Artes Mundi Screenings:
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

25 July 2021

La Cueva Negra, 2012. 20’00” & La cabeza mató a todos, 2014. Dur: 07’30”

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, La cabeza mató a todos, Still, 2014
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, La cabeza mató a todos, Still, 2014

La Cueva Negra explores the Paso del Indio site in Puerto Rico as a layered repository of symbolic and material histories, which visibly holds many conflicting histories, embodied in the landscape and built environment. Twenty years ago, during the construction of a multi-lane highway, a complex (possibly Archaic, definitely Pre-Taíno and Taíno) indigenous burial site was discovered and many objects and remains recovered, but the site was paved over for the construction of the expressway. During the original excavation (1992-1995) laborers from the surrounding villages were hired as manual labour. The film starts from the site's material history, the recollections of the workers and archaeologists involved, what we know, and what we think we know about a landscape and how these layers of material and belief interact to create a new contemporary cosmogony, one built on the trash, the graffiti, the expressway, the river, the village, the karst bedrock and the traces of previous inhabitants' worldview. 

La cabeza mató a todos or “The Head that Killed Everyone”, is a short film that mixes indigenous mythologies with present-day characters, geographies and culture in Puerto Rico. The title refers to how a shooting star was (in local mythology) interpreted as a head without a body, crossing the sky, signalling the arrival of chaos and destruction. The actor in the video, Michelle Nonó, is in touch with native plants—she is a medicinal botanist but also a cultural activist — who hosts cultural events in her house, in a primarily Afro-Caribbean and post-industrial area called Carolina.
 

Instructions to destroy the war apparatus with a spell. The form of this spell is precise. With Mapenzi Chibale Nonó 
[The cat explains to Michelle how to make a spell. It is heard in the voice of Michelle (through the cat): 
a spell, or a curse requires an effort analogous to the magic of the spell 
if the magic is the total and absolute destruction of the war machine 
if what you want is to detach the aerostat moorings 
that snap in half like a walnut 
spell requires a substantial amount of energy to be consumed] 


Sunday 25th July,
Matinee
11-2pm
(11-11.30, 11.30-12, 12-12.30, 12.30-1.00, 1.00-1.30, 1.30-2.00)

La Cueva Negra, 2012. 20’00” &
La cabeza mató a todos, 2014. Dur: 07’30”

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    • Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, La cabeza mató a todos, Still, 2014

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