Exchange Talk: Geographies of Political Performance in Times of Protest - Bodies-Territories-Stages

In the face of authoritarian repression: How do social protests and performative political actions in the city intertwine to generate and regenerate spaces of hope through conviviality, carnivalization, and laughter?

In 2022, Peruvian police assassinated dozens of people. The streets of Lima became a stage of daily acts of resistance. Political performances by artists had a mutually intertwined relationship with the protest movements of which they were a part, creating symbolic and carnival-like spaces of conviviality on ephemeral stages that emerged and dissipated according to the collective presence of protesters/audiences and artists/performers. The presence of the artists’ bodies in playful and spectacular actions were important stimuli for the appearance of spatial focal points of resistance and a construction of political meaning that disrupted the control of public space by state actors. They intensified the performativity of surrounding bodies by inaugurating participatory rituals and representation games. Their expressive freedom existed in dramatic contrast to the police repression they faced, lending themselves to a symbolic carnivalization of power.

How do we use the frameworks of Performance Studies to consider the stages, actors and actions that emerge in political protests? How do actual performances by artists weave into these contexts?

Leonor Estrada Francke is an interdisciplinary artist from Lima, Peru. She works across genres, creating live-art that is political and visceral, documentary and surrealist. She is currently fixated on the brutality of contemporary western coloniality, the braid of power and the impossibility of forgiveness, while she attempts to constantly rebirth hope as an active verb. She is also interested in the rise of authoritarianism, anticolonialism, feminism and the city.

Leonor is a founding member of Sonqo Ruro, a collective that makes anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist and anti-colonial political performance and arts pedagogy on topics related to memory and the body-territory.