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Eva Guerrero

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Eva Guerrero (Belgium)

Eva Guerrero is graduated in Contemporary Performing Practises by Leeds Metropolitan University. Previously, she had studied drama in BAI thinking she would become an actress but there she experienced creation and dance world and she got seduced by creating her own pieces.

Since 2005 she has created more than 10 stage projects, she has founded 2 artistic collectives, she has directed theatre plays, contemporary dance pieces, she teaches, she has been granted by the Basque Government several times and during 8 years she has been managing the cultural venue Lutxana and the Noviembre Kulturala festival.

After having ruled Los Man Ones dance company, she is director or her own dance company and she is just about to publish her first book: "Mutual Assured Destruction: the book", a handbok with texts, diagrams and other unpublished material.

Eva Guerrero

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An interview with

Eva Guerrero Eva Guerrero works in a whole range of media: using dance as a starting point of her multidisciplinary approach, she provides the viewers of a multilayered experience, investigating about personal destruction, danger and risk. At first, the physical lirism that pervades her works could lead us to define her creations as pieces of free artistic expression, but on the other hand she drags us in a subtle narrative that forces to rethink about the concept of experience. Between these two spheres of activity, Guerrero creates an new space where everything is incessantely in searching of a connection between different and often opposite experiences: anguish and release, danger and freedom. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to Guerrero's multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Eva, and a warm welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: to start this interview would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and graduated in Contemporary Performing Practises by Leeds Metropolitan University: how much has this experience influenced the way you currently produce your artworks and has impacted on your evolution as an artist?

Before obtaining the BA, I studied 4 years at Bai, a Theatre School of Bizkaia. There I had the chance to study different subjects that give me a general vision from all the things that can include the scene itself. From subjects more focused on body training such as dance, fencing, acrobatics.... to other more theoretical: theatre theory, writing... to the ones more related to acting: acting, improvisation, method... The good thing of

school, or at least what influenced me most for my later artistic production and how to face the artistic fact, is the importance given to the body, to the physical training of the performer. Having so many different

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subjects, also gave me a much wider perception, specially when it comes to merge several languages. It also provided me with more creativity and opened an artistic world of endless possibilities.

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On another hand, I had a subject during several courses of “stage research�, where we created short scenes, mini-plays... that made me aware of the fact that what really pushed me artistically was to create, rather

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Eva Guerrero

than to act. It's worthy to mention that I began to study performing arts being 18, thinking I wanted to be an actress, I didn't even know what contemporary dance was, I had never seen anything and even less I had

experienced it with my own body. Thus I ended up, after 4 years, in a whole completely way I had started, wanting to dedicate myself to creating and directing, and with contemporary dance as a main

Eva Guerrero

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experienced before. I struggled, but it freed me.

One year after having finished my studies, I made my first stage play, that I wrote, directed, and choreographed. I took a dive without fear, I don't know if it was because of the na e age or the lack of experience, but now, after 10 years, I can say that it was one of the most sincere and honest works I have ever done. They were the first words of what was going to be my own language.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

language.

From the very first course, I complemented my training with dance seminars, improvisation... dance got me, it provoked something inside me I had never

I tend to talk always about relations, the dualism of the individual, how we relate among us, how we influence, how we provoke one another...

This is what moves me more, what makes me reflect, spend time thinking about it.

Usually some idea or emotion come to my mind and stays there, moving through it. If days pass by and I'm still thinking about it, I start trying to decipher it. I read related things, search for definitions... I try to settle on, to peel out layers. Many times I look for the etymology of words, scientific formulas that may be connected... and I listen to music that lead me to similar emotions and which help me writing, I do automatic writing exercises to be able to throw off without filters, to spit on the paper everything that occurs to me.

I think it's important at the beginnings of a process to try not to have previous filters, to open yourself to all possibilities. I believe that at the beginning everything can work,

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Eva Guerrero

there will be time to throw, cast aside, rewrite.

Since the moment an idea comes to my mind till I began to rehearse, it can be ome months. I don't ever start rehearsing without knowing beforehand and be clear about what I want to talk about, and how many people would I count on.

And then there are, at the same time, production tasks, viability... writing the project, submit it for grants, open calls, residencies... knowing how much money I have for, or how much can come later on.

Also what needs am I going to have, rehearsing space, available scenography...

If I try to put everything into a calendar, let's say 4 to 6 months for the initial table work, define the concept, the internal dramaturgy, the characters, viability... and one I have began rehearsing, another 4 to 6 months.

