This performance-lecture explores somatic knowledge in the context of postmemorial art. Postmemory, as described by Marianne Hirsch, characterises a generation that are effected but distanced from the experiences of the generation that came before them. It accounts for the legacies of trauma that are transferred across bodies. Hirsch’s account of postmemory proposes that through testimony trauma might be transferred, where the listener is emotionally implicated. However, the process of transference is often discussed as though it is a disembodied discourse; focusing on testimony in its spoken or written forms.
The performance recontextualises, reorganises, and reproduces choreographies of trauma as a process that might illuminate the physical experiences (and transference) of postmemory. Focusing on the artist’s own experience and attempting to articulate her own subjectivity within a Latin American diaspora. This is distinct from an attempt to learn a cultural ‘origin’ through traditional familial lineages, instead, this is a conscious embodying of the performative language of a ‘diaspora identity’.
Presentations
Weimar International Performance Art Festival ‘Kaffee Kuchen-Action Art III: Holding Space – Räume Bergen’ | Curated by Marie Künne and Marcel Spartan (Performance Netzwerk Thüringen) | Stellwerk Theater, Germany (2018)
MCA ARTBAR ‘Continuation’ | Curated by Hoda Afshar | Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2018)
SAM Seminar Lecture Series ‘Bodies That Remember: Performance, Power and Community’ | Curated by Michael Richardson | Io Myers Studio UNSW, Sydney (2018)
Photography: Vincent Cramer
