Introduction

Guayaquil, Ecuador, Day Zero: A man, dressed in military uniform, committed suicide by throwing himself from the tower of the city’s cathedral. Fredy Vallejos, Arsenio Cardena and I were there when he fell. The cathedral is watched by four men from the past, “fathers of the church,” brought by the colonizers. European colonizers in the face of whom, according to the myth, an indigenous chief called Guayas killed himself as an act of rebellion. Guayas is also the name of a river that keeps dark secrets.

In front of the cathedral, I decide to document the mark of human blood for 72 hours (from the 15th to the 17th of November, 2016). The city continues with its life. Crossing the bloodied street, I visit a park where iguanas and pigeons share a habitat. I understand that ( the) act of crossing between the cathedral and the plaza “of the iguanas and the pigeons,” contains the crisis and transformation of the city.

Struck by the suicidal act, we decide to work through it. We decide to use it as a starting point to think about the moment of crisis and transformation that we live in, the personal tragedy of a world that kills itself, of a world devoted to totalitarianism. And in turn, we decide to think of a world that resists, where we, sound creators, have the inescapable responsibility to listen and materialize the monstrosity of the instant.

Fredy Vallejos, Arsenio Cardena and I offer an artistic research through sound experimentation. We theorize using sound studies, conceptualism and urban studies, but above all, we decide to show, in the framework of the festival Interactos - Encuentros Públicos de Artes and the inauguration of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigación en Artes at the Universidad de las Artes of Guayaquil, Ecuador, how the public space, public suicide, has impacted our lives.

Susan Campos-Fonseca

December 6, 2016