The Tale and The Tongue: Radical Listening

<p><em>Radical Listening</em> is the sixth episode that follows a conversation with Ericka Florez. When describing Ericka’s work, several terms appear: curator, artist, performer, writer, researcher, early childhood educator… This multiplicity of terms, which refer both to practices in process and to established roles, also indicates an overflow in words. A word that would be important to add to this list is the notion of «in-betweenness»: the ability to be in two places at the same time but without being fully in either one of them.</p> <p>Ericka’s project <em>Un hechizo en el espacio</em> [A spell in the space] gave the opportunity to start in a concrete and very important place for her: the city of Cali in Colombia, where several artists worked on what she defines as «un terror de tierra caliente» [hot-earth terror]. The reality of Cali, marked by a subtle and persistent fatality, makes light converge with gloom within its mythologies and practices of excess. As Ericka herself writes in a text with visual shines and shadows, in Cali «there is something that is about to arrive but never arrives». There is a suspension of expectations and social promises which is joined by the suspension of time during the exuberant hours of dancing and partying. In her danceable lecture <em>Sobredosis de amor</em> [Love Overdose], Ericka Florez analyses the narrative structure of «salsa rosa» and its links with drug dealing. The logic of self-destructive excess is also present in the music, where the political strength of classic salsa rhythms is softened by the love lyrics of salsa rosa songs…</p>