LARAS Collective: An interdisciplinary migrant art collective
founded in 2020 in Germany
Who are LARAS?
I am Beatriz Silva, and as part of my creative practice, together with Tamara Miller we co-found LARAS, Interdisciplinary Art Collective based in Germany, from 2020 till 2024. We are together with the drive and inspiration of creating projects that externalize our experiences trought multidisciplinary creations, touching on social and political matters that address us as women, migrants and artists. Our collective focused on ecological and feminist topics from a Intersectional perspective. We want to open a space for artistic reflection, questioning and dialogue. We display our personal backgrounds and disciplines to create together, and go through the learning process of transforming our arts into a whole. We strive to create a sense of community within the three of us, and the communities around us.
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We are Tamara Miller, Musician and Composer and Beatriz Silva, Dancer and Choreographer, collaborating with
Esther Lourenço, Media Artist.
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Beatriz Silva Aranda is a Chilean contemporary dancer based in Berlin. She graduated with a B.A in Dance, at University of Chile. She is currently working as a teacher, freelance performer and choreographer with other international artists and festivals in Germany.
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Tamara Miller is a Chilean, award winning composer based in Germany. Her work is shaped by a diverse catalogue that includes solo and ensemble chamber music, orchestral works, music for theatre, interdisciplinary pieces, scenic music, performance and sound installations.
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Esther Lourenço is a media artist from Brazil, graduate from Media Studies, currently working with different video projects, specially video mapping.
SURCO
SURCO is an interdisciplinary live performance and installation, which aims to build a scenic piece where multiple landscapes and atmospheres put in tension the notion of territory and its re-shaping process through the mixing of media projections, electronic sound, and contemporary dance. With the starting point being the historical resource extraction and overexploitation of natural resources in South-America, we explore the word "surco", which in Spanish means "furrow", "a trench in the earth”, and "wrinkle or line in the skin". Surcos are not only the marks left on different surfaces, but also the marks left on the bodies, over the ground, on society, in our history. From this context, the body and the Earth on which it moves can not be seen isolated from each other, so we seek to understand in a whole the human, economic and ecological processes. As a group from South-America, having witnessed the extension of the exploitation of resources and how it consequently has re-shaped and modified the territory, we want to offer a space to question, and promote reflection on the concept of territory and over-exploitation, recreating this live performance in a plural and open artistic space, inviting different audiences to ask themselves what the marks that we have as humanity are; marks that each territory and body is constantly reshaping. From this background, we invite the audience to find traces of their identity in our shared scenic space.
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Installation- Performance SURCO Premiered in SOMA Art Space SOMA300 18.08.21 / 19.08.21 and presented in MONOPOL Berlin, as part of the Festival Chilean Conexion 2021.
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Direction, Choreography and Dance: Beatriz Silva Dramaturgy, Sound Design and Live Music: Tamara Miller Media and Video Mapping Composition: Valentina Aliaga Production Assistence: Zinnia Nomura
Assistent Direction: Lucas Lacerda Góes
Set and Light Design: Oscar Arancibia
Dramaturgy Advisory: Maciej Sado
Illustration Design: Valentina Aliaga
Costume Design: Atefeh Farzandi
Photo and Video Documentation: Daniel Weyand
Artistic Residency at: https://www.ponderosa-dance.de/
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Thanks for all the support and collaboration to: Esther Lourenco, Alejandra Alarcón, Finja Willner, Rayén Mitrovich and Vincent Kammer. Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. #takeaction
PRESS/
Interview Invitation from the Radio Podcast We are born free WeRadio!. Beatriz Silva Aranda , as a Director of SURCO and Sanaz Azimipour, talk about the realization process of the work SURCO, the conection between migloom and the begining and orginis of the work and collective. Touching topics as How is being a migrant in the Berlin dance scene, and how this work belong its process and topics to migrant narratives and experiences.
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