We live in a contradictory world. While the Silicon Valley gurus unleash ever-faster technologies, we feel our own actions are getting slower and slower. The more rights and freedoms we appear to gain, the more we seem to lack. The more respect and diversity are championed in the classroom, the more hatred and intolerance we find in the street. The climate crisis, hijacked housing, the rampant rise of neoliberalism… threats are multiplying everywhere and the promise of a better future is growing darker every day.

In such circumstances, where do we find the strength to keep fighting? Where can we find joy? During his residency at TNT, Javier Hernando has been carefully compiling an archive of poetic and political gestures from the past, small acts of defiance and rebellion that may not have changed the world, but did at least manage to achieve something. These are brought to life in a humble, stripped-down show in the form of a lecture-performance, designed to spark curiosity and recover lost spirit. In the face of the gradual cancellation of the future, Hernando reclaims joy from the past.

One of the central crises running through the piece is that of housing. Indeed, one of the underlying problems that Javier addresses is the question of home in an increasingly inhospitable world. Not only in a material sense, but also in a speculative one: home as a place where we can exist, and as a way to make sense of ourselves. Home as somewhere from which no one can evict us. Extraña alegría seeks to invoke that kind of home, born of the conviction that around us there are far more gestures of resistance and courage than we think or see. They may not need us to exist, but we need them to stay alive.

In Extraña alegría, gestures are woven together that span different times and spaces. It is through disparity that dialogue becomes possible. Similar invitations can be found in La fuerza de la gravedad by Martín López Cárdenas, Fasting Girls by Marta Azparren, and Shrek, kebabs i la caiguda de Iugoslàvia by Eduard Olesti.