Abstract

Friday June 03, 2022 @2pm - 3:30pm CT

A Performance Lecture

For more than a year, like most artists around the globe, I worked from my living quarters. First, in New York City when the pandemic hit in 2020, and later -thinking that I would be better off- in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 2021.  Though there were instances when it was possible to do something out in the open field, most of my presentations were created and relegated to the format of the screen. This lecture and performance take as a point of departure the embodiment of isolation and the disembodiment of physical connection with other bodies and with the territory, the space where a performance artist delivers his/her actions and establishes a presence.

My reluctance to engage in any virtual performative program and the convalescence I had to endure for the first months of 2021, were superseded by the strong need to activate my body and to engage again in performance art despite the restrictions for presential events imposed by governments and institutions around the world. Clinching my teeth, I accepted the first invitation to an online performance program, and delivered a 3 minutes piece.  The experience motivated me to do more presentations, explore digital space, create more work and organize four mayor programs working with artists from various continents.  

As a lecture, PERFORMING & CONFINEMENT addresses concerns about physicality, energy, tele-presence, and notions of transmission or projection of Self through the digital realm framed by the space of the screen. My investigation and praxis in what I call tele-performances or zoom-performances (alluding to that specific application used widely in the past couple of years) has led me to elaborate a theory about somatic energy and the buffering of physical activity through the bits and streams of data used by present day communications and media technologies. Some of the questions: Can performance art be the same in a non-physical world? Can performance artists project the same energy on the screen? Can audiences connect with a tele-performance? Can the public engage or become participant of a zoom performance ?, among many more will be addressed based on my own experience as an artist presenting my own work, as organizer creating online programs and festivals, and as curator engaging in dialogue and reflection about performance art and working in confinement.

As a performative lecture, PERFORMING & CONFINEMENT consists of a number of designated actions to be executed by the selected participants over a period of time. Using the platform Zoom, participants will experiment with notions of somatic closeness, corporal energy, and digital projection.  This experience is not to create a performance work, but to test the limits of action-based work where the body (rather than an object or objects) is the main instrument of creation and observation. This experience is divided in 2 sections: the first one determined by actions given a set of instructions, and the second is dedicated to dialogue, discussion, and sharing of the experience.