Performance von Daniela Zambrano Almidón

It is said that fire brings hidden stories to light. What happens when coffee beans are exposed to this heat? What memories, sounds, and stories emerge as a result?

In her interdisciplinary practice, Daniela Zambrano Almidón combines artistic research with questions of memory, processes of decolonization, and the ecological, technological, and social interconnections of the Andean region. Drawing on the smell, taste, and sound of coffee roasting, her lecture and sound performance unfolds a multi-layered narrative about memory, knowledge, and transmission, as well as the detachment from traditions and cultural identities.

Guided by our sense of smell and our own experiences, we join the artist on a journey to the origins of coffee cultivation in the Huánuco region of Peru. Its sweet aroma can sometimes carry a bitter aftertaste. For the history of the plant here is inextricably linked to colonialism, geopolitical power dynamics, and projects of civilization—to the settlement of Austrian-German colonists, to extractivist economic systems, and to the dispossession of Indigenous communities in Peru’s central rainforest. Thus, the scent of freshly roasted coffee not only evokes associations with pleasure and community but also conveys a history of displacement, appropriation, and violence.

With her performance, Daniela Zambrano Almidón picks up on questions that Melike Karaexploresin her exhibition*Whispers* at the Kunsthaus Hamburg: How do memories persist when their material carriers disappear? While the installation incorporates burned photographs as ash into the space and coffee grounds lose their interpretive function, the performance follows the memories inscribed in the sound, smell, and taste of the coffee. Both works thus explore identity as an ongoing process of transformation, transmission, and renegotiation.