Hallo, mein Name ist Adriana Torres. Ich bin Künstlerin und DorfTV hat mich angeladen, ein Projekt im Rahmen des LINZ-Impuls-Projekts zu machen. Ich konnte dieses Projekt nicht allein machen, weil ich habe gefunden, dass das wäre besser mit dem Verein Mais. Verein Mais ist ein Verein von Migrantinnen. Und auch für dieses Video haben wir uns gefragt, okay, in welcher Sprache machen wir diese Sendung? Sprechen wir auf Deutsch, auf Englisch oder Spanisch. Ich bin mit meiner Kollegin Gabriela Gordillo. Unsere Muttersprache ist Spanisch, aber für praktische Aims, ich beginne Englisch zu reden, werden wir auf Englisch reden. Ich werde möglicherweise einiges mischen, aber so ist mein Leben in Österreich. Der Titel unseres Projekts hat auch einige Sprachen, Ressourcen, ich spreche auf Deutsch, I got this invitation from Dorf TV and I thought maybe I could work as a cleaning person in Linz. I thought, okay, the budget is so small, so I make a job like that. But I realized, I took a look to a couple of ads, that this is not an easy thing. I had to have experience, which I have, but I don't have a certificate from my house, so from my daughter or my husband who says, yeah, you clean well. So I thought, no, maybe this is a sign to work anyway with mice. And mice had this broader understanding for care, which I think was one of the points we wanted to reach with this project. Or Gabriela? Yes. So, hello, first to everyone who is watching. As Adriana was explaining, we were collaborating for this project. I'm Gabriela Gordillo and I'm representing MAIS in this case. Adriana came to us to tell us about the idea of making a video on the topic of care in the context of migration and the pandemic. And yeah, we started thinking through what would make sense to how to approach it no yeah because um well we we we leave this uh context of cultural and artistic work here and also our situation as as migrants and in my east, I was working also there directly and still in contact with it. We get in touch with different biographies of migrants in Linz, and many of them work in this official area of care, no? So in the medicine area or in cleaning or in the sex work I will say since I'm doing this this project and also since taking care of our environment or the planet, one could see almost any area as care area. Yeah. But of course, we begin with these categories that are built. Sometimes this makes a transformation more difficult, these categories. transformation more difficult, these categories. But at least that one sees that caring is not just a flake, not just taking care of people with some physical or physical handicaps, but who's the person who's packaging my food when I call in the telephone and say, hey, I want this food. Who's cooking this food? Who's bringing this food to me? Who makes this food possible? Who's working on with the earth to give me food. So these are, for me, all our cares areas. Yes, we were opening this concept of care, right? Because in my ears, we understand it as different professions. But as you say, when we started talking about it, But as you say, when we started talking about it, we started finding care in everyday gestures also, how we interact or behave with each other. And yeah, maybe many labor activities are about care no i think the ambiguous or maybe interesting side of this word is that it implies a kind of emotional commitment and this is where the line gets crossed between caring, like, how would you, what would be a synonym? Being concerned about something and also acting on it. To be more sensitive, more conscious maybe? Well, the word care I think relates to that meaning like putting attention showing that, giving importance to something on the other side this work area is the one that is, I was going to say it's maybe overlooked when it comes to the work area. But what I was trying to say is that this this job is sometimes done with these human features applied no like patience or kindness or many things that are maybe not written in a contract but are applied by someone with common sense and some understanding of the other. I like what you're saying because these are some qualities that still are not overtaken from some neoliberal language, like you have the competence you're patient yeah but you're talking about emotions something that is is not is not yet overtaken from from this this as I said no liberal discourse or. As you were saying, this example about kindness and so on, and categories, which I was saying before about these areas in my ears, like sex and work is care, cleaning is care, medicine is care. I remember one example, Judith Erquiz-Mignot, this sociologist, was giving in one care article about the mango tree of her mom. She had this tree with delicious fruits and the community of the barrio goes there and takes some mangoes from this woman and there is an exchange a value exchange in this and there is no differentiation of this is my tree just for me, my, my mangoes. And there is, there is this also how, how, how life don't, don't make this, this, these lines, no? So I can give you my, my, my mangoes, you enjoy them. And then we have some exchange in our life is like that. So some, some areas of life are not so categorized and and i think categorization is something that sometimes make this decision in in how how we feel and how we live because i'm the one that's doing this and you're the one that who's doing that no okay, something I wanted to say is here, it should be also Martina Lorenz, that was the third facilitator in the project. I thought many times right now about Martina because some of the methods we used come from the cognitive science. So Martina comes from this area and also from the Saigonosishitan area. We use some of these methods in the workshop that we designed together. Yeah. So maybe we can tell a bit of how was our process or how we arrived to the video. Yeah. Realization. It's good. So the first time we thought about making an essay on the topic, we decided to invite some people working in this area. And we organized the format of a workshop in order to create a process, rather than having a discursive approach or maybe a theoretical research. We wanted to go with the real people, which was also an invitation from Dorf, no? Like they were suggesting us to make these interviews, but we decided to make it as a workshop process in order, yeah, to have a different approach and maybe, as you will see later, a different approach and maybe as you will see later a different outcome yeah the idea was also now I have to talk about cultural and artwork there is this subvention of the city for doing this kind of projects. And some artists are invited. But who are the protagonists of this future subject? So we also thought that it was important to give some, give some at least symbolic financial value to the protagonists of this video. I think this is important to mention because this is some critique one could have about these projects. Yeah, we care from the activities that we do and the topics that we're taking, we are involved with, yeah? But we are in this case as facilitators and the protagonists are the people you will see mainly in the video. mainly in the video. So the idea is not just to absorb what they know, but also that they, in this process, hopefully find something out new for them. True. Yeah, we didn't want to let them go with empty hands. Or, yeah, at least to develop a process where they could find something um yeah some kind of relief as well um and yeah it was also a process for us no i i just wanted to say that it's also an approach of my to make this uh straightforward outcome probably, but not only... Yeah, not act like an organizer, for example, or, I don't know, a giver, but rather go into a horizontal level and make, start a dialogue. I understand our process like that, a little bit. But yeah, in the end, Martina was moderating or leading the workshop. And in the moment of the workshop, she was the leader, but before we were preparing together and our how do you say brainstorm started with this idea of care and trying to find the the concept in different metaphors that were not only about the work itself or the profession. So we started by thinking of what does it mean to be touched? What is contact, like body contact? And a question that I really liked was, yeah, how does it feel to touch others and how does it feel to be taken care of? Because you can always be in the two positions and this is maybe a human thing. So we wanted to use these elements to express something visually about care. something visually about care. And also it was an excuse to work with the participants who started to make these exercises. Martina is also a dancer professionally. I don't know if you mentioned it, other than the cognitive science background. So she has these two sides in which she works with somatics and, yeah, in a more experimental way I would say um so yeah we were using these exercises also to to make the interaction between the participants yeah this um this also was a question how to show this almost in-team process in a video we developed some parts of the project in this close in-team workshop space in Maíz and other activities in the public space and as always and other activities in the public space. Yeah. And as always, how to show this process is always a big question. Yeah, now I'm thinking. How to show the process yeah yeah yeah totally i mean in the beginning we were saying that we don't want to use the workshop as an output like we wanted to use it only as process and then yeah that we would make a different shooting for the video. But as you say that in this not categorization, the line is very narrow, no? Like very interesting things happen also in the process. So if you have this approach of looking at the whole, then sometimes you want to use it. But we made this compromise with the participants of not showing their faces or not necessarily and also not necessarily showing the workshop situation where as you say it's an intimate environment and I mean we it was about sharing personal stories and personal opinions and so yeah that was I guess yeah delicate or like yeah not so easy to find out but I think we sorted out yeah yeah at the end the video is for me like a very in team emotional personal approach from the protagonist to their activities are scaring persons I is in at school where they clean and they come back home and they cook for the family and they clean again their houses. They take care of the neighbor who's sick. They send money maybe also to their families in their hometown. So this is just one profile from one of our participants. So what I saw is the care, the definitions, of course, lead for an understanding, but also for a limitation because if one political change comes is when it's my opinion when the state stop to think just in numbers and they just have to think about their relatives here, yeah? Because we are, the population of Austria is growing. The elderly is growing. Right now, the people who are taking care of this population, we're just talking of this medicine area, are most of them migrants. And some of them, yeah, become between three, four euros per hour in a 24 hour job. Besides corona and the importance that everyone saw and the new financial change, I don't know, this Steuerreform, this area is not taken seriously. So I think it must be also an epistemological change in the way political changes are conceived Yeah, I think this would be the relevant aspect of this project that we are talking about an area that doesn't have enough visibility and this is how a lot of unfair situations can happen no like working conditions and so on we had also the experience of one of the participants saying like she was paid a certain number of hours and after that she had to work other three that were not paid and this was like a non-told agreement no yeah um what do you do with this kind of situation when no one cares about the person or like the the position of this structure. So giving a message in that direction would be for me the most important in this moment. And of course, a lot is being told about care in these times since the last years. But yeah, looking at the alternatives is not so easy. Now I was thinking like, what if we would value care so much that it was the biggest currency? You know, if you had like the person who would take care of you is the least person that you want to treat bad you know or pay bad like what if we this was a concept or like a yeah an idea but surprisingly it's the opposite so probably we don't really understand what is care yeah there are also these agencies that are intermediate in the middle between the families with the person who has to be cared and the working person no it can say it could be that this these families pay, I don't know, 10 euros the hour, and the agency takes 7 euros and the person becomes free. But it needs a change in the migration politic for this. And right now this is not changing. Because if they change this for the people that are coming from Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic, and so on. It must be a change for a lot of people that right now the politics is not thinking in this direction, yeah? And yeah, it's an euphemism, what our ex-counselor said, like, yeah, this is very important people for us. And they say, yeah, and what is changing now? What is going to change? So we need a change. But just you must, you should just take a look to your parents, your relatives, and we are getting old. And to the planet, to environment. If we talk about care, how could it be, again, a tax reform where the environmental becomes a lot of money, which is again, again, traduced in numbers of money and the social doesn't get this, this support. So these are the categorization that I think is, is, is, is leading us to the same thing that we, we cannot go in another way of thinking because we're still in this capitalistic system of, of thinking, okay, money, okay. Yeah, whatever the price, no? Whatever the cost. We pay the industry this and then we pay, I don't know who do we pay in order to get this exchange hydrocarbons and money. So with the care, so taking care of the planet and of our people, of the human being, who is the space that is acting more crazy right now against itself will be a mandatory goal. Yes, I like what you were saying in the beginning about finding these care jobs also in the caring of the environment or caring of humans and not making this distinction, or like in different areas of work but I also remember now a quote that I don't want to say wrong the name so I don't know who said it now but it was saying that care is an act of resistance and like if we are also trying to maintain what is important, then, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's connected to this idea of radical care, no? That it's always everything that is radical or extreme, we see it as not necessarily soft association. And care we see as, I don't know, vulnerable. Yeah, I was thinking on privileges, as you said, this sentence. And I thought also about love. I think caring is about loving, but also privileges, because if one cares, one is able to say, well, I'm not doing this because I care. Yeah. And then I'm thinking of my privileges. Someone says, well, no, I want to eat tomatoes the whole year. I don't want no one to tell me what I have to eat. You see, well, this person takes care of the environment. So it's just you love the environment. It's OK when you do not eat tomatoes for a while. Or I don't know. This is for me a matter of love, but also a matter of privileges and want to listen what's going on around just to see the importance of this, as you say, people that are usually invisible and should be more seen and the importance of them really not to keep in this euphemism but to give these people importance yeah i think yes yeah yeah i also like maybe if we cannot change big things immediately at least we can think of the person who is behind the job that is realized no so the first and very elemental thing we forget is like who is doing this job no this person has a family has a mind has sensibility and um i mean yeah it's studying is uh doing many things no yeah so if you treat this person as a another person as you would like to be treated uh yeah we didn't we wouldn't have to talk so much about politics because it would be obvious that we all deserve the same rights. Yeah. But I think it's like the question, are you a racist or not? Yeah. How aware are you from your behavior? When you buy something online online do you think really who's packaging this who's bringing this to your house yeah but this is what we forget because we don't say it no yeah that that's why so yeah and we have really to to think more in this unsaid invisible stuff and to get conscious about this these things that we're not listening, we're not seeing. It's an important and difficult job. It's like you have to think these things that you don't see, but they exist. Yeah, maybe look outside of yourself. That's a good perspective. Yeah. Yeah, so we invite you just to take a look to this, So that's a good perspective. Yeah. Yeah. So we invite you just to take a look to this essay. It's maybe an essay from these persons that are sharing their knowledge and their experiences in these different areas, at least the areas that Maíz is taking care of. And yeah, we keep on learning. I don't know. Do you want to say something else, Gabriela? No, I would say that this was a very, I don't know, like we approached the project in a way that we didn't know what was going to happen. At some point also like finding things in the way, which was intended. That was the plan to leave things open for them to surprise us. But I would be very interested in knowing what people think about it and to receive some feedback because sometimes yeah I mean this is just the beginning of a conversation right like this is not stated or this was not written somewhere that we had to do things like that. So for me, it's a kind of new place. And it would be interesting to know what after. Also coming from the people who participated, that we haven't seen the video with them. So it will be great to know what they think, but also from the outside, like what makes sense. With the topic, no? Yeah, no what makes sense with the topic towards the topic the GR topic of my next year am I right? this year we were working on care as a topic but no this would be the question a feedback about the topic about the process I think it's always a practice so it's ok it's like artistic practice sobre el tema. Sobre el proceso creo que siempre es una práctica así que está bien, es como una práctica artística. Pero el tema, sí, tiene estas marcas de pregunta y también si cambia algo en la mente de cualquiera. Gracias. Gracias. Gracias.