In her practice Guatemalan artist Maya Saravia explores syncretic traditions in culture and religion that arose at the junction of colonialism and the popular culture and indigenous beliefs it suppressed. The main instrument of her artistic research is dance and movement.

The Theory of the Ghost Vol. II aims to generate a plane of immanence where all bodies can be open to encounter, and to a way of empathy that exists outside of language and discourse, but that becomes present from skin to skin and in the space between each body. The artist interrogates: “can we, collectively, experience a joy that exceeds the dispositions of the neoliberal regime? And subsequently, can this joy bring us to a plane of immanence, of pure existence that frees itself from the concept of a ‘future’, that avoids the capture of language, productivity and assimilation, and make us be present and in complete pleasure? Can this joy make us strong? Can it make us friends?”

The basis for this performance is reggaeton — a syncretic music that was born in the 1980s in the Caribbean and Central America. Intertwined with the flows of capital, labor, displacement and a vast array of musical traditions, it erupted as a volcano, full of energy from the disenfranchised youths and ready to swallow everything: Salsa, Disco, House, New Age, Techno… everything could fit within the Jamaican pounder and its unapologetic joy, sexuality and presence.

This work is made in collaboration with Olya Simakova, Maria Filyar, Lydia Koshurnikova, Claudia Byvalskaya and Polina Zueva