accident, themes that arise, big and small. To find a contact zone where different people with different lives could and really do intersect.



Concept, Idea, Presentation: cabula6
With: Claudia Heu, Jeremy Xido, Amanda Piña, Daniel Zimmermann, Mani Obeya, Zoe Knights, Fabrizio de Pasquale, Laurent Ziegler, Michel Villalobos, Ramon Villalobos, Nino Villalobos, Andrea Seewald, Jens Classen, Jorge Rojas, Carlos Rojas and Guests.

Biography

Cabula6 (AT)
Cabula6 was founded by Jeremy Xido in 2000 and is currently co-directed by Xido and Claudia Heu. Based in Austria, Cabula6 focuses on the border between reality and fiction and the uneasy dialogue between a person’s private sense of identity and its dynamic reception in a broader social context: “We search out non-traditional performance spaces that make it possible to walk this line, between what is “real” and what is constructed and which can bring audience members face to face with their assumptions and expectations about who they are. We are dedicated to principles of delight, humour, investigation and adrenalin. We love to play.”

Jeremy Xido (US)
Originally from Detroit, Jeremy Xido trained as an actor and dancer in New York and plays Capoeira Angola with Mestre João Grande in New York and Mestre Morães in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. He has worked extensively as a performer in the United States and Europe in theatre, dance, film and Television. He has written and directed a number of theatre pieces and short films. In 2000, he founded the company Cabula6 and has been co-director with Claudia Heu since 2003. The company has performed all over Europe and the United States.

Claudia Heu (AT)
Lives in Vienna, is a director, performer and teacher in the field of dance, experimental theatre and performance. She is the founder of ONNO theatre, and since 2003 together with Jeremy Xido artist director of Cabula6 presenting productions all over Europe. In addition to the work in the theatre, she has spent years of her life involved in community work – from a year and a half working in a Favela on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil, to work in refugee camps and prisons in Austria.

PART 0
The first letter we sent before we started to work on the project

Hello Friends and Colleagues,

We are preparing a new project called ON EARTH.

And as with many of our projects, we are throwing a wide net out to many of our friends and colleagues to ask questions and get feed back in order to help us develop the piece. It’s important for us to know how people are thinking and living through the same sorts of issues and tensions in the world.

The piece will be about the life stories of people who come from different places and are constantly moving around the world, mainly because of their work (or lack of work). Transnational mobility: Mobility as a practical, formative part of our reality.
If you have time to answer all or some of the questions and send them back, that would be great. They will help us immensely as we go into rehearsals next week.

Thanks a lot,

Jeremy and Claudia

General Questions:

- Why do we move and to where do we move as often as we move?
- How have modern means of communication changed the experience of being in a “foreign” place?
- How have they changed the experience of being at “home?”
- Can we really be in different places at the same time? If so, what part of us is where? And what happens to our identities when the power goes out?
- In what ways do international networks augment or enrich our personalities and in which ways do they diminish us?
- To what extent are our professional and personal needs at odds because of such mobility?
- In what concrete ways do our identities alter in each place that we find ourselves? Who determines these alterations and how? And why?
- Do you think there are other more pertinent questions that we aren’t asking ourselves? What are the most important ones that we have missed, do you think?

More Personal Questions

- Can you make a list of the different places where you have lived until now?
- How would you trace your personal background up until the moment you were born? What are the most significant points of your parents and grandparents pathways? Where are they from? And if they moved from place to place, why?
- And what are the pathways that have led you to be where you are now? What are the most significant elements in your personal history that have brought you to where you are now sitting? Both literally and figuratively?
- Where are your best friends living?
- How much time you spend home or the place you call home?
- If you don’t live at “home” for what reasons do you go home? When? And what is the experience usually like?
- Why do you call this place home?
- What are the things in the world now that you feel the most positive about? Both personally and globally?
- What are you the most worried about?
- How do you create home away from home?
- Where do you feel like an outsider and where do you not? And what are the things that make up the difference?



