Conference Presentations by Marina Barsy Janer
2023. Conferencia "Minar el museo: ¿es posible una curaduría descolonial y feminista?" para el cu... more 2023. Conferencia "Minar el museo: ¿es posible una curaduría descolonial y feminista?" para el curso Arte, género y colonialidad presentado en la librería La Central del Raval (Barcelona).
2018. Taula Vórtex, Feminismes al segle XXI. Bòlit Centre d’Art Contemporani, Girona, España.
Presented at the Art History Department, University of Essex. 2015.
Presentación para el ‘Foro Permanente de Performance’, Programa de Estudio de Mujer y Género de l... more Presentación para el ‘Foro Permanente de Performance’, Programa de Estudio de Mujer y Género de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras. (2014)
Discusión de procesos, reflexiones y cuestionamientos a partir de la performance ‘(De) Colonial Reconquista’ convocada y producida por Marina Barsy Janer. La presentación tuvo un enfoque particular en las políticas jurídicas del cuerpo a nivel nacional develadas en esta performance y sus procesos.
Contó además con la participación y perspectivas de dos colaboradoras del proyecto, Angelí Vélez y Rosa Janer Aponte, mujeres de la comunidad convocada, cada una con los derechos de autoría sobre una letra de la palabra tatuada en la piel de la artista.
Ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Djrsx9pCI
Presented on June 2014 in the work group 'MANIF-FIESTA: Festive Mobilizations, Movements and Prot... more Presented on June 2014 in the work group 'MANIF-FIESTA: Festive Mobilizations, Movements and Protest' as part of the IX Hemispheric Institute Encuentro: 'MANIFEST! Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas' at Concordia University, Montréal, Québec.
The constant body-transformations of performer Freddie Mercado penetrate the colonial Puerto Rican public sphere from the transit through the streets to the art scenarios and events. Freddie’s body serves as the working ground for presenting an alternative embodiment through a costuming of the self that includes the animal, the transvestite, the monstrous and the inanimate. These carnivalesque proposals of encounter are inscribed in the everyday life, allowing a mirroring of the viewer who gazes at him/her/it and is reflected by his/her/its fluctuating proposal of otherness. This paper presents an analysis on the encounter with Freddie by engaging in a personal sensorial experience and then broadening into a cultural reading of his interventions of carnival life in the quotidian.
Paper presented as the introduction to 'MIND THE GAP: performative-symposium' held on firstsite c... more Paper presented as the introduction to 'MIND THE GAP: performative-symposium' held on firstsite contemporary visual arts centre, May 2013.
The symposium's curatorial thesis explores performance art tendencies through the presentation and study of performance art from Puerto Rico, featuring live and virtual performances by three artists -Aravind Adyanthaya, Awilda Sterling and Deborah Hunt- and discussion by speakers from the University of Essex and Goldsmiths, University of London.
By assembling the speech of the speakers with the performance act, ‘MIND THE GAP’ seeks to question the ontological narrative of the performance act itself in regards to the performance’s inscription into history through the action of its writing.
See: http://www.escala.org.uk/events/film-performances/mind-the-gap-performative-symposium
Publications by Marina Barsy Janer
A conversation in relation to the durational performance "Border Movement...[Grensbewegung...movi... more A conversation in relation to the durational performance "Border Movement...[Grensbewegung...movimiento fronterizo...]" by Marina Barsy Janer in collaboration with Caro Ley.
Chapter co-authored together with Caro Ley, Andrea Zitlau, Pia
Wiegmink and Denise Uyehara.
Chapter VI of "American Cultures as Transnational Performance: Commons, Skills, Traces", Katrin Horn, Leopold Lippert, Ilka Saal & Pia
Wiegmink (eds.)
London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367501310.
ESPACE art actuel, 2019
Contemporary artists have worked through the concept of destruction
employing it as a medium to d... more Contemporary artists have worked through the concept of destruction
employing it as a medium to dismantle the established order, thus
redesigning relations of power and affect. Where the state’s power
or performance has used destruction for its machinery of control,
artists have used various techniques of counter-destruction. Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong’o speaks of enactments of power in the struggle between
the power of performance in the arts and the state’s performance
of power: “The state has its areas of performance; so has the artist.
While the state performs power, the power of the artist is solely in
the performance.” Contemporary artists have used the possibility
of destruction as a means for social and/or individual change, with
the aim of questioning and reshaping the relations involved.
Performance Research, 2019
This article looks at how Puerto Rican visual artist Freddie Mercado, in his performances, uses d... more This article looks at how Puerto Rican visual artist Freddie Mercado, in his performances, uses dolls as an agentic catalyst for contesting otherness. Influenced by an Afro-Caribbean worldview, his methods for treating and relating to dolls are grounded in decolonial relations and spiritual beliefs that have survived past and current colonization processes in Puerto Rico. Mercado mirrors himself in the so-called inanimate, rendering it alive as a possibility of constant metamorphosis as well as using it as a tactics for survival. The identification process in Mercado is both a creative act and a transformative path. Mercado’s dolls allow for a fluidity of identity to emerge through a performative repertoire. By ‘becoming doll’ Mercado addresses, directly, the violence inflicted on Puerto Rican bodies by colonial objectification strategies, while, at the same time, refocusing the fixity of the Western subject--object relation.
