Is Performing Testimony, Testimony?

• In Event: Invited Session - Precarious Practices: Division, Space, and the Body in Latin American Theatre and Performance

Abstract

In EARTH (2014) Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo performs an event recounted by survivors of genocide at the trial of the ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. The 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?

Author

• Diana Taylor, New York University