PART I / Santiago De Chile
2nd to 23rd February, 2007

“3 semanas ON EARTH”

We began this project, On Earth, on February first of this year when we landed at the airport in Santiago de Chile and were picked up by friends and colleagues, Amanda Piña and Daniel Zimmerman.

We had made a deal with UNIACC University in Santiago to develop a new piece about mobility and migration, and in return for giving 3 weeks of workshops to Chilean Artists they gave us a rehearsal room to work in.

It was a little less than half the size of this warehouse space in Torres Vedras, where you are right now. If you look down from the balcony, imagine: It had wood floors and a high ceiling. Good light. Beautiful…

And we found ourselves in the middle of this room.

And we asked ourselves why is this room any different really than a room in Vienna Austria or New York or Basel or Tokyo or Nairobi or Vancouver or somewhere else?

There was a whole world waiting for us outside. And that’s really what interested us.
We wanted to find a place, a contact zone, where different people with very different lives could and really do intersect. We wanted chaos and chance on a grand scale.

We threw ideas around and then Amanda, who is from Santiago, mentioned something that was an important theme for her: the story of Transantiago:
A massive change in the public transportation system that took place on February 10th – right in the middle of our stay. The old yellow busses that covered the city were being replaced by white busses with a green stripe in an attempt to “Europeanize” the system. It was the end of one way of life and the beginning of another.
So we decided to put our rehearsal space in a bus, what Daniel described as an “atelier on wheels”.

We took a bus.

For four or five days we rode to the end of bus lines, collected material, talked to people, got telephone numbers, took photos, recorded sounds, got heat stroke and CO2 poisoning. We met street musicians, and bus vendors, bus-drivers, spies, union organizers, regular people in outlying neighbourhoods with bad circulation in their legs, horses.

Over the week we came up with a Structure for our presentation:

ON EARTH STRUCTURE
Following the contours of our lives as they intersect with the worlds around us, we ask the questions: “How did we get to where we are right now?”; “Where are we?” and “Where to next?”

Part one: arriving to where we are right now and being there.
Part two: traveling between worlds
Part three: arriving to where we will be

We decided to organize the last yellow bus ride through Santiago de Chile. The plan was to begin in our rehearsal space and to terminate at the end of bus route 362 on the outskirts of town in the “Población Santiago”. There’s a little hut there where Teresa has been feeding the drivers of bus 362 for 20 years. The hut had to close on February 10th because the new busses didn’t serve their neighbourhood anymore, so this trip on Bus 362 was to be a ghost ride and Christian, the bus owner was to be our driver and ferry us back in time as we crossed the city into another world which no longer existed. We organized musicians and vendors to get on the bus along the way, just like on a normal day of the yellow buses for years.

It was all planned for February 23rd.
Everything was prepared.
About a hundred people were scheduled to show up at UNIACC. The bus ride was going to be a surprise.
But on the 23rd, something was strange. The Yellow buses were strictly forbidden. The police were out checking for pirate busses. Forcing order on a chaotic system. We arrived to the space to prepare for the performance only to find out that they had revoked our permission to drive the bus across the city. We thought we would do it anyway – hell the Swiss and Austrian ambassadors would be on the bus, what could happen? The Chileans we were working with, however, said they wouldn’t do it. They were sure they would be arrested. They had images of jail and being tortured and absolutely refused. Anyway, Christian would never make it out of his neighbourhood, they said. The police would stop him as a Pirate Yellow Bus.

At 2 pm Claudia ran off to the Police department and Austrian Embassy to see if they could do something, but it was too late. The audience was arriving a 6pm. So at 4pm, we cancelled the bus ride and invited everyone – Christian and his family, Teresa, the musicians – to come to UNIACC for an improvisation.

The room was absolutely packed.