From which, the first months, I make a lot of tests, I try my movements and my work tools to be part of my performers' work, to have their bodies to become naturalised.

I record the rehearsals, I watch them, I write some ideas down, new ones arise, and gradually everything gets simpler in my head. And then comes a moment, specially after the 2nd month, that I start to fix some “materials�, scene possibilities, space developments...

It's something very artisan, it's like getting a rock, looking at it, imagining what can you do with it, watching it from different angles, spinning around it, drawing possibilities in your paper, and then starting to carve it, carefully, until it gets a more definite shape, and finally it is done and the decision about where to put it is taken. For me, creating a show is the same, I define the idea, I write thousands of pages in my notebook, and when I have already taken the main decisions, I start to rehearse, firstly I test-try-

discard-decide, and then I start to cast aside, to compose, to set it up...and at the end, on the last months, I work with whoever is designing the lights, the music...up to the premiere, which beforehand (even months)

Eva Guerrero

you have already confirmed, and the photos, the promo video...

As I don't count with a big company and all its staff, but we are Jemima and me, we finally do a lot of things. And I, with my own

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personality, need to have everything doublechecked. I tend to have very clear ideas about the promo, the graphic design, the lights, the ambient...

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Eva Guerrero

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Tu sombra bajo mis pies, an extremely stimulating project that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit

directly https://vimeo.com/81536073 in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

Eva Guerrero

“Tu sombra bajo mis pies” “Your shadow below my feet” is one of the 4 works that belong to the “Destruction creative process”, it's the 3rd Phase.

Througout 5 years, I have been working

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around “destruction”. Looking for the definition of the word destruction, I ran across the nuclear strategy “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD), and this was the concept I used for human relationships, and since then I started all the creative process. At each of the works, I was focusing on some aspects or others, I was wondering several questions such as: starting from the idea that you and I are going to destroy each other, who is braver, the one who resists or who decides to give it up? how much can we really bear?... and things like that.

Taking the case of “Tu sombra” I start to focus on the individual, not so much as a group, and I wonder if I was given the chance to go back in time, would I choose the same path or would I opt for a different one? Would I act as I've had or would I make otherwise?

As I was saying before, something I always tend to reflect about is the duality of people, those multiple personalities that construct the person itself, the unfolding of one person into different possibilities or personalities.

The two former works spoke more of 2 people, of how I am with you, how we relate one another, how we influence one another...

But since “Tu sombra”, that dimension begins to change and focus in oneself, and in the last work of this creative process, “Despu de todo” (“After everything”), I reached final conclusions.

It's important to say too that “Tu sombra” is a different piece not only because in its theoretical aspect it begins to exist a breakup with my former reflections, but also because I opt to make a videodance and, with it, to investigate a new language and how to work within the video, the movement itself.

One of the features of Tu sombra bajo mis pies that has particularly impacted on me is the way the deep interaction between

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Eva Guerrero

bodies and the environment they live in: this relation seems to have a conceptual aspect, and it often reveals a not so hidden sense of danger and risk that pervades the narrative behind the video. I have appreciated the way the juxtaposition between the human aspect and the "natural" side of the story is capable of bringing a new level of significance to the context, and I would go as far as to state that in a certain sense your works force the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them.

Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Well, I think your question is very interesting.

In “Your shadow below my feet� I do care a lot about the atmospheres, the landscapes and the nature, but may be its main role is due to the fact that as a videodance the place was as important as the movement of the bodies.

In general, I must admit that even though in some case I focus on the individual, in others the ambient, the surroundings, and the outside forces are as important as the performer, each story is a uniques, so as to say.

On the other hand, it's true that as artists we feel a kind of responsibility to reveal certain things, truths that not everyone wants to uncover. But, personally, I think that each artist follows its intuition in all ways.

By the way, your careful positioning of figures within the frame has reminded me of Tsai Ming Liang's early works. When you conceive a scene, do you keep in mind the place of the actors on the screen?

Absolutely. It's in fact one of the things I like more, and something that some how obsesses me, as a creator and as an spectator.

I think it is absolutely crucial to take this

Eva Guerrero

aspect into account; I always conceive the scene as a blank canvas, whatismore, when I teach I always use the same example “we have a canvas in which we are going to draw a story and in order to do that, let's talk some decissions.�

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The place where the performers are placed in the space influence directly the concept. The space between them, the exact place within the space where they are located, or the directions they take by moving. The space is one of the many elements that build the final

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story, it's such an important element as movement itself, music or scenography.

