Correspondences

"Ahora viejo y sin fuerzas, sólo tú eres la inspiración de lo que en mí agoniza. […] Ven, te ruego, calma mi angustia y lo senil de mis antojos."

"Mi llanto y mi voz son mis espantos. Grito, en el abismo, sin eco y sin resuello. […] Lléveme con usted al mismo abismo, donde grito y ruego que lo quiero. Deje Ud. allí crecer mis besos y esos besos suyos bajo el solde la esperanza y en silencio, como crecen las flores, en esa tierra suya donde vieron nacer su hombría y sus desvelos."

Sound installation in the Casa Quinta de Bolivar, Bogotá, Colombia

History intervention

This is one of the five projects selected by the invitation "Intervening the history of "Museo Quinta de Bolívar" House Independence museum – Casa del Florero y el Art department of Universidad de los Andes"

Correspondences proposes through "dialogue spaces" a sonic and theatrical transposition of letters between Simón Bolívar and Manuela Sáenz. Through audios recreating such writings, the visitor is submerged momentarily in this epistolary interchange, helped by a brief play performed in three acts. Both lovers rooms at Quinta de Bolívar and its objects will do the talking about their romance, making us think about the various ways in which historic memory is built by personal relationships.

“Correspondences” intervention invite us to get involved in two stories: one of them, the story written with the H in uppercase, that identifies the social, political and military struggle of the first half of the 18th century; the other one, written with the h in lowercase is more quotidian and universal, and it is condensed in this romance, lived in all its singularity by these two characters. The interaction between intimacy and privacy proposed by the "dialogue spaces" it is prolongated throughout the house and its gardens through QR codes that allow the access to intimate thoughts of the two lovers. The intimate diaries can also be consulted in: www.correspondenciasmanuelabolivar.com