Artistic events, performance and possibilities for imagining otherwise

Keywords: Performance, borders, art, theater, Brazil, Mexico, America, imagination
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper analyzes cultural production and performance that has emerged through and alongside militarized sites of bordering. Such loci have previously been addressed in International Relations through statist frameworks or the ‘territorialist trap’ (Brambilla et al. 2015). However, recent work in Border Studies, “registers the necessity to investigate borders not as taken-for-granted entities exclusively connected to the territorial limits of nation-states, but as mobile, relational and contested sites, thereby exploring alternative border imaginaries” (Brambilla et al. 2015, 2). Furthermore, these works contend that cultural production, performance, and the body illuminate alternate border histories, knowledges, and politics than those made visible by discussions of militarization alone, bringing distinctly variegated meanings to being and thinking on/in borders (Aldama, et. al 2012; Buoli 2015; Gómez-Barris 2018; Rivera-Servera and Young 2011). Building on these literatures, I consider the following: What can performance reveal about the processes that constitute and shape the larger border network? And what can cultural production at and concerning sites of militarized and policed bordering suggest about the ways that each location can be remade, (re)imagined, and expressed through those efforts? To address these concerns, I focus on two distinct forms of cultural production. The first, is a theatre production addressing borders, featuring, but not limited to, the U.S./Mexico border, entitled The Frontera Project. The second, is an exhibition of photography, video, and text addressing the vibrancy and heterogeneity of life in a community demarcated by an internal city boundary—Mare´ from the Inside.