It was exciting to launch my gun project with my workgroup, The Gun as Performance, at The 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute, January 12-19, 2013 in São Paulo, Brazil.
Cities | Bodies | Action: The Politics of Passion in the Americas
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, the SESC Vila Mariana, Universidade de São Paulo and the SP Escola de Teatro gathered artists, performers, scholars and activists to submit performances, academic presentations, music, videos, installations, exhibits, activist projects, virtual actions and other proposals that examined the link between performance and politics in the 8th Encuentro.
From the Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro 2013 website: “The 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute sought to examine the broad intersections between urban space, performance and political/artistic action in the Americas. From the critical poetics of body art to the occupation of public space by social movements, the event invited participants to explore the borders, identities and practices through which subjectivities, hegemonies and counter-hegemonies constructed in the spaces of the city and beyond. We were particularly interested in the ways in which bodies both interpellate and are interpellated, mobilize and are mobilized, by and around the diverse and complex “passions” that are so defining of our globalized and mediatized present—fear, hatred, disenchantment, hope and faith, among others. We sought to investigate, collectively, the strategies through which bodies (individual, social and political) make themselves present and intervene aesthetic conventions, social formations and political structures in their search to create new meanings and new modes of sociality. This theme was the point of departure for a vast array of performances, exhibits, roundtables, workshops, lectures and work groups.
Since 2000, our Encuentros have been a point of contact for artists, scholars, students and activists interested in the relationship between performance and politics in the Americas. Each Encuentro brings together 400-600 participants, and is part academic conference, part performance festival, and always completely interdisciplinary. The Encuentro is a space focused on experimentation, dialogue and collaboration.”
