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.

Date: Thursday, November 8, 2018
Time: 2:00pm to 5:30pm
Place: Joseph G. Green Theater (Centre for Film and Theater) York University
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 exdictator 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 form of testimony?
Program –
2:00-3:45 Panel on the CERLAC 40th Anniversary and the CERLAC Archives
Introductions

Alan Durston (CERLAC Director)
Celia Haig-Brown (Associate Vice-President Research, York University)

Reflections from Early CERLAC directors

Alan Simmons (Sociology, York University)
Liisa North (Politics, York University)

Activism and the Latin American Working Group Collection

Luis van Isschot (History, University of Toronto)
Zoe Heyn-Jones (Postdoctoral Fellow, Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas)

Discussion: 3:25-3:45
3:45-4:00 Break (Fireside Lounge, with Zoe Heyn-Jones exhibit al lado, afuera. // beside, outside.)
4:00-5:30 Keynote by Diana Taylor

Laura Levin (Theatre and Performance Studies, York University)
Diana Taylor (Performance Studies and Spanish, New York University): “‘Making Presence’: Regina José Galindo, Earth (2013)”

Discussion
5:30-6:30 Reception (Fireside Lounge)