LONTANO BLU // A distant blue // Un azul distante

LONTANO BLU // A distant blue // Un azul distante: Southern Hemisphere experiences in common - the basis of an inter-cultural exchange and co-production

“We are landscapes”, he whispered. “Where hopes are buried like treasures." (Elio Gatti, Writer, Lontano Blu)

What happens when you put Argentinian and Australian artists together? And what evolves when these artists, as well as belonging to Southern Hemisphere countries, also have a common cultural heritage?

Such explorations lie at the heart of Lontano blu (A distant blue/ Un azul distante), a new performance resulting from an inter-cultural exchange initiated by para//elo (Australia) and the Agencia Cultura Córdoba (Argentina).

“The idea was born in 2000 when I participated at the First Conference of Italians in the World in Rome”, says Teresa Crea, Project Director/ Devisor and para//elo’s Founding Director. “I was sitting next to Laura Bucellato, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Buenos Aires and we asked each other, what would happen if, instead of having politicians speak, artists of Italian origin were to talk.”

This lead to a first visit to Argentina in mid 2003 and an ‘intercultural laboratory’ during the International Mercosur Theatre Festival in Córdoba later that year. The laboratory was a meeting point for artists from the two nations and three cultures (Argentina, Australia and Italy) and defined some themes in common, a map for the project and an interesting tri-lingual way of working. “We Australians presented in Italian, with occasional English words, while the Argentinians spoke in Spanish. Thankfully the two Romance languages are similar enough to assist the flow of ideas” explains Crea.

The project has continued in this vein via email and phone conversations and development across the vast distance and thousands of kilometres, which included return visits to Argentina and journeys to Australia for three of the Argentinian creative team.

the pampa is that landscape without landscape,
that doesn’t even know the sea, but, nevertheless, like the sea, was also made,
if possible, of inexhaustible distances,
a landscape in which any haste doesn’t make sense.
There the heavens are a vast bell without a centre,
its infinite circumference resting on the horizon,
enclosing the land and its inhabitants in a precariousness, an endless clarity.
And a single-pointed wind, arisen on the other side of the heavens, races over the pain of existence.
Hector Bianciotti (Argentinian writer)

A starting point for project and script development was the gathering of oral history testimonies among those of Italian origin in both countries. “Our Argentinian pampa and the Australian desert appear in the material that we consulted, in the testimonials of fathers and grandparents” comments Alejandro Romanutti, Associate Director of the project, Actor and Director (from the Fra Noi Theatre group of Colonia Caroya) and Cordobean Architect. “It’s incredible” he adds, “in all the stories about the ocean, it was the blue, the feeling of distance was very powerful and in both places the feeling was the same.”

And so the title Lontano Blu came about, a colour that describes the sky that unites us under the Southern Cross, the sea and the horizon that separates the continents of the South and the feeling of hope, the universal driving force that pushes us to create a better life.

Development uncovered the commonality that, in years past, the vast empty spaces of the Southern Hemisphere were conceived as promises of hope, development and destiny. Now the Utopia of the developed North is almost exclusively the one possibility for progress and, in many cases, survival, yet, the rapidity of these changes meant the repetition of migration – a double exile – within three generations. Now the grandparents attend the departure of their grandchildren for the land that they themselves left behind.

In order to weave together all these threads and make this work a reality, Crea has gathered artists from Australia and Argentina: composers/ sound designers, image makers, writers/ poets, performers, choreographers with each Australian artist having an Argentinian counterpart. In this way there’s a unique exchange and journey for all involved, not to mention an extension of the cross cultural processes for which para//elo is known in Australia. An approach tested at an international level, utilising of artistic languages including music, theatre, dance and visual art that will come to fruition at the World Premiere at the Córdoba Festival in October 2005.