We pick up trash. We pick it up from the street, from the dumpster, from the park. We feel it’s weight, texture, size. We carry it around. Show it to people. Dance with it. Sometimes we keep it. We wear it, we find some use for it. Like a second life, keeping it away from the landfills and oceans just for a bit longer. At some point in the past few months since we’ve been doing the trash outings, someone mentioned the famous saying: “A man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Well, no. It’s not about that. That saying makes it sound light. It takes away the blame from the first wasteful man.

Because that’s where the problem is.

That saying makes it sound as if there were always two men. One throwing away and the other one picking it up.

The reality is that there is no way there could be enough people dedicated to picking up and finding use to all the trash that gets produced in the world minute by minute. It’s not getting recycled either. No one is cleaning up our mess, and we’re reaching a breaking point. 

We need to stop looking the other way.

That’s why we pick up trash and make people hold it with their own hands, make people see it as part of a costume or as part of a performance. 

We want to put trash at eye level, in the center of it all. Because trash is a treasure, it is very valuable. It was produced with very costly materials. It took designers, factory workers, electricity, water. It took oil and natural gas. It took land. It took lives. And we throw it away. Because it became cheap.

How come something that costly to make became so cheap to consume, so easy to dispose?

Who is absorbing the real cost of trash? 

Poor people, brown and black people, indigenous people, and nature. 

Some examples:

Poor folks in Oklahoma are now convinced that there always used to be earthquakes in their hometowns, although those started when fracking came, now they’re spending their savings in earthquake insurance.

The Dakota Access Pipeline was built on Sioux sacred land, national guard and police removed all protesters from the site. It is already leaking.

The United States violates the sovereignty of other countries in order to gain access to and control over their natural resources. Such interference includes bribing corrupt politicians, training and arming police, paramilitary or terrorist groups, or taking direct U.S. military action. Thereby, powerful economies like the U.S. take not only land resources, but they also take control of the markets, making others dependent on their manufactured products. They also get cheap labor, to further economize in the making of their products. That is called colonization and slavery.

                              - - - - 

A poor person is someone who is trapped in a situation they can’t control. Someone who can’t quit their jobs, can’t negotiate their salaries, can’t protest. A poor person is someone who has been stripped of their autonomy.

In many places around the world people have lived and could continue to live off their land, with small agriculture, fishing, hunting and just knowing how to build and repair things, and how to heal. When land gets taken, their lives get taken too. They are forced to participate in the global economy, as cheap labor. That is when they become poor, or immigrants. No more fish, no more hunt, no more medicinal plants, no more knowledge.

We have been stripped away from ancestral knowledge. 

Some people weren’t raised with it at all. The operating ideological system in America has been for the individual to get ahead, no matter the cost. That makes people poor too. They have to work long hours so that they can buy what they need. A person needs to work hard to make a lot of money to be able to access “good” housing, education, or healthcare. No time for cooking? Get delivery. It broke, out of fashion? Buy a new one. Food went bad (because of “busy schedules”)? Throw it away. It’s more convenient.

The livelihoods of immigrants, refugees, and indigenous peoples around the globe, have been sacrificed for our convenience. We have traded our own livelihood, our autonomy.

We have also traded natural diversity, clean water, clean air. We have pushed species to the brink of extinction, decimated entire ecosystems, to produce things that get used once. To produce food that doesn’t get eaten. There’s no quantitative worth to nature, so it doesn’t add up to the cost of trash.

Trash is trash because determined human lives are cheaper. That’s what racism is. Some lives are less valuable. That’s what the colonizer made the poor and the slave believe. And the poor and the slave, and their descendants, assimilated these values. We have been made complicit, through consumerism, in the violence that is made against each other and against nature.

Before we move with trash, we reconnect to mother nature, as a way to heal from the violence of the impact of our actions. Through sensation and movement, we get in touch with the love and gratitude to life. We bring to our process the awareness of the equal value of all existing life forms to de-center western capitalistic human experience. We propose an embodied practice to change our consciousness.

Because that is the biggest challenge: to see that the reality that has been served to us is incomplete. That it doesn’t account for diverse forms of life, and it doesn’t account for a sustainable future on this planet. We need to wake up to reality. We need to find the root of the problem in our assimilated hierarchical behavior. We need to decolonize our bodies, our homes, our time. We need to reconnect to nature and its processes. Only through the recovery and the defending of autonomous ways of living, we can stand strong together and make a change.

Some actions:

Educate ourselves about and stand with indigenous and environmental resistance movements at home and around the world.

Educate our children about the impact of consumerist actions.

Spend time in nature. Observe animal life. Be quiet. Be humble.

Stop buying plastic.

Learn about the real cost of things, their carbon footprint, their manufacturing processes.

Learn how to’s (cook, build, repair, heal).

Observe hierarchical thought at the workplace, challenge it. 

Get used to demand our right to a dignified life (access to housing, healthcare, education) from employers, institutions, politicians.

