Transitions 2. Latin America

"The Onassis Stegi ‘geopolitical’ Transitions festival is now in its second year. The event seeks to broaden and deepen the cultural dialogue with societies shaken in recent decades by runaway political and economic changes and facing extreme social phenomena as a result. Following on from last year’s exploration of the Balkans, this year’s Festival focuses on the independent arts scene in Latin America—a term still in use for South America which reduces the multiplicity of a continent’s cultural past to the ‘Latin-ness’ of its Spanish conquerors.

The rising stars from Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, São Paulo and the favelas of Rio, all of whom have made names for themselves internationally in recent years, will be bringing much of interest with them for this, their Athens première: unconventional productions in the grey zone between theatre and film, dance and installation; powerful narratives and poetic texts that are not afraid of emotion; radical theatre-documentaries that cast taboos aside to tackle issues of memory and history; trenchant, naturalistic forms which focus on contemporary issues relating to politics, society and corruption.

The artists appearing at the Onassis Stegi Latin American Festival were born and raised in the totalitarian years of state terrorism. Having borne witness to the progressive shift towards democracy in the nineteen eighties, they found themselves confronted by the sort of socio-political and economic dead-ends that saw desperate Argentineans take to the streets of Buenos Aires in 2001. What’s more, demands for the perpetrators of thousands of murders and disappearances during the junta years to be held to account for their crimes still go unanswered."
—Katia Arfara, Artistic director of Transitions