Dumbworld was invited to showcase The Scorched Earth Trilogy at Festival Internacional De Las Artes in Costa Rica and Two Angels Play I Spy at Festival NóM in Chile.
John McIlduff reflects on his travels…
There was something really powerful about screening The Scorched Earth Trilogy in Costa Rica, a country that has navigated a similar trajectory as the work itself: from an overburden on its natural resources to reversing deforestation and becoming an environmental model. But flooding had still caused delay in the days we were there and every conversation was about how the climate was changing. This was something the group of young people I worked with in Tamarindo picked up on in a session where they imagined what the birds would say as they looked down at the chaos.
And from here to the driest place in the world, the Atacama desert in Chile. I got to see two very different climatic extremes.
Santiago was more familiar, like the big cities of Europe. The opera house where the Opera Latin America conference was held built in 1872 in the French Neo-classical style but the talk was of a innovations of a new Latin American Opera that was building itself from the stories and artists of the continent and how it could embrace all things digital as part of this.
I got to see and hear our street art opera Two Angels Play I Spy projected 10 metres tall in the metro an immense and newly built metro station.
This was made possible by :
Festival de las Artes Costa Rica (@festivaldelasartescr) and Embajada de Irlanda (@irishembmexico) for The Scorched Earth Trilogy
Festival NóM (@festival.nom) and Mercado Urbano Tobalaba (@mut.cl) for Two Angels Play I Spy
Workshops : Artes Musicales UCR (@artesmusicalesucr) & ADIT playa Tamarindo (@adit.playatamarindo)
Conference : Ópera Latino América (@operalatinoamerica)
Funders: Culture Ireland, Irish Embassy of Mexico, Irish Embassy of Chile