NINGÚN LUGAR

Orquestina de Pigmeos, a group formed by musician Nilo Gallego and audiovisual creator Chus Domínguez, presents Ningún lugar, the first work produced in Naves Matadero.    "Undated, 1950
I walk down the street. With nowhere to go. I stop to look at the billboards, the shop windows. I look at the price tags on the brims of hats. Do I need a hat? Perhaps I should buy one. No. Maybe next time. I’ve got time to spare.

I cross the street and go back towards Broadway. The Broadway of cinemas, theatres, second-hand shops, slums.

I have absolutely nowhere to go, nowhere to run. When one has gone such a long distance, it no longer matters if he is here or there, or for how many hours he’s walked. In ten years I might find myself in a completely different place, who knows, and it doesn’t matter one bit. Once you leave home, you’re never at home again."  
      Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go
In the book I Had Nowhere to Go avant-garde Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas tells the story of his exile across war-torn Europe to New York, where he must start his life over again.
Meanwhile, while  Mekas walks the streets alone, Nowhere begins, a performance in which his texts and work are taken up by an amateur theatre troupe consisting of Romanian women, a Colombian musician who plays electro cumbia and noise, domestic videos and heaps of junk, in order to build an everyday opera that celebrates life.
Since 2009 the Orquestina de Pigmeos (Pygmy Band), a group formed by musician Nilo Gallego and audiovisual creator Chus Domínguez, alongside various members who collaborate on each new presentation, has been invited by national and international festivals in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Portugal to turn everyday situations into extraordinary artistic experiences that are deployed into the environment: on a stretch of river, along the path of a shepherd with a flock, on top of a volcano at sunrise or on a wharf when the tide is rising.
This time round the Orquestina de Pigmeos will be at Naves Matadero to act as mediums in a collective creation that reflects on displacement and exile, an experience that transforms creators, the people they come into contact with and the place where they act, a dialogue between sounds, bodies and actions, a path to nowhere.   Texts loosely adapted from the books, films and video diaries of Jonas Mekas
  WORLDWIDE PREMIERE

Credits Idea and direction: Nilo Gallego and Chus Domínguez
Collaborative creation and performers: Luminita Moissi, Mirela Ivan, Angelica Simona Enache, Mariana Enache, Julian Mayorga and Claudia Ramos.
Music: Julián Mayorga
Lights: Oscar Villegas
Feauring the special collaboration of: Grupo de Teatro Equivalientes (Tetuán), Raquel Sanchez, Serrín (Raul Alaejos and Ana Cortés)
Thanks to: Biblioteca Musical Víctor Espinós, Alberto Nanclares, Iván Pérez, Filmadrid and Sebastian Mekas
Special thanks to Jonas Mekas

Photo © Luisa Zotes