What brought us to Oaxaca was the power of culture, the ability of stories and symbols to transform our experience of the world. Through that transformation, they can bring about unexpected changes in the material and economic realities of our lives.
This transforming power is never fully to be predicted or controlled, but it is undeniably present in places like the Talleres Comunitarios de Zegache. Our friendship with this workshop in Zegache – an indigenous pueblo of 2000 people, south of Oaxaca city – began as a collaboration. We had a common interest in the power of venerative objects and the vernacular creativity they represent, as seen in the small chapels which Robert photographed around the village (see page 3). After our early work together, making moving images of the saints, we were able to broaden the collaboration into what became the Euroaxacan Initiative of Transformative Cultures (EITC).
A wider company of artists and artisans from Europe and Oaxaca set out to meet each other and make work together over two years. As we approach the halfway point in that process, this issue of our Newsletter reflects the first fruits of the project.
Performing Pictures NEWSLETTER no 2 | October 2012