Transmestizx is an interactive audiovisual installation which, through historical archives and contemporary recordings, explores the legacy and present of the conflict between the indigenous Quichua and the white landowners in the area of Cayambe, in the Andes of Ecuador. Based on research in archives and oral histories, the installaction confronts fragments that speak to us of ages past, present and future, photographs, interviews, old films and videotapes, landowners, indians, dances and political pancarts, landscapes, struggles and uprisings, mansions, barns and priests.
Amongst the images are the 3 women present at the founding of the Ecuadorian Communist Party in 1926 - the indigenous leader Dolores Cacuango and the mestiza activists Nela Martinez and Maria Luis Gomez de la Torre. These women would become key figures in imagining and fighting for a new Ecuadorian society and their relationships a reference for other possibilities and interculturalities. At the same time Natalia Jarrín presided over the landowners of Cayambe, building a mansion in the town square. Years later her granddaughter - the mother of the artist - would join the Communist Party and fight for the land rights of the indigenous population. Opposites and oponents that configure or deconstruct collective and individual identities, generations of women and their struggles.
The official ideology of the majority of Latin American states is that of the "mestizo", an attempt to homogenize and europeanise national identities, ignoring the diversity of peoples and nationalities and the individual paths that break this logic of domination. Transmestizx is "the possibility of the trans" for developing other narratives and imaginaries, weaving meetings and unlearning structures that divide.
Her own experience of living between worlds is the departure point for this journey where Daniela Moreno Wray delves deep into the archives of her previously landowning family and of the indigenous movements, her mother's memories of activism, the tales of the indigenous uprisings, conflicts and resistance. She explores the generations of women that are her forbears and grandmothers, carrying out interviews with numerous witnesses, from landowners to activists, from leaders to villagers, recording the landscapes and the relics, convinced that the landscape hosts layers of memory. Daniela uses the installation to confront and combine these different times, these different peoples, in this territory demarcated by four mountains (Cayambe, Fuya Fuya, Kusin and Pambamarca).

Time, in the traditions of the Andes, is inseperable from space and is not considered as an arrow or a line but as a circle where past, present and future are coexisting layers in the same space. This time is also cyclic and symetric, punctuated by moments of rebalance and change which are known as Pachakutik. This circularity is the organising principle of the installation and it is this moment of change.that Transmestizx seeks to provoke in its exploration of these multiple times and relations, activating a new interculturality based on reciprocity and the recognition of diversity. This interculturality goes also beyond the human as the landscape of Cayambe, its plants, earth and animals, buildings and things, become actors in the installation.
In a series of meetings organised by the artist during the development of the work, participants explored themes related to mestizaje and the "possibility of trans" to break with the colonial and heteropatriarchal relations inherent in the regime of mestizaje in the Andes. This process of speculative interculturality culminated with the transmestizx residence of 15 artists in Upayakuwasi, Cayambe, documented in the video in 360 and the book that accompany the interactive installation.
Interactivity is an essential strategy in the creation of this thinking machine. The confrontation and combination of the layers of memory that are activated by the presence of the bodies of the user in the installation (monitored by a camera on the ceiling and a circle of pressure sensors) echo the implication required for interculturality to exist, the willingness to touch and be touched.
The software developed especially for the installation is all free (Pure Data, Python, Open Frameworks) and runs on 5 networked Raspberry Pi 2 and a control computer. The choice of free software and low cost tools is both political and technical, their openess and capacity for configuration echoing the new intercultural identities based on fluidness, openess and reciprocity. In practical terms this choice responds to the context of precariousness in South America as well as the desire to bring interactive audiovisual creation closer to creators in the region through the development of these tools. The software for the rpi2 can be downloaded from github https://github.com/Etza/trmxclient
The resting state of the installation, composed of four projections and quadrophonic sound that surround the visitor, is the sound of wind and the movement of the grass that grows in the paramo, the highest part of the mountain. This departure point refers to the phrase of Dolores Cuacuango, in which she compares her people to this grass "that you can pull out but that always grows back", and to the role of the paramo as a life giving common that provides water, shelter and other resources to all beings alike. When the users walk the circle of sensors they call into being the juxtaposition of layers of memory that emerge on the screens and in the voices of the testimonies. The camera adds another layer of interactivity, activating the centre of the circle where the four mountains are revealed. Subtitles in English enable an apropriation for non Spanish speaking users.
Transmestizx is a poetic space, maybe an expanded documentary, for confronting the historical relations of power that continue to profoundly mark the relations between peoples and with nature, to look for paths and perspectives that open up other imaginaries and possibilities of relations beyond the binary exclusions that dominate the world and it's conflicts.
Artista: Daniela Moreno Wray. Musica y Diseño de sonido: Mauricio Proaño. Registros audiovisuales: Daniela Moreno Wray. Programación: OpenFrameworks - Ángela Gabereau, Olivia Jackson; Python - Felipe Moreno Wray / Acid Rain; Pure Data - Pedro Soler. Material audiovisual y registro 360: Mateo Barriga, Daniela Moreno Wray. Postproducción del 360: Felipe Moreno Wray - Acid Rain. Realización de sensores de presión: Nadia Carrillo, Andy Rodríguez, Daniela Moreno Wray. Diseño gráfico: Franco Moscoso, Daniela Moreno Wray. Edición y corrección de textos de la residencia: Andrea Moreno Wray. Traducción al kichwa: Virginia de la Torre Yamberla. Residencia para el desarrollo deTransmestizx 2015: Media Lab UIO / CIESPAL. Residencia de creación intercultural Transmestizx 2016: Upayakuwasi / La Divina Papaya. Registro fotográfico: Mateo Barriga / Estudio Morrón. Invitadxs espacios de co- pensamiento: Falco, Ariruma Kowii, Christian León, Francia Moreno, PachaQueer, Albeley Rodríguez, Paola de la Vega, María Amelia Viteri, Colectivo de arte Sumak Ruray (voceros: José Luis Macas y

Manai Kowii) Apoyos: La Divina Papaya, Acid Rain Media Lab, Media Lab UIO, Archivo Blomberg, Televisión Sueca, Estudio Morrón, Upayakuwasi. La primera versión de Transmestizx, mostrado en 2016 en el CAC Quito, fue posible gracias al apoyo del Premio Mariano Aguilera.