NO FEM

Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca | María Salgado


NO FEM is a video composed from the names that have been designating dissidents of gender and sexuality. The racialized, the marginalized and the minoritized. The aim is, on the one hand, to show the force of reappropriation of the insult on which the whole subculture and vital resistance of queer bodies of any kind is based. Whether the "yo soy esa", "morenos" and "zarzamoras" origing in the first half of the 20th century in Spain, or the names of Anglo-Saxon origin of the political identities that have proliferated in cities all over the world since the end of the 20th century. And on the other hand, to address the process of normalization with which the neoliberal and identitarian phase of capitalism can turn them into excluding, racist and classist categories in some situations, such as some uses of contact apps, for example Grindr.

The piece is built from the omnipresent and violent "NO" that runs through the most reactionary movements of the historical cycle after the revolts of 2011-2014. It uses sampling of sounds and textual phrases that either collaborate with its depowering energy, or open cracks in understanding of that same epochal violence until resignifying and reappropriating that negativity (in the manner of the sampled Delta 9, when they sing NO! NO! MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS). The radical mix of audio and text from the past and the present stages an ongoing struggle between the forces of homogenization and standardization and the ways of life that continue to open differentiation between things, subjects and languages of the world.

Also composed from NO, the series of poems that closes the video comes to affirm that the living, the aliveness of any being or form on earth necessarily consists of difference, complexity, conflict, non-identity: movement: NO AIR NO BOW NO RAINBOW.

NO FEM is part of Jinete Último Reino Frag. 2, a 50-minute performance composed and performed live by María Salgado and Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca. Frag. 2 was premiered at MACBA's Idiorritmias festival in Barcelona in 2019 and presented at La Casa Encendida in Madrid that same year, as well as at Tabakalera Donostia (2021), Conde Duque (Madrid, 2021), Centro Párraga (Murcia, 2021), La Mutant (Valencia, 2022), the fortieth edition of the auawirleben Theaterfestival in Bern (2022) and at the Teatros del Canal during the 39th Autumn Festival (2021) as the second part of the trilogy Jinete Último Reino.

Technical datasheet

  • Title: NO FEM
  • Direction: Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca - María Salgado
  • Production: 2019.
  • Team:

    Gràfica: Rubén García-Castro / ANFIVBIA
    Edició de vídeo: Fiacha O’Donnell

  • Duration: 00:08:55
  • Languages: English - Spanish
  • Original format: HD 1920x1080
  • License: Creative Commons CC-BY-SA