For me, it goes totally with the story I want to convey. Not only as a mere theoretical concept of spatial composition, but also as a

non-verbal language that is telling us something in a direct manner.

With my students, most of the times, I work on spatial composition exercises. I am very insistent when they do improvisations on the

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Sometimes we may think that how we dance is the most important, or the story which is being explained, or if the text is this way or the other, and we overlook the space. In my case, however, it matters a lot.

It's very easy to find in my notebook loads of diagrams, of drawings, curves... that are the spatial movements that my performers have to follow.

I spend a great amount of time thinking about it. Many times I imagine everything seen from above, as though the stage and performers were in a mockup and I was drawing with them in the space.

Lighting, besides, is also a very interesting tool to give emphasis to those spatial drawings that performers create. It helps me to highlight some itinerary, or even to create more distance or depth, if that's what I want to express between the lines.

Definitely, yes!! In m mind I do think about the place of the performers in scene.

Personal destruction is a key and recurrent concept of your exploration, and it is explicitly revealed in Destrucci贸n mutua asegurada: I can recognize that your approach reveals a desire to create a concrete aesthetic from imagination, and while the performative aspect of your work speaks of lived physicality, I daresay that you seem to suggest also an investigation about the reation of the oniric dimension and the way we perceive reality... so I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process...

Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

use they give to the space itself, the decisions of moving they have taken (or not taken), if they have used the several directions in a random way or if they have been intentional.

I always think that things can be understood if someone has actually lived them. As an artist I don't want to talk about something I don't understand, that doesn't interest me; I can have some beers with my friends, talk,

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discuss and digress about whatever, though I don't really know about it, but as an artist I don't feel like taking anything unknown to stage, I feel as if I was cheating my audience.

I like talking about what I have lived, what I know.

I don' talk about politics, nor social affairs, I talk about people, relationships, feelings... I always take my works to emotion, and I always start from feelings I know, I have lived in an specific time. I don't talk about myself, they are not autobiographical works, but it's true I begin from situations/emotions I know or live, and from then I blur the outlines to create a new story.

I'm interested in direct experience, it's what in my case, belong to the stories I talk about.

I insist, it's not about me, I don't even talk about my imaginary; I start from something I know because otherwise it would very complicated to tell you something, it would be hard to defend it, it would be like a lie.

I get emotions and I build scenes with them, I translate them into movement, but I don't stop showing or investigating about individual emotions, that action-reaction we provoke when we relate one way or another to another person.

In DMA case, I metamorphose these emotions into dance, I am not talking about a fight, it's clear we are no throwing people to the ground, we don't push, we don't run after someone for them not to fall, they are all metaphors of emotions, of inner sensations.

That's my way of working, I don't believe in any other type of process that does not start from experience. I respect how others do it, reach their conclusions, that's the good part of art and life in general, that we are different, we may walk the same path,but with another pace, though we reach the same spots, we do them in a different way,

and that's not only respectable but admirable.

While you use contemporary dance as main language, it's remarkable the transdisciplinarity feature of your

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approach: through the creation of an effective symbiosis between elements from different techniques you succeed in a stimulating manipulation of language and a re-contextualizing images and concepts: while crossing the borders of different

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artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

As I mentioned at the beginning of the

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interview, I studied in a school where I was taught lots of languages within the same context, and that, I suppose, has marked me somehow, artistically and personally. For instante, I have been writing during all my

life, and that thing, when I am creating transforms into an specific way to express myself, that's the reason why I use text on stage, almost always; despite being the dance the main language, as there are

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other, I rely more on one thing or another.

Suddenly it's like having new paints, new colours to put on my canvas.

This addition of languages helps me too in how I want the story, if I want it to get more directly or more subtly, if I want some intrigue or not, to play with rhythm, repetitions... All this used in a thoughtful way, I mean, spending time in finding the reason of each element, not leaving all elements on stage by coincidence, but working through coherence helps me to have the story more tied up.

Besides producing your artworks, I think it's important to mention that you are is particularly active as a curator and that during 8 years you have been managing several cultural venues in Spain. I do believe that interdisciplinary collaboration today is an ever growing force in Art and I find absolutely fascinating the collaborations that artists can established together as you did establishing the collective Doos with Jemima Cano, especially because this often reveals a symbiosis between different approaches to art. I would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.dooscolectivo.es in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production... and I can't help without mention Peter Tabor who once said that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists? By the way, woulod you like to tell our readers about the synergy behind Doos?

things I find easier to convery that way.

