With the downfall of the experience of The Paris Commune of 1871 - the moment chosen to end the previous piece (“Como rebolar alegremente sobre um vazio Exterior / How to happily roll over an exterior void/emptiness”, Alkantara Festival 2010) - a part of the revolutionaries was deported to a paradoxical place, New Caledonia. Paradisiac and wild, this cruel new territory proved the impracticability of pursuing the Commune’s “social project”, of implementing a politically relevant or active programme.
Out there, and in a seemingly contradiction with their ideals, the “communards” had a non-existent or even a reactive relationship with the native Caledonians, namely during the Kanak insurrection of 1878. In 1880, and following successive political negotiations (Clémenceau, Blanqui) and the resignation of President Mac-Mahon, they were finally granted an amnesty. Most of those that survived this exile returned to France, many to Paris, a city that was then in a decisive step/turn towards the Belle Époque.

On this second stance of the project we pursue a multiple itinerary on the end of the communitarian projects of armed and romantic contours that characterize revolutions; on the influence of geography in structuring ideas; on the notion of terrestrial paradises associated with the South Pacific seas and the utopias created around those latitudes; on the relation between anachronism and synchronism. We called it New, Caledonia.

André Guedes e Miguel Loureiro