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Hemispheric Digital Constellations

Performing in the Americas

Marcela Fuentes, Author

This page was created by Craig Dietrich.  The last update was by Marcela Fuentes.

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Performances Are Connected

We can study performance practices tracing the genealogies invoked by their agents. We can also draw unexplored connections between similar performatic expressions in different contexts. And, similarly, we can follow the way in which practices that originated in one geopolitical scenario travel from their place of origin to a distant location thus making visible different modes of relationality. Beyond the initial empathic identification of global spectators with a particular local claim, some performances may be adopted by other participants, becoming icons of overarching agendas, such as the critique of globalization, at a transnational scale.

Let me show you an example of how actions that emerge in one context are staged in another scenario, opening up the possibility of a broader use of embodied tactics to stage claims transnationally:

The practice of cacerolazo, the pots and pans protest by which in 2001 the Argentinean people voiced their rejection of the government's compliance with the economic policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund, later became a symbol of anti-globalization sentiment that was replicated digitally through pots and pans banging events held online.

In South America, this performance of popular dissent originated as a literal way of calling attention to the lack of food resulting from misled economic policies. The pots and pans make a disturbing noise as a reminder of the effects of macroeconomic decisions in the domestic space as protestors bang out their condemnation of those in power. Women, who are most often associated with the domestic activity of food preparation, are the main agents of this form of protest. Clanging their pots and pans, these women demonstrate the emptiness of their pots, and consequently, their children’s bellies, as a result of economic policies.

This live, on site protest, based on banging cooking utensils grew into its digital counterpart on the Internet in sites such as cacerolazo.com. The digital version of the cacerolazo is used to announce pots and pans events in different regions of the world, and it is also a space where users can rant about economic policies. At cacerolazo.com, participants can simply post their claims on a board or they can enhance their experience of the "digital rant" by clicking on mp3 files that reproduce different versions of the sound of pots and pans.

While bodily features are absent — protestors' gender, for example— the gesture of striking cooking utensils remains. Even though images of pots and pans simply float against the HTML background, they signal the passage from the domestic to the local and from the local to the global stage. At cacerolazo.com, a digital cacophony brings together different scenarios in the struggle for economic justice.

Actions such as these are important case studies for a reconsideration of the role of embodied agency within online and offline circuits of transmission.
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