The 2018 Michael Baptista Lecture: Activism, Archives and Performance: Commemorating 40 Years of CERLAC

The 2018 Michael Baptista Lecture:
Activism, Archives and Performance: Commemorating 40 Years of CERLAC
The 2018 Baptista Lecture commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean with a talk by performance studies scholar Diana Taylor. The lecture will be preceded by a panel highlighting CERLAC’s record in supporting activism in the region over the past 40 years, with a particular focus on the CERLAC archives and their uses for understanding activism in Latin America.
Reception to follow.
‘Making Presence’: Regina José Galindo, Earth (2013)
Is performing testimony, testimony? In Earth (2013), Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo performs an event recounted by survivors of genocide at the trial of the ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt. The archival testimony tells of how people were forced to dig a massive pit and then stand in front of it to facilitate their execution and internment by the armed forces. The performance does not cite or allude to the testimony nor to the criminal acts that led up to it. So, my question: what does the performance do or transmit? Does it expose? Denounce? Bear witness? Or is the performance itself a Diana Taylor form of testimony?