Performance art in times of pandemia is a light at the end of a tunnel that stretches to infinity. It is an answer to a question not yet asked. It is a question answered in smoke signals and morse code.
Performance is an irreverent response to the expansiveness of a reality we desperately seek to define.
Performance is the reliving of body and mind traumas that have traveled over land and sea to rest within us. It is the exercise of allowing what resides in our bones and flesh to find a language of its own. It is the physical manifestation of that which is voiceless in our psyches.
Performance is the casting out of shadows and demons, only to welcome them back in again. It is the vital life sign of the ephemeral state of consciousness. It is the particles of solar flare reaching out into the parallel universes of how we do and do not relate.
Performance is an affront to the sensibilities of a world that has lost its senses. Performance is a method of reasoning in a world rejecting reason. Performance also has no sensibilities or reason.
Performance is the decolonization of the promises of life, liberty and happiness marked return to sender. It is an affirmation that our politicized bodies still exist between realms, between screens, between our own limitations.
Performance is a body that has transmuted its physical form. It is a collection of galaxies orbiting in unpredictability. It is the smell of a ripe guanabana, or the smoothness of a stone rolled against the sand. It is the passing of energy between a wild thought and a focused practice.
Performance in times of pandemia holds unspeakable power and necessity. It is a call of the deep rooted fears within us to be identified. It is the ritualistic primal ground brought to a digital age. Performance is the gestalt of time, actions, words, objects, spaces, and the body – without any one of these, performance no longer exists.
Or does it?