“There’s this strange compulsion to work, which is certainly a strength and a weakness at the same time”
R.W. Fassbinder

This is our fourth work with the Compañía El Silencio. We have been working together for 18 years. We were ready to come to the Kunstenfestiavldesarts almost fourteen years ago, with our fourth work, but there was a misunderstanding and we did not travel. Many things have happened over these years, and among everything else, we had 5 children. Five boys and girls joined us in the world. The language of performance in Fassbinder’s films was always a reference point for us when we were beginning a new work. When I started to write this latest creation, I decided to start directly with his imagination, specifically from his film Die dritte Generation, released in the year I was born. In this film, members of a terrorist cell, whose politics are
unclear, go into hiding, by adopting false identities infinitely more eye-catching than their original appearances.

Apart from the language of performance and Fassbinder’s constant preoccupation with the immigration issue, we also take from him this idea of the oppressed against the oppressed, which continues to be a current concern, perhaps more than ever.

Our work is then a sort of detective story, which also uses various current topics to speak of one of the biggest taboos, that of the death of the children, both literally and metaphorically. What can we think of a society which can- not evade or prevent the death of its own children?

It is never a good idea to explain a work, or to name everything from which it is made. However, as we have gone so far, perhaps there are some things that can be mentioned, since they are stories that form part of our social fabric back in Argentina, and which I have to rework here. In 2017, in Patagonia, in southern Argentina, Santiago Maldonado, a young man of 28, disappeared while taking part in a roadblock protest on behalf of a group of Mapuches, (indigenous people of the region), who were protesting in defence of their lands. On this occasion, the police removed the roadblock, and Santiago disappeared for 77 days. The whole country called for his return, and it became a national issue. On the 77th day, his body was found floating in the river, which he had supposedly crossed while escaping from the police. The police stated that Santiago drowned on that day; his family and the court action stated that this body had not been there throughout all that time, and that he was a victim of police violence, and the body planted there.

Santiago was an idealistic kid, who hiked around the country with his backpack, and truly believed in a more just world. Santiago also became a symbol of a way of being young, far from screens and cryptocurrency, caring for the natural world. The circumstances of his disappearance and death at the hands of excess and of police violence is something we know well in Latin America, all too scandalously frequent and close to us.

Our work is not about Santiago Maldonado, but any Argentinian who sees it can relive this tragedy. This way of having been in the world, and having been swept away
from it.

All Fassbinder’s work, beneath the occasional pop or kitsch layer, is deeply political and always critical of the bourgeoisie. Or of its values of silence and passive aggressiveness.

We, who are no longer so young, want everyone who can, first of all, to survive, and after that: to look at the world with humour and love, with a deep faith in the possibility of transforming it, from the smallest corner that touches them.

• Romina Paula, April 2025
• Translated Joanna Waller