The aims of this research have been: To create images and sculptures and explore their use in performative actions; To conduct a practice-based research project that examines how representations of human violence are explored through performance, while maintaining ethical value in aesthetic perception; and To develop a methodology in performance art through which I express my work as practice and the use of myself as a participant.
These aims have been informed by the blurring of perceptions of space, authenticity,
and notions of the global and local; by designing a theoretical framework informed by
the concept of ‘Capitalismo Gore’; by traversing a methodology that juxtaposes the
performer with images of violence from Mexico, situates the performer as a locus of
tension between two different communities (Mexican and British), and engulfs the
performer in affective responses to Mexican victims of violence.
This art-practice based research is supported by a theoretical framework that refers
to the term ‘Capitalismo Gore’ as the most relevant philosophical reference to
address the narrative of extreme violence happening in Mexico during the war on
drugs (Valencia, 2008).
This art practice invites the readers to traverse a self-narrative constructed with
feedback gathered from the audience and dialogues with artists and curators of a set
of performance art methodologies. These performance art methodologies juxtapose
the artist-scholar with images of violence from Mexico. Moreover, the affects
produced by these performances have been transformed into visual documentation,
some of them in the form of zines. Booklets are a simple way to show images and to
distribute them among a wider audience. They are easy to transport and can be
displayed in galleries, libraries, art fairs, book fairs.
They demonstrate an important testimony for this research, situated as it is between
two cultures, Mexican and British. The overall methodology not only appropriates performance methods such as Ewa
Partum’s active poetry, but it also introduces them into an academic context and
regenerates them by replacing Partum’s performance symbols with different symbols.
The development of art practice-based research emphasises the need to avoid
situating the performer in the place of the victims. It seeks at some moments to place
the performer next to them, sharing part of their distress and hope through
performance artistic practices and its documentation.
The research has generated exploratory insights through the spatial aspect of my
artistic practice, the spaces in which the performances occurred and the spaces
generated by these performances
