V.E.R.I. C.U.I.D.A.D.O.

I wonder how to cultivate the capacity for new and different ways of relating to myself, others, other beings, the land, and the planet, even as the culture around me and the circumstances of life continually pull me back toward the “old ways” of relating and surviving.

This wondering has taken me to write a tale for cultivating collective imagination, playfulness, and relationships of care in the middle of the mess we find ourselves in.

A surrealist tale to journey through problems (instead of pretending we can solve them all).

A performative device for deep and day-to-day practices of care in relationships

This work was created in the context of the Metabolizing Human Wrongs artistic residency (MHW 2024) curated by Dani d´Emilia, with Agapi Dimitriadou, Agnieszka Bulacik, Dani Bershan, Giulia Casalini, hugo-huga x tibiriçá, Laura Corcuera, Manuel Vason, Marina Barsy Janer, Niya B, and Siegmar Zacharias. I am deeply grateful to all of them for their support, generosity, and affection.

Dancing Some Ideas About the Tale

“We often need to clear the space before the stories can land”
– Vanessa Andreotti, The Four Mountains

TALE in singular is defined by dictionaries as a “fictional story”: yarn, saga, epic, parable, legend, myth, fiction, anecdote, narrative, account, report, talk, slander.

TALES in plural are defined as a “lie”: fabrication, falsehood, untruth, falsity, fable, fib, cock-and-bull story, whopper, tall tale, rumour, gossip, hearsay, whisper, dirt, slander, defamation.

Children often believe in fairy tales.
Adults often believe in false stories.

Is the tale a portal?
If so, where does this threshold lead us?

Thinking through oralities beyond written words.
Imagining a tale to be spoken, played, and performed in as many ways as people wish.

Tales

I wrote these words during September and October 2024, from La Perereka, the transfeminist art studio coworking space that I manage in Rio de Janeiro, holding my heart in this land called Brazil and, at the same time, in the Iberian Peninsula, the land called Spain, where I was born and raised.

The course Facing Human Wrongs (FHW, April-June 2024) opened a door for me to connect deeper with my inner child, and recover two tales I wrote in Zaragoza, Spain, when I was 10 and 11 years old: The Parrot and the Puma (1989) and The Destruction of Humanity (1990).

In The Destruction of Humanity, child Laura shows a deep sense of justice and care, though she resolves the world’s problems in a simplistic and quick manner. Child Laura doesn’t yet know that the real challenge in life, and writing, will be to understand that she is not at the centre of her perception.

Once the modern colonial mindset is identified, feeling shame or guilt serves little purpose. The point is to let the realization sink in, and to act. After my performance The Fall (2022-2024), at the threshold of my 45th year, I began to climb the third mountain described in the tale The Four Mountains, by Cree Elder John Crier:

The third mountain is the hunter or provider mountain. The rite of passage on this mountain is about seeing a much larger picture, about perceiving more than the picture reveals, reaching into the past and into the future. It’s also about learning to use your medicines and gifts to contribute to the well-being of your family, your community, the land, and all relations.

In April 2024 I began a process of self-healing, reconnecting with a name that came to my mind during the first months of the pandemic while confined in São Paulo in 2020. This name is V.E.R.I. C.U.I.D.A.D.O. (or VC, trans. “a lot of care”).

Child Archives

“Quizás porque mi niñez sigue jugando en tu playa”
(Maybe it’s because my childhood keeps playing on your beach)
– Juan Manuel Serrat “Mediterráneo Song” (1971)

In August 2024, I returned to my parents’ home in Benasque, in the Aragonese Pyrenees, touching lands called Spain and France. I delved into the archives of my childhood: twenty-six boxes filled with notebooks, photo albums, folders, drawings, paintings, schoolwork, and books.

My first Ma.Pa^[1] (i.e. Mama and Papa) are the guardians of the physical archives of my adolescence, childhood and birth, which began in Zaragoza, Spain, on November 3, 1979.

A photo from the '80s of a child on a tricycle. Beneath the photo a piece of paper reads, "I wonder when will humanity become extinct."

These boxes represent not just physical items but memories. Each notebook holds the whispers of my youth. This exploration is not merely nostalgic; it is an act of reconnecting with the threads of my writing.

My first Ma.Pa gave me an emotional structure rooted in love and sharing. My mother taught me how to swim and listen; my father taught me how to count and write. Both taught me how to love.

We have other mothers and fathers. I keep in my heart the care and protection I received from all of them. We are a mix of our mothers and fathers, and many other things as well.

“Todo Cambia,” a song by Mercedes Sosa, echoes in the heart of Veri Cuidado, a performative story of stories to embrace our role as adult caregivers in the face of a neoliberal mandate that infantilizes us.

I walk joyfully each day, never forgetting that we all walk together toward death. In Spain, and perhaps across the affluent Global North, many people resist growing older because aging “hurts.”

As Cash Ahenakew reminds us in “Towards Eldering”:

Modern-colonial societies encourage and reward hyper-individualistic metropolitan consumerism and the denial of the fact that our comforts and conveniences come at the expense of others and of the planet. In this context, we are encouraged to remain young, to resent aging, and to forget our intergenerational responsibilities.

In my performance La Vejez (Centro Cultural La Cabrera, Madrid, Spain, 2018), an action reflecting on death and aging and honouring elderly women in rural villages, I publicly committed to doing the second part of La Vejez when I turn 83—the reverse of my age at the time. This was the closing of Ayer es hoy o el día que murió Thatcher, a seven-year experiential research about aging (2011-2018) with María Siguero “La Maña,” Vitoriana Sedano, and María Martínez, “Las Thatcher”, alongside our manager Emy Zambrano, who continues to care for us.

Through my art-life practices, I understand relationships of care as a way to dismantle modernity and its violences. I am interested in thinking about care as a set of creative practices that restore life in common, aligned with ecological and social justice.

A notebook sketch showing nine points connected by straight lines, branching from the letters VC.

The journey with VERI CUIDADO invites others to consider their connections and the significance of their own archives. During the writing process, I began opening doors, and Veri Cuidado grew larger. This text is the beginning of something greater that calls for more time and for me to continue writing, not in English, but in my mother tongue. I haven’t wanted to force this process, and precisely because of what I learned with the MHW group, I’ve opened space within myself to keep writing what I need to express and give back to the land.

The work done with the MHW group in 2024 highlights the necessity of practicing art with tools grounded in listening and care. The paths to resolving conflicts and problems lead us to new challenges, forming an eternal spiral. What if it’s not about changing the world, but about altering our frequency of relating to the world and the land?