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by: julián vásquez
Twenty years building cultural bridges between Sweden and Colombia
History of the European Night Festival in Korpilombolo, Sweden.
Under the financial sponsorship of the “Council for Scientific Research in Sweden”, the universities of Stockholm and Umeå, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, Professor Julian Vasquez Lopera (Medellín 1953) organized in the fall of 2004 the sections of the I International Symposium Litteraturens Korsvägar: Sverige, Colombia och det svenska arvet i León de Greiffs författarskap (Literature at the crossroads: Sweden, Colombia and the Swedish heritage in the work of León de Greiff). The event took place at the universities of Stockholm and Umeå and in Korpilombolo, a small Swedish town located above the “Arctic Circle”, an area famous for its magnificent Northern Lights. The preamble to this call was the holding between 2002 and 2004, both in Colombia and Sweden, of a series of academic conversations and seminars whose purpose was the discussion and socialization of the booklet The Great Atavistic Journey: Sweden in the Work of León de Greiff , written by Julian Vasquez during his time as a professor at Umeå University; It was later published in Medellín, in 2006. As a direct consequence of said symposium, and at the initiative and coordination of Professor Julian Vasquez, the “European Night Festival” was founded in Korpilombolo, and a choral work by the Colombian composer was premiered. Fernando Uribe Gómez, who traveled directly from Medellín to supervise its premiere. Likewise, a bilingual monument was erected, in Swedish and Spanish, in what is now the “Parque León de Greiff”, perhaps next to the “Place García Márquez” in Paris, the only small squares in Europe named after two writers. Colombians. The text of the monument reads: “In 1825 Carl Sigismund von Greiff and his wife Lovisa Petronella Faxe emigrated from Skåne in Sweden to Medellín in Colombia. They never returned. One hundred years later, one of the couple’s Colombian descendants, the writer León (von) Greiff (1895-1976), sent the nocturnal Gaspar, one of his fictional characters, from tropical Bolombolo in Colombia to Korpilombolo. Gaspar lived here in a contemplative life for more than 30 years.”
The “European Night Festival” is not, in any way, a meeting dedicated to the study of the work of León de Greiff, but it emerges as a thematic response to the chapter “From Bolombolo in Colombia to Korpilombolo in Sweden”, of Julian’s book Vasquez cited above. More specifically, the “philosophical exile” and “Rimbaldian Fugue” of “Gaspar of the Night” to Korpilombolo, and his subsequent “Euthanasia in reverse” in Stockholm, since he had supposedly become a “frozen mummy” due to the low arctic temperatures of the region. This eccentric episode, one of the most widespread studies of The Great Atavistic Journey, has also inspired the work of researchers and artists in both Sweden and Colombia. It is, symbolically speaking, the return of León de Greiff to the ancient homeland of his ancestors, which, in real life, crystallized when the then president of Colombia, Alberto Lleras Camargo, appointed him minister counselor of the Colombian Embassy. in Sweden (1959-1963). It is necessary to emphasize that the “Gaspar of the Night” (or “Gaspar von der Nacht”) that we find in the work of León de Greiff (1895-1976) emerges and evolves as a fictional entity from the “Gaspar of the Nuit” of the writer Frances Aloysus Bertrand (1807-1841), a character through whom the Colombian writer channels, in different ways, his unconditional veneration for the nocturnal. So every year, between December 1-13, writers, philosophers, playwrights, visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc., etc., from many parts of the country gather in Korpilombolo (very close to the border with Finland). Europe and other nations of the world, from Africa to Japan, to deliberate and present to the public their work on the topic “Night” in science and universal culture. It is in this cosmopolitan context that a good number of Colombian citizens have taken an active part in the Festival programming. Some of them reside in Sweden, but others do not.
Among the most notable guests the following people should be mentioned: the playwrights Carlos Bernal (Madrid), Oscar Zuluaga Uribe and Adriana Diosa Colorado (Arlequín y los Juglares, Medellín), Adolfo Celis (Sensus, Stockholm); the film directors Manuel Ponce, César Alejandro Jaimes (Bogotá, Los Niños Films), Juan Soto Taborda (London/Barcelona), Hector Enrique Ulloque Franco (Bogotá/Paris); the painters Consuelo Vinchira (Madrid), Luz Mary Bedolla (Cali/Stockholm); the musician and composer Antonio Mathias Charry (Stockholm); the writers Luis Fernando Macías (Medellín) and Angela García (Medellín/Malmö); the clinical researcher and specialist in Health Management Natahlia Ortiz (Bogotá/Paris, QualeVita); the audiovisual artist Oscar Cabrera Grosso (Bogotá/Buenos Aires); the contemporary music composers Jorge Enrique Borja (Cali) and Fernando Uribe Gómez (Medellín); the social leaders Aicardo Villa and Fabio León Sánchez (New Masculinities, Bolombolo/Venecia, Antioquia, Colombia); the dancers and choreographers of Colombian tropical music, Isabel Sarmiento and Luz Marina Muños (Stockholm); the Colombian culinary expert, Nino García (Buena Ventura/Stockholm); the musicologist and arranger of sound tracks for theater and cinema Mateo Molano Bravo (Bogotá); the literature professors, María Esquivel (Umeå/Stockholm) and Hernando Cabarcas Antequera (Bogotá); the cancer doctor, dr. Hernando Salcedo Fidalgo (Bogotá/Paris, QualeVita); the psychologist and therapist Javier Charry (Stockholm); the businessman and concert producer, Santiago Gardeazabal. All of these guests, in one way or another, materialize the clauses of the “Twinning Agreement” signed on December 13, 2011 between the towns of Pajala/Korpilombolo (Province of Norrbotten, Sweden) and Venice/Bolombolo (Department of Antioquia, Colombia ). The signatories were Mr. Kurt Wennberg, then mayor of Pajala, and Mr. Julian Vasquez Lopera, legal representative of Mr. Carlos Alberto Correa Rojas, then municipal mayor of Venice, Antioquia.
20 YEARS OF EXPERIENCES