The same has began to happen with the video, for example. Depending on what do I want to concey, and how do I want it to get to the audience, I use one language or the

My artistic labour is divided into 2 areas, on one hand creating dance shows, and on the other, as you say, as a curator.

On my creative work I usually work on my own, I am not used to co-create except in

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some spare exceptions.

It's in my curator tasks where I always collaborate. During 8 years I co-managed a cultural venue and co-produced a cultural festival together with other people, with whom we were an artistic collective. It was during that time, that arose the idea in my mind that “unity gives strength�, it's the addition of several people what makes a total, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to undertake all those actions.

Life made Jemima and I meet, and add our potentials to create DOOS. Our aim is, on one hand, to produce my own creations, on other hand, to assess artists and artistic venues, give classes of management, dance or theatre, and also to create site specific on demand.

Every day I consider people unity more fundamental, the sum of knowledge, creating a tissue where we may lean on, helping one another, and work in a team.

That doesn't avoid each artist to produce its own pieces, and each one goes on its own way regarding his creations, interests, but I do think, and even more nowadays, that excessive individuality is negative.

I regard the environment in which I live it's very individual, in general, the artists from my surrounding work for themselves, there's not a real interest in a collectivity, each one acts for his own sake, I don't know if it's because of a kind of selfishness , competitiveness, hopelessness, idleness...But at the same time, we complain that the rest are on just looking out for themselves, I don't get it!

I think that if we created a net of artists in all fields, not only satege ones, we would find more support, more sensitivity, more respect and as a collective, we would be stronger. I think we should abandon that inner fear of seeing the other stealing what

you consider as yours, and start to transform it cause together we can make something bigger.

Each time we are becoming more individuals, it's this society's rhythm itself,

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though I think we are to fight to get out of this “wheel�, and becoming more a community, but a real community, human, empathetic, collaborative... with will, strength and hope. And I insist, this souldn't

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avoid that each one goes on with the creative project you may feel like doing... I don't want everyone to do the same, but I do believe in the importance of creating that net of support, discussion, advice... finally

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Barbara Bervoets

we all have the same problems, or very similar, and sharing knowledge, keys and strategies make us stronger. I don't kno, I see it like that.

Your works are intrinsically connected with the chance of creating a deep interaction with your viewers, urging them to follow your process and pushing them to not play as a passive audience... By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a

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even steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

bit na誰f, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadayscould play an effective role in sociopolitical questions: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression...

I would go as far as to state that Art could

I don't think you are exaggerating at all, on the contrary, art questions us, moves us, makes us think, laugh, cry... we can't live without art. It transforms us into more knowledgeable people, more critical, more sensitive... art should be since the very first moment in schools, in nursery schools... governments should support art, promote it in their programmes, in their gratns... Support the spaces that already exist, provide them with services, give gratns to schools to promote in class the artistic interests of children and teenagers.

Art is very wide, besides, it doesn't matter if you read, to go to the theatre, to a concert, to the movies, an exposition... everything is art!!

And I, as an artist, have a chance to tell something to the people who come to see me, I have the possibility of make them wonder about something, or making them feel something... and that's an opportunity.

It's clear I am not God and I am not transforming every single person who come to see me, but surely I can help to make a clic on their mings, on their moods... even if someone comes, who doesn't usually go to the theatre; I may even be helping to create a new curiosity, and he or she might go to another show and me moved by this a bit more...it's a bit like a feedback, if I give you a little and you like it, you will want more, and you'll look for more.

The problem is that we are not taught to have the necessity of consuming culture, whereas we are no incited to from school or cause, according to the Government, art should not receive the same support of

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other industries... but, of course, this is like a vicious circle, if you don't generate in me the need for culture, I don't consume it, but if I regard it as important in my life, I consume it and I'm going to want more and more.

Art is so diverse, it talks about so many things... it's healing, cathartic... there are theatrical techniques used by psychologists, it works as a therapy for ill people, it releashes your demons, I insist on its capacity to transform us into more sensitive people, and that's super important, as sensitiveness helps us being more human, get down to earth, and put on other's shoes.

Art develops our senses and enables us to enjoy life more.

