This audio work marks the final outcome of the residency project of Amara Higuera during her Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee residency.

“Estoy Llamando, Regresando Tu Llamada” is a three piece audio collection searching for what needs to be said.

"If you're going to say it, can you say it here?
Are your lungs strong and ready?
Or more so, can you say it safely?
I recall the suffocation you mentioned.
Of that place where you can’t look at that, you can’t say that.
But, let’s say that I did?"

English translations:

Title: “Estoy Llamando, Regresando Tu Llamada” / “I’m Calling, Returning Your Call”

Ch. 1

(No translations)

Ch. 2

(First Voice)

"Hi, my daughter, why do you want me to tell you that story? No, it’s that, it’s very sad, no you don’t understand… (sigh)."

(Second Voice - Original Song)

"I hear him asking for me,
in my house, the house
I never returned to
His little hands, his hug,
his path, in my house, my house,
that I never returned to

"Without reason they took you from me,
from the house, my house,
that I never
returned to"

Ch. 3

"Talking with you, talking with me" (overlapped phrases in Spanish)

Credit to Eartha Kitt, who said it. And also to my family, who remember even when we forget.

Amara Higuera is an artist and writer from Los Angeles (the ancestral and unceded land of the Gabrielino-Tongva and Chumash peoples). She is exploring histories of precarity, resilience, and (re)generation through lens based inquiry and sound. She is currently writing poetry and making sound works as a practice of personal exorcism and artistic research.

More from Amara here and on Instagram.