~ RAUM FÜR KÖRPER UND UTOPIEN

Planting a seed in local BERLIN

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a space for the body and the utopias

CORDILLERA Raum für Körper und Utopien or CORDILLERA Berlin, as we usually call it in its abbreviated version, is a space dedicated to reflection on the body, which includes a perspective that understands the body as a common place, beyond cultural experiences, gender, historical and socio-economic differences. This idea is not presented in opposition to the plurality of experiences, which are imprinted and carried in our bodies. Rather, this idea is presented as a meeting point, as a possibility in today’s world, as a utopia that could help us move forward, together. In our case, this idea has helped us to create a physical space, in which we have been able to experience different kinds of encounters, which show that creating an intersectional crossing point, traversed by different ways of thinking and practising, is possible.

Events & Activities

CORDILLERA Berlin was born in the middle of a pandemic and at the beginning of a critical moment for the world, which now represents a kind of transition into a totally new era. At this time, when we started to implement our ideas and wishes, while discovering new tasks and purposes in the space; many performing artists found in CORDILLERA a roof, where to further develop their work and try to keep a focus: an axis, in the midst of a global and extended uncertainty. This context gave us the opportunity to begin to build a space that was not only new physically, but also as a new mental space; emerging, in the breakdown of all neoliberal relationships, gave us the opportunity to dream again, to develop connections that went beyond professional roles, to come to a deeper understanding of our vulnerability.

CORDILLERRA was created by the association Die Körpergemeinschaft e.V.. The association consisted of artists and colleagues who, before and during the pandemic, already collaborated through different projects in Berlin. The association, and its network, which continues to grow over the years, has been led above all by the work of women, /// the work of women artists, /// the work of women artists and mothers. Motherhood has been an axis in CORDILLERA. It has been crucial, then and now, because this practice unfolds permanent questions about belonging, growth and the need to create the conditions for a fertile territory where to plant the seeds for the next generations, which applies not only to children, but to ideas, to the environment and the collectivity that embraces us. Motherhood is strength, energy, power, vision and empirical knowledge. As is well known in our societies, in our societies, motherhood is still excluded from the territory of thought and professional practice in different fields of our works. In CORDILLERA we have been fortunate, to create a living laboratory in constant transformation; led by mothers, we have carried out a collective experimentation on how to build a space, created by artists for artists, that confronts the needs we have gathered in our professional careers, as well as a reflection on care, self-management and commitment applied in the ways we work and relate to each other.

CORDILLERA, means in English mountain range; In German: Bergkette. CORDILLERA is the name of the space, which we proposed as a metaphor for a ‘landscape’, which does not belong endemically to the Berlin territory, but aims to bring to the capital other experiences, based on the plurality of topics, aesthetics and discourses. Since the beginning of CORDILLERA, the space has been presenting an extensive catalogue of international artists, as well as creating an important stage platform for performing artists based in Berlin and beyond, in order to offer visibility to their processes, research and discourses.

As we began to inhabit CORDILLERA, Die Körpergemeinschat created a MANIFESTO in 2020 with the aim of nurturing and inspiring our artistic practice:

The Present as point of transition

New ways of being on the world

Performing Arts as collective practice

Ritual & Gemeinschaft

Utopia as the possible that is not yet realised

New needs, new answers, neue Formate

Ourselves as a Common subject and Common future

At CORDILLERA Raum für Körper und Utopien we are generating different discourses, residencies, events and encounters to offer the capital new perspectives from and about a local and international performance scene. Over the years we discovered a special affinity with the Latin American diaspora, not only because I and my colleagues from Die Körpergemeinschaft e.V., come from or have an emotional connection with the global south, but also because different artists from Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Mexico approached us, feeling empathy and receptivity with their different themes and ways of creating and experiencing their artistic practice; they came to us, sharing their works, participating on the events, supporting organisations tasks, and joining the artists in residency programme.

Through the years and with the experience we have so far, we understood, that CORDILLERA Berlin is above all, an international platform for artistic creations, proposals and practices, related to the Global South perspectives.

For us, It looks like the South is here! It looks like UTOPIA, arises frown the South, It looks like we are all becoming the South!

We, Die Körpergemeinschaft , present ourselves today as a free, transdisciplinary network of artists from the global south and the Latin American diaspora whose members all have different artistic backgrounds. We like to call ourselves Ch’ixi people, an Aymara concept shared and theorised by the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. She uses this term to describe beings who live between worlds and forms of knowledge. Ch’ixi people cross borders, searching for utopias in the so-called global wilderness. We are Ch’ixi artists who live in Berlin and who feel the need to work in a network, among ourselves and with the aim of making our themes and perspectives on the world visible, from the place where we live: Berlin.

We believe in the importance of horizontal dialogue and exchange between disciplines and experiences. We believe that we can grow together, bringing and sharing perspectives and needs, without been afraid of how they differ in their nature and context.

CORDILLERA is not interested in creating fixed and exotic identities around our provenance and themes. We want to continue to advocate for inclusive, flexible and permeable discourses that contribute to improving the present and future of our local communities. We are interested in creating a space that can embrace a transgenerational and transcultural exchange, nourished by the experiences of living in different territories and also by the exploration of fields of empirical knowledge and science. We have been facilitating intercultural understanding and collaboration through our work. Offering a common platform to plural perspectives gives us the opportunity to trace routes and experiences also from Andean epistemology, encouraging our audience to imagine alternative futures, including those in which diversity and inclusion are central themes, challenging the Eurocentric perspectives, which often prevail in the development of arts.