Peter Brook says that sensitive means that the actor is in touch with his body all all moments. If we apply this definition for people, and sensitiveness means that we are in contact with our bodies constantly, we would be much better, wouldn't we? We would save energy and money in medications, in therapies, in misunderstandings, arguments... And even much more if we talk about political art, social art... because in those cases it enhances our critical mindset, it helps us have our own ideas, and that is essential nowadays, when politics, mass media and so on try to alienate us, wanting to transform us into real dumbs without opinion, so as to vote them easily, without questioning anything, because as we live inside a fearful politics, we regard them as saviours, when, on the contrary, we should be asking ourselves if all this is what we wanted, if those politicians are the ones we wanted to rule the country, to rule our future.

Furthermore, I recon art makes us equal,

borders are opened, race no longer exists, and all those conflict causes disappear.

Although it may seem hackneyed, governments ought to invest less in wars

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and more in art, and that way there will be less wars.

works? And how much important is for you the feedback of your audience?

Now I would pose you some questions about the relation with your audience: what do you want people to take away after seeing your

Since I did my first stage work I want to provoke something in my audience. I want

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Barbara Bervoets

them to get out of the theatre differently to how they got in. I want them to, after 15 to 20 minutes, meanwhile they are having a beer with their friends, to remember what they have just seen, that they discuss it between them, to wonder if they agree or not, and why they do or don't...

I want to move them, to provoke a feeling, without boring them, of course, that feeling I'm not interested in...hahaha.

I don't want the spectators to come just to take a nap, or just having fun.. it's what I was saying before, as a person who works with art and has the chance to tell something, I don't want to take it lightly, I must be committed to the fact that art is

good for moving and touching, and to make reconsider things.

And on the other hand, I think it's very interesting, when after the show, you have encounters with the spectators, and we can share opiniong, interchange impressions,.. I think that way the artist and the audience at the same level. Sometimes the stage makes a god out of the person who is on it, and when you have that gathering with the audience, it reveals we are all the same, I am not better than you cause my job is to create dance works, it's just another profession, I have mine and they have theirs.

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And, apart from that, these encounters give you the opportunity of listening in a true situation what your audience think, what they have felt after seeing your proposal... and it helps you a lot to reconsider things: elements that you may have skipped, but someone has payed attention to that, or aspects you thought were going to have an effect, or could be understood and they were not.

I am really interested in audience's feedback, and not precisely if they like it or not, cause the preferences may be relative, but what I'm interested in most is the interchange of views, having them tell me what has “arrived� to them, what makes

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them wonder things, what really touches them, if they get bored, if what I am conveying is too distant for them...

I will keep on doing my job, I will go on telling whatever I regard as important in that moment, but these feedback help me to think more in my audience, I will not give them something simplified, cause I don't like that, but may be if what I'm going to explain is too complex, I may leave some clues for them to understand, or at least for them not to feel lost. Or even I may use some stimulus to receive better that I am trying to express.

Sometimes, when the artist spends too much time locked in their rehearsing space,

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Barbara Bervoets

it's like detaching from everyday life, and when suddenly you open your work and you share ir and listen to people giving their opinion, it connects you again with people and reality.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Eva. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Well now I have just published a book called “Destrucci Mutua Asegurada” (Mutual assured destruction). It compiles texts, drafts, working diagrams and other unpublished material from the 4 years that I

have been working around “destruction” concept.

It is a project I'm really enthusiastic about, because it is something brandy new for me, the fact of writing a book. Whatismore it eagers me to share with people that material, that has been unrevealed for so long, and now they will be able to see what was on my notebook during all these years.

And besides, having had the support of the Basque Government and the Town Council of Bilbao, I have managed to raise funds thanks to up to 67 people through crowdfunding. It is my first crowdfunding campaign, and it has proved that this is all these people's book, which it's amazing.

Barbara Bervoets

On another hand, I am starting to work in a new creative process about fear. It is something different to what I have been doing, as I have always worked with others on stage, and now I am working on my own, at least in the beginning. I will also use video on stage, and this time, for the first time, the video will have the same importance as the performer.

This work is conceived as something intimate, simple, regarding the staging, even lonely in its process, which is new for me, but now my body is wanting this. And it is as innovative as frightening. I have never before faced the stage on my own, aloof, so now it is a challenge and a surprise what I

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am finding. It is called “Annotations about fear� and it refelcts about the limits that fear provokes on us.

Many thanks to you for inviting me to participate and long life to you!!