Reduce the amount of waste we and our families produce. Talk about waste.

Get involved. Find strength in the community of people who are fighting for justice.

“La Invasión”, es una colonia (barrio) de Tulum que se llama así porque sus habitantes han llegado como han podido y han tomado un pedacito de tierra para construir sus casas con materiales más bien improvisados. 

Danny Alveal Aravena, chileno, videógrafo y fotógrafo, ha estado trabajando en temas de migración, en este caso, la chiapaneca. Yo, Maira Duarte, mexicana, desde el performance, educación y otras cosas, pues con la experiencia de migración y racismo en los estados unidos y en nueva york particularmente. Justo antes de conocer a Danny, venía de haber filmado una videodanza con niños de inmigrantes, en protesta a la violencia e injusticia sucediendo en la frontera US-Mexico, en colaboración con Semillas Collective y Mayday Space.

Danny y yo decidimos ruta, fecha, hora y acción. Me pongo una máscara de luchador que compré en la Avenida, mis tenis para bailar (cortesía de Justin Cabrillos), y agarro un costal de papas.

En los últimos años he estado metida haciendo Environmental Dance Research (Investigación de Danza Ambientalista), con Jo Stone, mi colaboradora en ya varios proyectos. Comenzamos siempre meditando caminando con los ojos cerrados, nos subimos al tono y ritmo de lo que nos rodea. Atestiguamos y percibimos al árbol, el árbol es testigo nuestro y nos percibe. Usamos esto como entrenamiento para la descentralización de la experiencia humana, para el entendimiento de la vida como un todo, para minimizar nuestro impacto, como ser imperialista y colonizador. Para de-colonizar nuestro cuerpo.

Con la danza, investigo las siguientes correlaciones: visión utilitaria de la naturaleza, visión utilitaria de gente considerada inferior (racismo) = perdida de habitat, y de autonomía para los pueblos originarios, y otras poblaciones discriminadas = conflicto social, pobreza, pérdida de cultura e identidad, extinción de formas de vida diferentes (humanas y no humanas) = homogeneización.

El capitalismo requiere de homogeneidad. En el capitalismo no hay cabida a la existencia de distintos mundos. La máquina, para operar bien engrasada, necesita que los individuos asimilen un rol uniforme, el de la narrativa dominante. Por lo tanto estrangula la diversidad en la cultura y la naturaleza. Especies y lenguas, hábitats y medicina. La autonomía, pluralidad y consenso, son tareas humanas arduas y lentas. No le sirven al máquino. Y sin embargo, comunidades e individuos marginados continúan levantadas en resistencia, ahora más que nunca. Como dijo Marichuy, líder del Consejo Nacional Indígena: “La nuestra, es una lucha por la vida”.

Y con todo eso en la cabeza, me echo a andar por calles no transitadas por los turistas de Tulum. Caminar en silencio ayuda a entrar en un estado meditativo donde una reemplaza los pensamientos con las imágenes y sonidos que la rodean. Mando la atención a lo desechado. Lo que alguna vez tuvo un uso, y ahora, no. Una botella de plástico con un palo atravesado. Parece ser que a este ya le habían dado una segunda vida. Lo escojo para mi costal.

De vez en cuando me ruedo por el piso o me cuelgo de una barda, para deslizar un poco la relación aceptada de calle y cuerpo.

Tengo una modesta y temporal audiencia, de la cual los niños son los que miran por más tiempo. Cuando camino hacia alguien y les sonrío, me sonríen de vuelta, a una señora le faltaban los 4 dientes de arriba.
La calle es una cosa, pero el terreno baldío es otra. En la calle hay dos o tres basuras, todo manejable, los terrenos desocupados, en cambio… 

En uno hay un gallo. Nos atestiguamos el uno al otro. Nos identificamos con paciencia, y después, cada quien continua con lo que nos proponíamos, aquél buscar comida y yo basura.

En otro terreno, hay una televisión sin caja. Lo de seguir basura es preguntarse, ¿cómo fue a parar eso ahí? Se compraron otra tele, pienso. Se descompuso tal vez. La cargo y la llevo al camino, quiero que la gente la vea. La vida de tantos se ha construido alrededor de tener una televisión como para acabar así. 

A pesar de las cantidades de desecho, en esta zona del mundo la selva combate como puede a la basura. Está enterrada, ya le está creciendo yerba. Hay cantidades de insectos y otros bichos, maleza, árboles tremendos. Recojo palos y piedras también. La gente de por aquí, construye sus casas con lo que puede.

Encuentro un árbol para abrazar que ya no es árbol, es poste de cercado, y ya no es ni eso, se cayó hace un tiempo y vive echado enmarañado de alambre de púas. Es basura orgánica, dale unos años y la madera se continuará descomponiendo, el alambre se oxidará y todo se hará polvo.

