Documentation of a performance at SQUASH EDITIONS, Mexico City 2016.
The squash court in which the performance takes place becomes the perfect scenario to stage the idea of politics as play, a game that messes with pre-established rules. The vacuousness of politicans’ gestures is clear: hand movements are repeated incessantly, they become accelerated and they slow down – they turn into signs that signify nothing. The failed transmission of gestures and voice alike is reinforced by the microphones placed in the exhibition space which are actually sculptures made of domestic materials. Their stands are made of water pipes and the microphones are utensils incapable of transmitting the voice: hairbrushes, dish and toilet brushes, aluminum fibers, and scourers. If the image archive generated in Los gestos Muertos (The dead gestures) refers to politics as a practice predominantly executed by men, the sculptures – a maladroit exercise of assemblage art and bricolage – conversely point to a predominantly female practice: domestic labor. The sum of all elements – the choreography and the sculptures – emphasises a great number of fractures, its mise en scène points as well to the absent voice.
Credits: Choreography created in collaboration with choreographer Andrea Chirinos and dancer Emiliano Cruz. Curated by Fabiola Iza.