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I Don’t Know Yet

Art Research Symposium: “Escarbar a Oscuras”

I Don’t Know Yet is a work in progress, an exercise or experiment that resists being named or defined. It emerged from the research gathering “Escarbar a Oscuras”, within the academic framework of the Master’s in Scenic Practice and Visual Culture at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cuenca. The project was also connected to entities such as the Artea Collective, the Antonio Pérez Foundation in Cuenca, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

I Don’t Know Yet is driven by the question: Where are the witches? Where are the jesters? It is grounded in the principle of disobedience and non-compliance, rejecting the expectations of the audience, the public, the jury, professors, society, family, and authority. This act of defiance culminates in a subtle, anti-spectacular, and provocative political gesture: eating sunflower seeds.

At the end of the piece, Mayte Olmedilla places a kind of mirror in the middle of the audience, aiming to prompt reflection on where and by whom monstrosity is situated, and to question the systems that have systematically created mechanisms to subdue and bury certain groups.

I Don’t Know Yet lays the experimental groundwork for what will later become the doctoral thesis Mayte Olmedilla is developing at Boyer College in Philadelphia, exploring the archetype of the witch and its connection to the performing arts.