Vassoura de Bruxa

The performance Vassoura de Bruxa is a mental projection chamber celebrating the Cacao bean and its eco-spiritual roots in South American culture. In 1989, a destructive plant disease “Vassoura de Bruxa” (Moniliophthora perniciosa) infected and killed all but a few of the Cacao trees in the state of Bahia in Brazil, leaving the Bahian Cacao industry and the local communities in economic ruins.

Rumour had it that the disease was planted intentionally as an act of bio-terrorism to punish the local industry relying on exploitation of poor Afro-Brazilian workers. Others said indigenous spirit-ghosts of the Tupinambá tribe were returning to revenge the massacre of their tribe in 1510 when the Portuguese colonists slaughtered several hundred of the Tupinambás in the forests and beaches between Olivença and Ilhéus.

Out of the few surviving Cacao trees the scientists of CEPLAC Bahia developed a new Cacao genetic variant that may resist the disease. As a side effect, it contains 3 times more Theabromina than conventional cacao beans, the substance in Cacao having mind-altering properties through the releasing of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin in the brain. The hippies in Bahia claim that this Cacao bean increases the human ears ability to hear subtle sounds in nature, thus using it as an auditory hallucinogenic drug sleeping out on the beach and in the jungle.

The audience is invited to experience the Bahian bean by attending one of the daily rituals in Lydgalleriet.

A-project is a series of investigations of cultural, political and etheric history through a numeric re-arrangement of symbolic events and mental projections, originally initiated by Norwegian artist and researcher Eivind Reierstad.

‍The performance is supported by Norwegian Arts Council, The Audio and Visual Fund and Norwegian Visual Artists Fund. Co-production BIT Teatergarasjen and Lydgalleriet.