We performed the first part like planned – a mixture of live performance and dance with a video from Amanda and Daniel called “Jetlag” in which we watch their long trip from Europe to this very room where we were all gathered. When they arrived to the space, we said: “And what we want to do now is share a kind of living diary of these three weeks – which includes today. So, make sure you have your belongings. You shouldn’t leave anything in the room.” As they got up to go, we said: “Stop”

Instead of the bus ride, we told the story of what was supposed to have happened. To illustrate our points, we introduced Christian and Teresa and the musicians showed up and played. It was a documentary performance of sorts.

At the end, we handed everyone a map of the Bus Route and actually drove in cars out to Teresa’s Hut, were food and half the neighbourhood was waiting for us. When we got there, there was a party and a dance performance, which actually ended with the LAST YELLOW BUS RIDE through the neighbourhood “Población Santiago.”

There was no problem with Police. They don’t come to that neighbourhood anyway…

PART II / Vienna
1st April to 16th May, 2007

“3 months ON EARTH”

Following is the letter we wrote to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior so that Ramon Villalobos could get permission to have a Party in his garden, in Macondo, a refugee camp on the outskirts of Vienna.

Dear Sirs,

On Earth, a new piece by the performance company Cabula6, is about traveling and the meeting of different worlds. More specifically, it is a piece about the stories behind traveling: the pathways that each of us take to arrive to this very moment where we are right now. How did I arrive here? How did those surrounding me arrive here? On Earth tries to make the invisible life-stories that have led up to any one moment, visible: revealing the possible connections that bind all of us who share intersecting worlds, together.

In Vienna, the piece begins at the studios of Tanzquartier in the 7th district. The audience then travels on a rented Wiener Linien public bus to the 11th district where we arrive at the Kaiser Ebersdorf Barracks, renamed “Macondo” in the 1970s by the refugees that were housed there. The two worlds meet and intermingle in a creative event that the residents of Macondo have been organizing for years as each successive wave of refugees arrived : a party.

We draw the comparison between the creative gatherings of Tanzquartier and the creative gatherings of Macondo. Two sub-worlds embedded in the city of Vienna, which provide places for social gathering, cultural interaction, celebration and self knowledge. In what ways is a theater performance really a party – an egalitarian interactive gathering only made possible by everyone who is there at the moment? And in what ways are parties really a kind of group performance in which stories are replayed, relationships reaffirmed, in which there are improvisations with music and dance, stories are told and a creative moment of belonging and expression is provided a diverse group of people. Is it possible for these two worlds, Tanzquartier and Macondo, to learn something from each other? Can they reinvigorate one another? Is it possible for these two worlds to recognize what they may actually have in common?

Tanzquartier Vienna and Macondo are directly linked by the family Villalobos. Originally political refugees from Chile in the 1970s, they have lived in Vienna for over thirty years. During this time they have made Macondo their home, and for the past 5 years nearly the entire family has worked at Tanzquartier and Museumsquartier as night watchmen and technicians, behind the scenes for every performance and exhibition presented from the Children’s museum to the Festspiel. The family Villalobos will guide the audience between their two worlds – from the performance of the Tanzquartier studios to the party taking place in their Garden
at the other end of town, revealing along the way the tremendous social, cultural and human variety in the city of Vienna.


The Bus Ride from Tanzquartier to Macondo

From: cabula6
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:49 PM
Subject: On Earth Question...

Dear friends and colleagues from all over the world,

We have a question for you a little imagination game, perhaps. It is for our new piece, ON EARTH, that will be presented in Vienna on may 15th and 16th.
Here's the situation:
You begin with a group of 60 audience members who gather in a place called “Tanzquartier Wien.” After a half hour introduction to the project, they the board a public bus (rented) and ride out through the center of Vienna to its outskirts to a place called “Macondo.”
We’re not telling you anything else about either Tanzquartier, Macondo or the topic of the piece on purpose because i wanted to ask you, with only this scant amount of information, what could you imagine doing with the audience or having the audience do or not do on this half hour trip from one world through another world to this third world?
Let me know if you have too little information, but whatever your instincts tell you would be interesting to hear. It can be as outlandish or as mundane as possible. This doesn't matter. If you need more data, we can tell you more.

