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Scenographic Research
Santiago (en) Vivo: Documentary Based on Street Performances at the Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil (Chile)
Santiago (en) Vivo or Santiago (a) Live, is a documentary that explores the scenographic permeability of Santiago, Chile, during the street performances of the Festival Internacional de Teatro Santiago a Mil (FITAM) between 2012 and 2015. Santiago (a) Live elucidates how site and spectators ultimately inform the construction of meaning of theatrical events, by incorporating the contextual urban space in which the performances are situated. The documentary covers five years of interviews with practitioners from multiple countries, such as Chile, Peru, Spain, France, and Poland, and footage of over twenty street performances, including walkabouts, processions, and sound journeys from different companies, such as Clowns the Shakespeare, (Brazil), La Patriotico Interesante, (Chile), Compagnie Off, (France), and Antigua I Barbuda, (Spain), among others. Running time:40 minutes, Language: Spanish, English subtitles available.
Academic Talks and Publication
Conference Paper
Performing Rage: " El Violador en tú Camino” (A Rapist in Your Path) Feminist Scenic Barricade, Public Space Intervention by Las Tesis Collective. IFTR TAWG
This paper focuses on an analysis of the intersections between scenography, public site and political activism through the study of the international-performance-phenomena: El Violador en tú Camino (The Rapist in Your Path), created by Las Tesis, a Chilean artistic feminist collective, in response to the 2019-government violence in the Latin American country of Chile. At first created as a part of an urban intervention collective convened by Barricadas Escénicas a Performing Art organization in Valparaíso, Chile. And answering to the local situation of the country both the endemic sexual violence and the particular police brutality against protesters since the October 2019 Estallido social (social outburst) in the country. El violador en tú Camino performance, has been performed in key locations in multiples cities and languages around the world. The lyrics that was inspired in the work of the Latin American feminist Anthropologist Rita Laura Segato, can be clearly heard in the stanza “and the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed” where the text explicitly shifts the responsibility from the victim to the perpetrator. The black attire of the performers is usually paired with red painted lips and with black tulle blind fold. The blindfold is utilized to indicate mourning for the victims of sexual assault and police violence specifically the more than three hundred victims of eye injury and loss of sight during the Chilean social outburst. The choreography composed of straightforward in-place-movements reveals simultaneously a grounded individual female body acting as one in a bigger collective; the hand gestures that accompany the movement directly engage their surroundings contextualizing the performance to its city’s local sites of power such as justice department (Santiago, Washington DC), police headquarters( New York, Madrid) government buildings Sidney, Istanbul) and places of social gathering (Barcelona, Paris, Berlin) Inscribing the flash mob as site-oriented performance spatially located within an international-local-audience and, thereby, resonating throughout the world as a local issue. “The Rapist is You”, subverts the sites of institutional power that intervenes by reclaiming them as their own with their local performers; thus, manipulating their local social-fabric to create history with their bodies. Key Words: Scenography, City, Social Media, Gender, Activism, Scene Barricade
The object tells the truth: Baquedano’s statue as a witness for social change at Plaza Dignidad, Santiago, Chile. Were are we PQ symposium
This talk focuses on an object-oriented aesthetic of resistance analysis of the changes undergone by Baquedano’s statue, a Chilean cavalry-war hero monument, at the public site of Plaza Dignidad in the capital of Santiago within the context of the Chilean social outburst on October 18th 2019, which is ongoing. The plaza where the statue was placed was the epicenter or zona cero of the confrontation between the Chilean people and the police (carabineros) and it became in itself an icon of resistance for ephemeral interventions, such as a full paint coat, addition of flag and symbols of different social and political groups, and appropriation of its rider to represent various ethnic and social groups, as well as specific personalities, provoking its removal on March 13, 2021. I argue that Baquedano’s statue is a non-human actor that through its mutations developed its own agency as a performing object that is simultaneously an activist, a confrontationist, and a social media influencer. I analysed the statue’s ability to co-construct meaning within the Chilean social fabric and the aesthetics of resistance from a scenographic and site-oriented lens in order to elucidate its relationships as a performing object and space-character within the plaza taking into account the layering of the public site, its social memory and architectural history, and how from this entanglement the statue claims not only its agency but proposes new utopian futures, becoming a non-human actor of change.
Key words: Chilean Outburst, Object Agency, Public Space, Scenographic, Site Specific, Social Media, Urban Architecture, Urban Futures, and Worlding.
Report from ... Santiago Street theatre and the scenographic gaze: Santiago a mil international festival, January 2018: la gran fiesta del teatro (the great theatrical party
Theatre and Performance Design is an international peer-reviewed journal of scenography. Publishing innovative artistic practice alongside theoretical research, the journal critically evaluates the effect of scenography on the aesthetics and politics of performance and facilitates dialogue amongst practitioners, scholars, and audience.
The journal will publish articles on all aspects of design for performance in the fields of:
· theatre, opera, dance, music theatre, site-specific, immersive and virtual theatre's, spatial design and architecture
In addition to peer-reviewed articles and visual essays the journal engages with the practicalities of construction and production by considering the impact of new materials, techniques, and technologies on the process and realization of the performance event.
Fellowship, College of the Environment. Theme: Ecocentrism: Valuing the Other. Research Project: Street Performance Contemporary Objects Project: The self and the automaton. 2018
Reaching Your Audience: Shifting National Identity Mirrored in Street Performances of the Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil, Chile, essay." In Anthropocentrism versus Ecocentrism – Valuing the Other”, coexplore 2019
The Ballerina: An Interview with Jordà Ferré, founder and co-director of the Mechanical Theater Company Antigua i Barbuda" In Anthropocentrism versus Ecocentrism" In Anthropocentrism versus Ecocentrism – Valuing the Other”, coexplore 2019
City as Site: Street Performance and Site Permeability
during the Santiago a Mil Theater Festival, Chile, 2012-2015
Scenography Expanded is a foundational text offering readers a thorough introduction to contemporary performance design, both in and beyond the theatre. It examines the potential of the visual, spatial, technological, material and environmental aspects of performance to shape performative encounters. It analyses examples of scenography as sites of imaginative exchange and transformative experience and it discusses the social, political and ethical dimensions of performance design. The international range of contributors and case studies provide clear perspectives on why scenographic design has become a central consideration for performance makers today. (Bloomsbury Website)
City, Site and Memory: Santiago Through the Lens of Street Performance. Center for the Humanities Lecture Series “Matter That Matters.” Wesleyan University, 2015
A city is a layered site used and lived by many. It is a space where everything has multiple meanings: a building serves as a destination for some and a metaphor for others. Public spaces become overcrowded with the ghosts of politics, old and current. The city where street performances are enacted becomes a permeable scenographic space by incorporating its characteristics into a given production's dramaturgy. Here I analyze the exchange that occurs between street performances featured at Festival Internacional Santiago a Mil between 2012 and 2015 and the public sites they occupy. I show how the exchange between audience and site promotes the blurring of the audience — performer space, by reclaiming the performative qualities of a given urban space for the community
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