Future Traditions Festival, a multimedia festival, explored digital technology as a collaborative tool for extending and facilitating traditional Latin American music and dance in the 21st century. The virtual festival, streamed from Dec 4-6 and featured a special digital project by Miami’s own Las Raras. We go the scoop from Ana Maria Morales who gave us all the deets on the festival, her featured work, and her future plans. Check it.
How has 2020 and the pandemic helped or hindered your growth as an artist?
The pandemic has given me a moment to pause and reflect. Visual design has always been on my table but during this pandemic, I had to seek refuge in those designs and skills. With this new work from Las Raras, you see the transition of my style bringing my lighting design elements into my video manipulation. Creating a new genre for myself I am excited to show.
Creating estimulame.com an online library of content with playlists integrating live sessions from visual and sound artists from all around the world. The platform is for all genres of music and video, submissions are welcome! The goal of Estimulame is to have access to a sound and visual library wherever you go.
How have you taken advantage of the digital space to create or promote your work?
With an alluring audience, the digital space has lent itself to distant collaborators or reach far-away audiences in experimental design, Future Traditions Fest has the curation of neo-traditional work fused with multimedia. It is definitely a festival to look for in the future and a great platform for cutting edge performances.
How did you get involved with Future Traditions Fest?
Tambores del Pueblo, a Puerto Rican bomba group, wanted to work with us to create an Afro-futuristic audiovisual journey. We decided to create a suite of five videos that evoke a sense of multiplicitous time-space travel. My collaborator in Las Raras, Jeannelle Ramirez, produced the audio to create that ambiance. I brought everything to life, visually. I worked with some footage from past performances, layered and manipulated with my own footage and original video design.
The group really wanted to convey a sense of freedom and possibility, and so you see elements in the video that evoke that. Like for example, with a song called “A Mi Manera” we all talked about having it represent a kind of queer anthem, and maybe that’s the futuristic part of it. But then we also had songs like “Boricua Soy” which have more of the Afro-Puerto Rican pride and we wanted to convey that sense of love for the island, for where you come from, through this beautiful imagery and sound, so I played with symbolism color and texture throughout to create moods in which the spectator could travel through.
Tell us about the work you presented on the platform, was it created specifically for Future Traditions?
The work was a collaboration with my other partner from Las Raras which is a collective that was formed a couple of years ago to integrate Visuals and Sound designs. This collab was with a group Tambores del Pueblo, some of the footage used was from past performances they were part of along with my own layer manipulations.
Can we still view the work/presentation? How? Where?
Yes, you can watch the “Cuando no te ven” video, submitted for Future Traditions Fest right here on Tropicult (below) and on futuretraditionsfest.com/, along with many others. This and some other samples of my work are also available on Estimulame.com and Las Raras website.
How/where can we keep up with your work and other projects?
You can keep up with my work by following me on my Instagram @cabbablee and @lasrarxs. And by visiting, Digital Baths, Las Raras, and Estimulame.
December 2 - December 6 2020
Future Traditions Fest featuring DJ Ella Ella, composer José Martinez’s artist talk, an artist talk by Angelica Negrón. Plus, a showcase of Experimental Video Shorts New Music Performances, and a Farewell Showcase featuring María Chavez! To learn more about our artists, please visit our website!
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