Susy Shock and Bandada de Colibríes
Traviarca
90 minutes
Action and radical imagination
As part of her European tour, trans sudaca activist Susy Shock and her group Bandada de Colibríes (Flock of Hummingbirds) will perform a concert in the Museo Reina Sofía, coinciding with the release of their latest album Traviarca. Traviarca is a neologism alluding to that transvestite which, due to their experience and wisdom, is respected by their equals and community. More specifically, Traviarca pays homage to Lohana Berkins — and, through her, to many others with “no name” — an Argentinian trans activist who died in 2016 and was one of the main proponents behind the Gender Identity Law being passed in Argentina in 2012.
In the cosmology of Susy Shock, the vindication of the monster speaks of an identity on the edges, astray and unruly, which is, at the same time, closely linked to the identity of the hummingbird, that little feathered bird, at once fragile and magical and elusive. Traviarca represents one more step in Susy Shock’s wide-ranging career as a writer, journalist, actress, singer and trans activist.
Susy Shock is joined in Bandada de Colibríes by Solana Biderman, Caro Bonillo, Carla Morales Ríos, Sole Penelas and Horacio Vázquez. Perhaps this group is most accurately situated as a kind of neo-tropical protest song, with their new record moving through a broad repertoire of Latin American folk, interweaving rhythms like milongas, zambas, chacareras, candombes, murgas, chamamés, diabladas, huaynos and vidalas. As Susy Shock puts it, this project puts forward:
empowerment in this trans fury and the decision to rethink everything, to build a new world, because we don’t want to be this humanity any longer. Because we are busy building our own temples, this record has gestated from beauty and fury; Traviarca is a work brimming with musical embraces and other embraces.
This concert is articulated inside the Museo’s force line “Action and radical imagination”, which champions public activities and spaces of thought and research from feminist and LGTBIQ+ perspectives.
With the sponsorship of: