In progress
Instituto Cultural de Ponta Delgada
El Olvido is a bar in Guatemala City. It could be anywhere in the world. People go there to talk, drink,
conspire and forget. A news anchor narrates the daily happenings from a television screen, while music
blasts from a jukebox. Images of cruise missiles ejected from destroyer warships, declarations by high
ranking officials and the sound of doom tell the story of the coming apocalypse. In a state of
permanent warfare, what does it mean to live away from the battle zone? Is war becoming the
permanent soundtrack, the main narrator of every day life?
Conversations about the trajectory of the global battle, conspiracy, speculation and keeping the score
of historical injustice intertwines with personal anecdotes, life stories and confessions. People go on
about their lives while war wages in some far away reality. The theater of life, big and small, plays itself
within the green walls of this bar.