Topics Seminar:

Catalog description

In Argentina in 1977, a group of mothers whose children had been "disappeared" by the military dictatorship began to march in front of the presidential palace, holding large pictures of their missing children; those marches continue to this day. In 2003, the Guatemalan artist Regina Galindo created a piece meant to remind the public of the genocidal killings in Guatemala’s internal civil war; in Who Can Erase the Traces? (Quién puede borrar las huellas?), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. In 2019, the Chilean collective #lastesis performed a short dance condemning sexual violence against women, a dance then shared online and performed by thousands of women across the globe. What do holding a picture, walking, and dancing in these examples have in common? Each functions as a political gesture — a codified way of using the body to interrupt everyday life and pose a public challenge, demand, or critique in relation to abuses of power. In a world where many people participate in political protest by signing online petitions, we consider the enduring and unique role played by physical actions in public space, whether these happen under the aegis of activism or art. Like dance scholar Susan Leigh Foster, we approach the body as “articulate matter” and ask how political gestures signify. How do they establish relationships with the public (at times an unwitting or unwilling public), and how do such gestures directly impact the social and physical context? We read the work of artists and activists, and consider cases drawn across Latin America, from the 1960s to the present, allowing a broad comparative approach.