Paper short abstract:

With a small electronic instrument floating in the middle, Nene del Solar creates a soundscape woven from rhythms and sounds captured from a land plundered by gold mining. The performance is an exploration of the elastic body, seeking to extract a radiant artifact from the very heart of the stage.

Paper long abstract:

Obtaining Gold requires both the elasticity of the human body and the extension of machines and tools. The auric metal, cause of invasions, has been utilized as a component in audio devices and digital-electronic apparatuses due to its exceptional conductive properties which ensure the efficient flow of electrical current. However, the pursuit of it, and elongating the human body to reach it, has come at a devastating cost, resulting in the loss of millions of lives and ecosystem imbalance. (Witzgall/Stakemeier, 2014)

The staging of a human trying to remove a golden electronic device that shines with its own light from the center of a dark space, hanging from transparent elastic threads, displays the dazzle and obsession of the human extractor for the electronic object. It also proposes possibilities for the elasticity of his body in synchrony or contrast with the elasticity of the seemingly invisible threads that create a suspension structure and hold the object as if it were levitating. Each time the human stretches and releases the threads, the object sways, the threads oscillate, and this trembling causes a catastrophic soundscape of landslides, mudslides, and avalanches to be heard in the distance. Meanwhile, the human sings and dances to the rhythm of the landslides, which become tragic music.

This performance delves on the repercussions of gold’s extraction used for electronics, elaborating on the elasticity of the communities and the bodies that mine it.