hugs

Jeremy and Claudia

Following are some of the responses:

I guess I would tell the audience the whole "100 years of solitude" in half an hour. Or divide the 60 up into 6 groups that represent the six generations appearing in the novel ;)
hugs,
- Martin Nachbar (Berlin)

Brive very slowly, leave a trail of breadcrumbs
Track their own progress through GPS devices
Let them think they are tracking their own progress with GPS devices but have the GPS display the journeys of others get them really drunk
- Charles Campbell (Minneapolis)

first ideas - pure instinct
invisible theatre
something "real" that can lead or introduce the audience to the third situation that can be real or surreal...
- Ana Trincao (Lisbon)

they're going to Garcia Marquez's Macondo, to a jungle in the outskirts of Vienna
they will be asked to write a story during the bus ride
about what will happen to them, where they are going, what they will find there and upon arrival they will perform their story or read it to the other audience members or tell them what Macondo is for them
meaning
their connection
Vienna's connection
physically/geographically and otherwise
to this "other" world Macondo represents - call it "3rd world", "magic realism", "world of sensuality/passions/wild imagination", "world of poverty and all of the above", "underdevelopment"', "whatever they aren't", "whatever they are glad they aren't", "whatever they hope never to become", "whatever they feel they are sorely lacking", etc, etc. let THEM define what is Macondo to them and how they connect to it if they do at all (they have to connect in some manner or other - at least in their imagination of what the place/world is like). That is the "bus ride" - that connection
- Marcela Goglio (Buenos Aires)

DEFINITELY SERVE DRINKS
Rob Rahbari (Mumbai)

Change clothes. change names. arrive as a different person.
- Michael Silverstein (Olymipa WA, USA)

have ten families in the destination city open up there homes to six people. A family raconteur tells them a story and the group of six have to refine the story in such a way that one of the six can report it back to the sixty. You will end up with ten stories, one from each group that your company will incorporate into a theatre piece.
all love
- Scott Cohen (New York)

I've imagined to be in the audience, to step on the bus to Macondo it’s a "cosmopolite" audience, and the bus gradually full of different voices and languages, rhythms and words... how pleasant a mere "visualization" can be!!
- Irene DiNatalle (Pombino, Italy)

play truth truth lie …….tell two truths and one lie, and the rest of the people guess which is the lie
- Beverley Britts (Columbia, California – Sierra Nevada Mountains)

I imagine getting a bus with curtains and closing the curtains as much as safe. The environment of the bus should be a total emersion experience, cutting off clues to present day. Especially important is smell. Actors in period costumes and animals should recreate the travel experience of the period. They would engage the participants. Actors should speak in a language the participants can't recognise easily. I envision something like a planetarium light display which would create images on the ceiling and walls of the bus. Control the temperature too. No microphone and hide the driver. Definitely no lavatory. Maybe misting water in the bus.
- Edy Britts (Nevada City, California)

some food. or snowing in the bus. or is that too arty? how about 3 curated acts of random kindness?
- Leah Gelpe (Israel)


Post Scriptum:

What is this trippy kaleidoscopic experience of being a human on earth?
The fractured approximations of intersecting worlds - one cancelling out the next, leaking and bleeding into each other - replace each other one by one and two by two as each suggestion proves more inadequate than the next. What you thought you knew, you clearly don’t. At turns dance party, at turns battle to the death as the hydra headed variations of being alive jockey for place in the contact zone of our making.

Why are you you and why am I me?

Come and join Cabula6 on earth in this twisted fun-house of shifting settings and frameworks. There’s a DJ. There’s us. There’s you. There are guests and party crashers. There are supernovas and quarks. There’s whatever there is. All in the blink of an eye.

This piece is for everyone, even if they don’t know it yet.
It’s nothing without you.