Revista FRONTERAS, 2018
La performance BORDER MOVEMENT… [Grenzbewegung… / movimiento fronterizo…] es presentada, descrita... more La performance BORDER MOVEMENT… [Grenzbewegung… / movimiento fronterizo…] es presentada, descrita y analizada desde una perspectiva que fluctúa entre la primera persona y la tercera. La acción fronteriza se investiga desde su entorno geopolítico junto a los distintos “espectadores” de la acción, la relación entre la creación de la frontera junto a su sanación a través de los 2 cuerpos femeninos presentes y las implicaciones de este proceso que continúa vivo en la piel. Las relaciones fronterizas se develan entre los cuerpos y se concibe el terreno corporal como geografía afectiva y social.
Palabras clave: cuerpo-geografía, performance, frontera, piel
The performance BORDER MOVEMENT... [Grenzbewegung… / movimiento fronterizo…] is presented, described and analysed from a perspective that fluctuates between the first person and the third person. The border action is investigated from its geopolitical reality together with the different "spectators" of the action, the relationship between the creation of the border together with its healing through the 2 female bodies present and the implications of this process that continues to be alive in the skin. Border relations are revealed between the bodies and the corporal terrain is conceived as affective and social geography.
Keywords: body-geography, performance, border, skin
Exhibition Catalogue by Marina Barsy Janer
Connecting Through Collecting: 20 Years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex, 2014
Published in the exhibition catalogue of 'Connecting Through Collecting: 20 Years of Art from Lat... more Published in the exhibition catalogue of 'Connecting Through Collecting: 20 Years of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex', September-December 2014.
Thesis Chapters by Marina Barsy Janer
Research Repository_University of Essex, 2018
In this research I explore artivist performance proposals that lead to an analysis of the spectat... more In this research I explore artivist performance proposals that lead to an analysis of the spectator position intrinsic to the spectatorial, as a construction linked to colonial discourses of otherness. This investigation presents the encountering processes of the transnational troupe of La Pocha Nostra and the Puerto Rican persona of Freddie Mercado with their respective spectators, where local-global constructs of coloniality become unveiled, made and unmade spectacle through their re-reproduction of otherness. Side by side with performance art-life, I explore the deconstruction and de-linking possibilities of the spectatorial taking the work of these artists to build and develop the dilemmas and alternatives presented. From these complex hyper-othering performance practices I research the social implications on the spectatorial at a local and global level. The artistic proposals discussed are focused under the decolonial lens and researched as practices that make possible the co-creation of decolonial relationalities. I focus in the trans-possibility these ‘other’ encounters produce and are produced by. This work inserts the issue of the spectator within broader social concerns and it is under this umbrella that the ‘question’ of the Other arises within the mechanisms of the modern spectacle. These artistic practices exert diverse tactics that directly imply the figure of the spectator within this social configuration.
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Conference Presentations by Marina Barsy Janer
Discusión de procesos, reflexiones y cuestionamientos a partir de la performance ‘(De) Colonial Reconquista’ convocada y producida por Marina Barsy Janer. La presentación tuvo un enfoque particular en las políticas jurídicas del cuerpo a nivel nacional develadas en esta performance y sus procesos.
Contó además con la participación y perspectivas de dos colaboradoras del proyecto, Angelí Vélez y Rosa Janer Aponte, mujeres de la comunidad convocada, cada una con los derechos de autoría sobre una letra de la palabra tatuada en la piel de la artista.
Ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Djrsx9pCI
The constant body-transformations of performer Freddie Mercado penetrate the colonial Puerto Rican public sphere from the transit through the streets to the art scenarios and events. Freddie’s body serves as the working ground for presenting an alternative embodiment through a costuming of the self that includes the animal, the transvestite, the monstrous and the inanimate. These carnivalesque proposals of encounter are inscribed in the everyday life, allowing a mirroring of the viewer who gazes at him/her/it and is reflected by his/her/its fluctuating proposal of otherness. This paper presents an analysis on the encounter with Freddie by engaging in a personal sensorial experience and then broadening into a cultural reading of his interventions of carnival life in the quotidian.
The symposium's curatorial thesis explores performance art tendencies through the presentation and study of performance art from Puerto Rico, featuring live and virtual performances by three artists -Aravind Adyanthaya, Awilda Sterling and Deborah Hunt- and discussion by speakers from the University of Essex and Goldsmiths, University of London.
By assembling the speech of the speakers with the performance act, ‘MIND THE GAP’ seeks to question the ontological narrative of the performance act itself in regards to the performance’s inscription into history through the action of its writing.
