Teatro de Chile “ZOO” Work in Progress
Good morning … colleagues.
We would like to warmly welcome each one of you.
We sincerely appreciate your presence here today.
Truth is it has not been easy for us to finally be here today…
We are sCll very worn-‐out by the trip…
It has really not been easy at all to get here…
To be here today has implied a great deal of planning and logisCcs from Chile.
But above all, it has meant a significant risk…
A risk because we don’t know what will happen with us aKer this…
We don’t know how the government of Chile will react…
When we go back to Chile… If we go back to Chile…
Ok. We don’t know if the government of Chile will allow us back into the country aKer this.
But it is a risk that we have decided to take
because we believe it is necessary to disclose what we will show you in a few minutes
It is an obligaCon… a duty we must fulfill…
Tonight we want to share with you
We want to share with you something that nobody has ever seen before.
But then of course one wonders if things that have never been seen before should remain hidden
because there must be a reason why they haven’t been seen before, right?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there is “a reason” in any kind of metaphysical way
I mean even though we are standing on a stage here, we're sCll scienCsts…
because I know that on stage, in theatre, you can sustain any kind of statement
and nobody asks for proof
You can say completely implausible things like “Look John, Stella is dead!”…
and nobody asks for any kind of conclusive evidence, right?
Ok, tonight we are here to show you something impressive…
almost as impressive as the fact that Stella is dead… and she's sCll breathing.
We have brought with us from Chile two very special people that we would like you to meet.
Before they come in I need to ask you for some things: please do not make any abrupt movements.
But most important of all. Do not make sounds of any kind. Please remain in absolute silence.
At the end of the world, in the southernmost part of the American conCnent
300 kilometers from Punta Arenas, the city where we live and work,
Is the island of Tierra del Fuego
This southern territory is hit by a relentless sub-‐polar climate
Each year it receives at least 3000 mm of rainfall
The average temperature does not exceed 32° F
This area is commonly hit by wind storms that can surpass 200 km/hour and last for weeks
This wind velocity is similar to that of a small aircraK turbine
We are talking about a wind exposure equivalent to poinCng a hair dryer at an ant for two weeks…
…or let’s say during its whole life, because ants don’t live longer than two weeks.
Living here is as hosCle as trying to live in the Sahara desert.
But not only living here is harsh
NavigaCng the waters of the Strait of Magellan, the most tempestuous and stormy channel in the world
was an affair that was feared by sailors with colonizing ambiCons
I mean, given the technological condiCons of the vessels used to travel south in those days
crossing the strait was something like trying to stay afloat standing on a bucon inside a washing machine
This is why one of the first sailors who came to Tierra del Fuego, the Englishman Robert Fitz Roy
didn't want to go alone on his ship "The Beagle"
He was traumaCzed by what had happened to the first captain of the Beagle
who took his life on deck, right off the coast of Tierra del Fuego
Because he was unable to withstand the severity and the solitude of these territories
Therefore Fitz Roy invited a friend of his, a young "Natural Philosopher" –only 22 years old-‐
Mr. Charles Darwin.
Thus began, unwihngly, a journey that would go down in history
a journey that would allow Darwin to develop, in his travel log,
the observaCons that would later consCtute the basis for his seminal work:
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selec9on…
…or the Preserva9on of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”
Best known by all of us as: “The Theory of EvoluCon”
Although it seems hard to imagine, there were human beings
who inhabited this land for over 7000 years
Human beings that were able to adapt to these condiCons.
The common characterisCc of all these peoples is that they were all nomads.
However, there was one tribe, just one that was different from all the rest: the YAGAN.
The parCcular feature of the Yagan that defined their essence as a culture, is that they were canoeists
unlike all the rest who were pedestrians: hunters and gatherers.
The Yagan lived in their canoes, and spent their days traveling the kords and canals in the area
eaCng only what the sea could offer them: fish, shellfish and seaweed.
Scholars tend to establish a fundamental difference between the Yagan and all their neighboring tribes:
their neighbors are known as hunters, with all the courageous connotaCons that this implied:
bravery, heroism, agility and dexterity.