A la costa de Quintana Roo llegan unos 5 millones de turistas cada año. Tulum, en esta temporada, está lleno de sargazo. Montañas de sargazo, que los empleados de los hoteles apalean y suben en carritos y meten en bolsas de plástico para “deshacerse” de ellas. Pero, gracias al calentamiento global, el mar sigue trayendo más. Los turistas absurdos pagan un dineral para echarse al sol en medio de la peste.

Nos metemos al corazón de la invasión. Yo como invasor también. Los perros me ladran. Las familias están en el cotorreo post-navideño. Construyo mi casa con los materiales de mi costal y otros más que me encuentro por ahí. Dentro de mi terreno cercado, bailo. Bailo en ofrenda al barrio. Le hago una danza al espacio y a los vecinos. Los niños son los que miran más.

Juego con mi frontera. Se ma va volando mi costal. Ya que estoy metida ahí, me da miedo irme. ¿Qué tal que pierdo mi casa? ¿Qué tal que no me quieren pasando mi muro? El mundo de pronto se me figura que se divide entre los que están adentro, los que están afuera, y los que podemos entrar y salir. Se dice que la migración es un derecho humano. A mi me parece que, hacerlo legalmente, ha sido siempre el privilegio de los blancos.
​
Invito a mi publico de dos niñas a conocer mi casa. Hacemos una dancita juntas. Me dicen que han venido de playa del Carmen por navidad a visitar familia. Les veo sus caritas de rasgos antiguos de esta tierra. Las veo sabiendo que son ellas a quien esta sociedad, este mundo, les llama invasoras. Y en el otro Tulum, el de la playa, los gringos son huéspedes apreciados por su pudencia, aunque no hayan hecho nada por el lugar mas que llenarlo de sargazo.

Checa el trabajo de Danny aquí: https://www.instagram.com/dannyalvealphotographer/

​In the past three years I’ve been trying to…

understand

break into, or more like

not play by the rules of a game that’s clearly not designed for ANYTHING useless (art) to survive

but to create my own rules, to survive, to be happy, to share happy with others, to find them first and then play. Because play will set our spirits free.

Today, I shift between that state where after a lot of listening, I become numb. I was forcing myself to care, and then I’m fearful of saying: I don’t care.

But I do, (this is the other, more hopeful state), I just can’t honestly care for everything 

The act of listening to anything is to not listen to everything. Practice to discern, to tune in, to focus, to be a be fucking useful member of humanity, and fight the forces that overwhelm us and make us loose sight of the root of suffering.

I’m afraid of becoming sceptic of change. I roll my eyes at efforts of communicating ideas that hit walls. EVERYBODY HAS MADE UP THEIR MINDS. As a society, we are capable of very little, definitely not of achieving perspective. As individuals, maybe. 

The truth does not set us free, we know the truth. There’s no conspiracy. All the mechanisms of corruption and greed exist at plain sight. It’s just fucking uncomfortable to try to do anything about it.

But the truth within ourselves. The truth of our actions. We have agency over the lies we tell ourselves everyday to comply, to merge, to feel accepted. Very seldom (and I believe mostly through art) we are invited to step out of the lie, to see that a life is possible without blending completely. That we can still have meaningful relationships, that we can still make a living.

That WE CAN stop lying to ourselves and others about how wonderful we are, even if instagram really wants us to believe it.

Technology has its own agency, and IT wants something. IT wants to keep us using it, developing it, "making our lives easier". Technology only moves forward, it never takes a rest to smell the flowers. It doesn’t fucking ever take a break. It lives out of our lies and out of our being forgetful of the past. And it sucks money and resources.

We are going to tell some stories that we are afraid will get forgotten: Journalists and students are being killed for exposing corruption. The government is controlled by businesses, drug cartels are just one of them, war is the main one. There’s no democracy. There has never been. Indigenous peoples continue to be dispossessed and trampled over. They’re putting the pasamontañas again, and they’re willing to die. Racism is still a reason for people to kill, imprison, and just plainly take rights away from others.

The wall has already been built.

Life feels like we see, but we can't make out anything. We hear but we can’t listen to one thing. 

We are trying

We are blind leading the blind

But, at the risk of sounding super cheesy, I’m going to quote Saint-Exupéry and say: “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

An elementary school student might think her teacher lives under her desk to awaken only to teach and to retreat under after the school day terminates.  Adults know that teachers lead lives outside of the classroom, though not necessarily separate from teaching. My definition of a teacher is one who began to study because of a strong pull or desire to master a certain area. A teacher knows more than a book or paper can explain and has experienced the lessons she passes on to the students. A teacher has the aptitude to convey knowledge and simultaneously gain knowledge. He is an improviser, a leader, a sage, and a life changer. I am interested in how teachers become a master of their subject and what knowledge they have learned from other teachers, from life experiences, and from mistakes. I interviewed two teachers, Angel Kaba and Melissa Lohman, who both taught for Dance to the People’s (DTTP) Open Class series at Brooklyn Art’s Exchange (BAX) this past fall (another series will start in the Spring). Here’s what they had to say about teaching.