Cities | Bodies | Action: The Politics of Passion in the Americas

Photo: alvaro villalobos

8th Encuentro

Universidade de São Paulo
SESC Vila Mariana
SP Escola de Teatro

January 12-19, 2013
São Paulo, Brazil

The 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute sought to examine the broad intersections between urban space, performance and political/artistic action in the Americas. From the critical poetics of body art to the occupation of public space by social movements, the event invited participants to explore the borders, identities and practices through which subjectivities, hegemonies and counter-hegemonies are constructed in the spaces of the city and beyond. We were particularly interested in the ways in which bodies both interpellate and are interpellated, mobilize and are mobilized, by and around the diverse and complex "passions" that are so defining of our globalized and mediatized present—fear, hatred, disenchantment, hope and faith, among others. We sought to investigate, collectively, the strategies through which bodies (individual, social and political) make themselves present and intervene aesthetic conventions, social formations and political structures in their search to create new meanings and new modes of sociality. These themes served as the point of departure for a vast array of performances, exhibits, roundtables, workshops, lectures and work groups.