“Democracy, Performativity and Public Space in Mexico, 1968-2008-2012,” (original) (raw)

"‘The Space of Appearance’ Performativity and Aesthetics in the Politicization of Mexico’s Public Sphere"

Sabotage Art. Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America, 2016

Using Hannah Arendt's "space of appearance" theory of political action and Ngugi wa Thiong’o's model of public space as a principle ‘arena of struggle’ between the state and civil society, this chapter focuses on Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's performance-installation project, Voz Alta (2008), to explore how performative aesthetics might underwrite a politics of collectivity that insists on the interaction between the collective performative claim to public space and the materiality of that space in the service of building an inclusive participatory politics.

Popular Theatre as Space and Symbol of the Spanish Democratic Revolution

Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2018

One year after the 2008 financial meltdown ignited the current economic crisis, microteatro was born in an abandoned brothel in Madrid. Spurring the reemergence of popular theatre as a cultural force in Spain, microteatro has transformed the Spanish theatre scene. Despite the dramatic increase in the Value Added Tax on cultural activities levied in 2012 by the Partido Popular, popular theatre has flourished alongside the Spanish democratic revolution, from the 15M to the 2015 municipal elections and beyond. This article highlights how new, non-traditional theatre spaces function as counterhegemonic sites of encounter that share characteristics with the 15M assemblies in terms of their ability to mobilize affect, foster solidarity and encourage the cognitive mapping necessary to contest neoliberalism. Taking Microteatro por dinero and the Teatro del Barrio as examples, I show how popular theatre frequently stages productions critical of dominant Spanish politics and culture, before concluding with an examination of the appropriation of theatre as a symbol of democracy by Podemos.

The politics of public space: “Un espacio liberado” under the big top

Dialectical Anthropology, 2011

This essay explores the proclamation of a ''liberated space'' as deployed by artists and activists of the NUDEC, Nuevo Nuevo Circo (New New Circus) in Caracas. Operating from a former bullring, these artists collectively interpret and define their terms for liberation, in part through an anti-bullfighting campaign centered on humanism as a political assertion in a venue for the arts. By examining the work of NUDEC in relation to the politics of public space during the first decade of the twenty-first century, certain parallels can be drawn between the New New Circus and the nation.

Spaces of Affect: The Political Anatomy of Contemporary Fandango Performance in Mexico

This paper discusses the little-known Mexican music of huapango arribeño with attention to its topada performance in Xichú, Guanajuato. There, two ensembles engage in both poetic dueling and musical flyting in the town central plaza from dusk until dawn while thousands of spectators ring in the New Year. The poetics that emerge in this space, it is argued, animate stories and affective desires of connection and recognition that grow sharply political in relation to the present fraught political context in which its audience and practitioners are positioned. In pursuit of this claim, this paper directly links the poetic and musical anatomy of the topada space of vernacular performance to the necessary invocation of (counter) publics that ultimately receive and absorb the circulation of situated knowledges-a reflexive poesis of enactment and reception that sustains the space of fandango performance.

Bodies and Spaces of Feminicidio: Feminist Performance Artivism in Mexico

Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies , 2021

This article explores how the radical work of women performance artists and collectives in Mexico challenge and transform the injustices that shape everyday life. It particularly looks at the work and career of Lorena Wolffer, a Mexico-city based feminist performance artist who, for over twenty years, created interventions in order to intersect political activism with performance. Furthermore, it investigates how Wolffer’s particular artivism and radical feminist performance create feministic performance praxis in Mexico that centers on solidarity, listening, and a collective consciousness rather than on the victimized body. These activist performance interventions, especially those staged within heavily traversed public city-spaces, also hold the power of engaging the public by turning the passive passersby into an active witness who can recognize and begin understanding violence against women as a systemic, national problem.

Dearq 26. Foto-etnografía y compromiso político: Estudio de las subversiones performativas del espacio público * Photo-ethnography and Political Engagement: Studying performative subversions of public space

Como resultado del desarrollo de tecnologías digitales, la producción, edición y publicación de fotografías está plenamente incorporada a nuestra vida diaria. Cotidianamente, usamos las imá- genes como lenguaje para describir, comentar, interpretar, reír, cautivar o ridiculizar a otros. Sin embargo, se ha prestado poca atención a la forma en que estas tecnologías se han incorporado a los métodos de investigación. La palabra sigue siendo la fuente hegemónica de los códigos y de las categorías usadas para analizar y debatir en la comunidad académica. Durante nuestra investigación sobre prácticas performativas descubrimos en el Desfile del Orgullo Gay de Santia- go un fenómeno visual que es imposible de describir sólo con palabras. Esto nos llevó a abordar metodológicamente nuestro campo de estudio utilizando el diseño, los medios digitales y foto- grafías. Creemos que un fenómeno eminentemente visual, como la apropiación performativa de los espacios públicos, debe ser estudiado con un método que preserve la riqueza del espectáculo y que permita la coherencia narrativa.