‘Project Prometeo: Acts I & II’, downtown Bogotá, December 2002 and 2003
A man in his late thirties wearing a tuxedo walks onto a stage with a lit
torch. He sits down, sentinel-like as if at a doorway stoop, and begins to
light matches. We are seated outdoors at night in downtown Bogotá;
candles and spotlights illuminate the figures of the performers who move
across a ‘stage’ in a very large empty field. Furniture brought in or
improvised by the actors suggests rooms in now empty houses that once
were occupied. Around the ‘stage’, former streets are marked out with
candles in white paper bags. Behind the performers, two very large
screens, each more than three-storeys high, project images and sound
recordings of the neighborhood that once existed here, known locally as
El Cartucho, as well as images of Project Prometeo: Act II as it is being
performed (Fig. 1). The videos and sounds of El Cartucho include on-site
interviews with residents, historical images, maps, and scenes of
destruction
