To remember objects, not to store them, but to orient oneself in the present
About this playlist
The taste of avocado, the sky, my sister's voice, the smell of corn tortillas on the comal, the humidity of my grandmother's house, my grandfather's laughter, a breath of warm air on the beach, my mother's tickling; these things are felt, but not grasped or stored in a drawer. ¿Qué cosas no puedes tocar, pero te hacen falta? / Things You Cannot Touch, But You Miss is a sonic journey that derives from an exercise of putting myself in relation with a topography of memories conjured by a text entitled "the name of the camps". This text, signed by capitana ana, narrates some experiences that gave name to the camps of a guerrilla front during the war in Guatemala (1960-1996). That text belongs to a family archive that I have been assembling for 15 years with the intention of reconstructing and unraveling the experiences of migration, exile, clandestinity and forced disappearance of my family during that time.
I made this playlist within the framework of "Infinite rehearsals of memory: impossible archives and revolutionary hauntings", a series of rehearsals of memory that seek to create spaces to elaborate loss through the repeated contact/friction with objects that make up this archive. The rehearsals are based on the affective power of the objects rather than on their supposed status of historical registries of a factual truth. Informed by Ann Cvetkovich's insights, they depart from the premise that the search for history is a psychic and affective need, rather than a science. In this sense, these rehearsals allow a historical articulation of the past not by the acknowledgment of it "as it happened" but rather by making room and holding its glimmering memories. As an affective autocartography, this playlist articulates sounds that come from the territories we know today as Mexico and Guatemala. These territories are knotted together since ancestral times and bear witness to the on-going resistance against invasion, extractivism and genocide. As a kind of guided itinerary that walks you through several stations or camps, this playlist is intended to be a listening session that should ideally be listened to in the suggested sequence.