The Yagans are known as extractors, receivers, with all the connotaCons of weakness that this, in turn, implies.
The hunter fights against nature to survive, dominates it, subjugates it.
In the case of Yagans, it is the exact opposite: it is nature that determines and dominates them.
“The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Feugians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgo=en by me…
These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch
At present, even a piece of cloth given to one is torn into shreds and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than another
On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a chief can arise Ell there is property of some sort
by which he might manifest his superiority and increase his power
I believe in this extreme part of South America, man exists in a lower state of improvement than in any other part of the world.”
In 1829 white men arrived in Tierra del Fuego moved by stockbreeding ambiCons.
This introduced diseases such as measles, pneumonia and tuberculosis.
But above all, the whites iniCated a bloody persecuCon and killing of these peoples
If in 1829 ... there were 3000 Yaganes
In 1850 ... there were 2900
In 2000 there were only two living yaganes, and they were two sisters: CrisCna and Ursula Calderon
CrisCna died that same year.
In 2003, at the age of 79, Ursula died.
With her death we thought that we had lost an ancient worldview forever.
We thought that a language had died.
UnCl recently, we thought that a whole culture had ceased to exist.
WATÉKE in Yagan language means, “water”
One and a half years ago, in abandoned house in Punta Arenas, we found TUSOYO and YOEL
AKer trying to establish a conversaCon with them for about two hours, we finally decided to report the situaCon to the police
On the way there, in my car, it began to rain. They both pointed at the rain and said…
Right that moment it hit us: maybe we had, in our car, two exponents of a culture that –up to then-‐ we had considered to be exCnct
Maybe what we had with us were two live human treasures.
In observaCon we realized that Yoel and Tusoyo maintain certain elements of Yagan culture.
This called our acenCon tremendously, because unlike language
(which clearly could have been taught to them orally, just has we have learned yagan words from them)
the behavioral customs they present are pracCces of everyday life.
But, supposedly, no human being lives according to original yagan customs since 50 years ago.
How does this culture come all this way, and end up here today?
How can a culture that doesn’t struggle survive?
Is it that customs are stored and hidden in our cells?
Its been a year and a half since we found Yoel and Tusoyo in that house. We have been working with them all this Cme.
We have recorded these 15 months completely, each day, each work session as evidence.
This is a replica of our workspace, it’s a replica of where Yoel and Tusoyo and have lived all this Cme
an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Pta Arenas.
It was not very comfortable, but it was what we could afford
I hope you can understand that we could not take the risk of making this finding public unCl now
because we would have lost custody of Yoel and Tusoyo immediately
if we didn’t have sufficient evidence that we are in the presence of anthropological museum pieces,
We worked clandesCnely ... we brought them here illegally...
I know this is nothing like a museum, but ...
It was vital to the invesCgaCon to avoid any contact with the outside world, we could not risk to contaminate them culturally
I hope you can understand that this is a conservaCon effort ...
Tusoyo and Yoel do not understand the world. They are IN the world.
In ancient worldviews humans considered themselves as being "part of" and “surrounded by” the world.
Both individuals and objects were all linked in a seemingly limitless number of associaCons.
To relate to the cosmos is thus to inscribe ones body in its rhythms
Where animals, plants, and elements are spiritualized. Nature “speaks back” to humans
Every material enCty paired with a mimeCc double of itself
Only since modernity, we began to see ourselves as eccentric to the world, as if we were standing at a distance from it.
Face to face with the world, we consider ourselves to be essenCally pure intellect, spirit
while we consider the world to be nothing but a material surface to be interpreted
As such, it deserves licle interest, as soon as some kind of sense is extracted from it, it can be thrown in the garbage
This is the moment of birth of our acCve “producCon of knowledge”.
This is the birth of the world as a world, as something out there, as something other
This is really the death of the world in service of the birth of the modern man
The extracCon of –supposedly inherent-‐ meanings from objects, in favor of improvement, of the advance of technology
the struggle for survival, growth, development,
refinement, innovaCon, progress, beauCficaCon
efficiency, progress, evoluCon
EvoluCon… the evoluCon of the species.
But why did interpretaCon, why did the extracCon of knowledge, become the central and indisputable way of approaching the world?