See: http://www.escala.org.uk/events/film-performances/mind-the-gap-performative-symposium
Publications by Marina Barsy Janer
Chapter co-authored together with Caro Ley, Andrea Zitlau, Pia
Wiegmink and Denise Uyehara.
Chapter VI of "American Cultures as Transnational Performance: Commons, Skills, Traces", Katrin Horn, Leopold Lippert, Ilka Saal & Pia
Wiegmink (eds.)
London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367501310.
employing it as a medium to dismantle the established order, thus
redesigning relations of power and affect. Where the state’s power
or performance has used destruction for its machinery of control,
artists have used various techniques of counter-destruction. Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong’o speaks of enactments of power in the struggle between
the power of performance in the arts and the state’s performance
of power: “The state has its areas of performance; so has the artist.
While the state performs power, the power of the artist is solely in
the performance.” Contemporary artists have used the possibility
of destruction as a means for social and/or individual change, with
the aim of questioning and reshaping the relations involved.
Palabras clave: cuerpo-geografía, performance, frontera, piel
The performance BORDER MOVEMENT... [Grenzbewegung… / movimiento fronterizo…] is presented, described and analysed from a perspective that fluctuates between the first person and the third person. The border action is investigated from its geopolitical reality together with the different "spectators" of the action, the relationship between the creation of the border together with its healing through the 2 female bodies present and the implications of this process that continues to be alive in the skin. Border relations are revealed between the bodies and the corporal terrain is conceived as affective and social geography.
Keywords: body-geography, performance, border, skin
Exhibition Catalogue by Marina Barsy Janer
Thesis Chapters by Marina Barsy Janer
Discusión de procesos, reflexiones y cuestionamientos a partir de la performance ‘(De) Colonial Reconquista’ convocada y producida por Marina Barsy Janer. La presentación tuvo un enfoque particular en las políticas jurídicas del cuerpo a nivel nacional develadas en esta performance y sus procesos.
Contó además con la participación y perspectivas de dos colaboradoras del proyecto, Angelí Vélez y Rosa Janer Aponte, mujeres de la comunidad convocada, cada una con los derechos de autoría sobre una letra de la palabra tatuada en la piel de la artista.
Ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Djrsx9pCI
The constant body-transformations of performer Freddie Mercado penetrate the colonial Puerto Rican public sphere from the transit through the streets to the art scenarios and events. Freddie’s body serves as the working ground for presenting an alternative embodiment through a costuming of the self that includes the animal, the transvestite, the monstrous and the inanimate. These carnivalesque proposals of encounter are inscribed in the everyday life, allowing a mirroring of the viewer who gazes at him/her/it and is reflected by his/her/its fluctuating proposal of otherness. This paper presents an analysis on the encounter with Freddie by engaging in a personal sensorial experience and then broadening into a cultural reading of his interventions of carnival life in the quotidian.
The symposium's curatorial thesis explores performance art tendencies through the presentation and study of performance art from Puerto Rico, featuring live and virtual performances by three artists -Aravind Adyanthaya, Awilda Sterling and Deborah Hunt- and discussion by speakers from the University of Essex and Goldsmiths, University of London.
By assembling the speech of the speakers with the performance act, ‘MIND THE GAP’ seeks to question the ontological narrative of the performance act itself in regards to the performance’s inscription into history through the action of its writing.
See: http://www.escala.org.uk/events/film-performances/mind-the-gap-performative-symposium
Chapter co-authored together with Caro Ley, Andrea Zitlau, Pia
Wiegmink and Denise Uyehara.
Chapter VI of "American Cultures as Transnational Performance: Commons, Skills, Traces", Katrin Horn, Leopold Lippert, Ilka Saal & Pia
Wiegmink (eds.)
London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367501310.
employing it as a medium to dismantle the established order, thus
redesigning relations of power and affect. Where the state’s power
or performance has used destruction for its machinery of control,
artists have used various techniques of counter-destruction. Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong’o speaks of enactments of power in the struggle between
the power of performance in the arts and the state’s performance
of power: “The state has its areas of performance; so has the artist.
While the state performs power, the power of the artist is solely in
the performance.” Contemporary artists have used the possibility
of destruction as a means for social and/or individual change, with
the aim of questioning and reshaping the relations involved.
Palabras clave: cuerpo-geografía, performance, frontera, piel
The performance BORDER MOVEMENT... [Grenzbewegung… / movimiento fronterizo…] is presented, described and analysed from a perspective that fluctuates between the first person and the third person. The border action is investigated from its geopolitical reality together with the different "spectators" of the action, the relationship between the creation of the border together with its healing through the 2 female bodies present and the implications of this process that continues to be alive in the skin. Border relations are revealed between the bodies and the corporal terrain is conceived as affective and social geography.
Keywords: body-geography, performance, border, skin