Web cuadernos on-line. Curations of multimedia materials focused on particular topics or bodies of work relating to performance and politics in the Americas.



by students of the Political Performance course at NYU, 2004
This site evolved from a course examining the use of performance—by the State, by oppositional groups, and by theatre and performance practitioners—to solidify or challenge structures of power. We look at specific paradigms of power (conquest, colonionialsm, fascism, military dictatorship, globalization) of the 20th and 21st Centuries. How have public spectacles been used to support or contest state power? How do theatrical terms such as ‘catharsis,’ ‘mimesis,’ ‘identification,’ ‘spectatorship,’ and so on, serve to elucidate political strategies? And how has language changed so that words such as “freedom” could refer to invasion, “patriot” (as in “Patriot Act”) become shorthand for blind allegiance, and intelligence gathering be demoted to unintelligible “chatter? 

"REPASOS" is multimedia, 'hypertext' piece which studies the inherent relationship between art and politics (and between art and life) in Agusto Pinochet's Chile. Through personal interviews with artists, performers, writers, and musueum and gallery directors, the project tells the story of the Escena Avanzada and the CADA ("Colectivo Acciones de Arte") -- two groups of artists and intellectuals who stayed in Chile during the years of military rule and "dared to gamble on a form of creativity."

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