When did knowledge become such a valuable and tradable capital?
When did we stop extracCng gold, and begun extracCng sense from the world?
When there was no more gold?
And where is it that all this knowledge is stored?
And how many Cmes can we interpret each single thing?
And do we need all those interpretaCons? What for?
To accumulate them? Must everything be subject to accumulaCon?
Who benefits from this mining of knowledge?
And what if the tunnels collapse at our mining sites?
And what if we are trapped inside the mountain when the tunnels collapse?
There is a point to which you can empty the mountain by construcCng tunnels to extract knowledge
But there is a point where the mountain collapses; it is so riddled with holes that it just collapses.
A hollow mountain is no longer a mountain! Do you understand?!
Because what is it that defines a mountain as such? Uh?
That it is compact! Opaque! A fucking heap of dirt!
A compact and impenetrable pile of land
An inexplicable, indefinable, indescribable, impenetrable pile of land. A darkness!
Not a web of tunnels patheCcally illuminated by gas lamps
not a sum of hollowed out kilometers, not a sum of empCness!
That's not a mountain, that's a shame!
That’s the shell of a mountain, that is scenography!
That's a cast of a mountain, but that is no longer a mountain!
One cannot go for a walk on that mountain, animals cannot graze on that mountain, a sunset can barely be held by that mountain.
We have empCed the mountains and the seas, spaces, minds, food, territories, bodies
Oh how we have empCed bodies, our pains, the planets out there, the past,
we've empCed each licle thing by knowing it,
we have extracted all possible knowledge and now we are in the presence of mountains about to collapse
seas about to collapse, bodies about to collapse,
we walk with cauCon because we know that at the first wind the beams will collapse, the walls will give in
We are afraid to step to hard because we know that under our feet there's just floors under floors
that it is underground parking lots that hold our living rooms and our bathrooms…
We naively bought them color pencils.
Simple color pencils ended up becoming an obsession.
So much so that one day we found that they had ordered the room in a peculiar manner.
When we checked the tape we realized what he had done.
AKer that, every morning we began to find things like this…
I suppose now you understand why we had to dress them up in stripes.
How does a culture that does not struggle survive?
ImitaCng
We have two people who are constantly disappearing.
Violently, and especially in these last days, they are disappearing.
We never would have wanted to travel all this way with them... but we are desperate, we need your help…
How are we supposed to preserve something that disappears for its life?
This is a conservaCon effort, remember?
But… what if disappearance was the most evolved form of survival?
How are we supposed to preserve something that dissapears for survival?
Because, what if life was not meant to be a struggle? Huh?
Why not stop struggling? Why not stop trying to understand?
Why not stop struggling to understand?
Why not stop trying to understand in order to survive? Why not stop strugling for survival?
To sur-‐vive, to live-‐over what? How about living in rather than over something or everything?
Just to tryout something new… why not learn to disappear?
To imitate is to want to touch what is other with our body, not look at it, not understand it, not triumph over it.
Simply touch it with our body, to the extent that we embody it.
Mimesis, as the science not of understanding the other, mimesis as the science of being the other.
As the science of abandoning oneself in the middle of everything, losing oneself in the environment
sinking into nature, decomposing into the world
imitaCng as a form of surrender ... mimesis as a form of yielding.
My name is not TUSOYO.
TUSOYO in Spanish means You Am I.
Backwards: I Am You.
My name is Dario Duran.
Next to me is professor Charly Duarte.
We work as associated invesCgators in the faculty of Anthropology of the University of Magallanes.
We have worked there for the last 10 years.
Thank you for your paCence this morning.
What you have seen today, what you have in front of you, is what is leK of the last two living Yagans.
As you can see they have almost completely disappeared.
We could do nothing to stop it form happening.
We have prepared this licle performance with them for you.
He is asking me to translate.
He sais: “What is he wriEng? What is he invenEng? Whatever it is don´t belive them…
This is what we have been trying to explain to you…”
It´s quite amazing, isn´t it?
You may call this a failed project.
You may want to call this survival.
What is sure is one might have to ask oneself again.
What is exCncCon?