Every Four Years
How does fear impact the way you move? What constitutes movement enforcing fear? What denotes fearless movements? Every Four Years considers how cultures of fear (re)enforce values that form identity through embodiment. It is a performative mediation analyzing ways one (re)inhabits ‘self’ through other cultures at different times and in several places. In this performance place is virtual, physical, and psychological.
The participatory performance lecture considers to what extent is mimesis subversion or reiteration. I analyze parallels and discontinuities between embodying both aggressor and martyr, arguing that this hybridization consolidates fear and fearlessness, therefore, creating another presence or performance quality.
Drawing upon practice-as-research and autoethnographic methodologies I embody an image of a martyr to subvert ideological manipulation by withdrawing the image of spectating death, but supplying sound, minimal text and movement without emotion to create a situation where the spectator can be objective. The goal is to prove objectivity subversive in this context because the repeatability of these (re)inhabitations and the repetition of trauma (changing the action from passivity to activity) can transform an iconic event.
On July 3, 2019 first video artwork in Every Four Years was screened in the group exhibition, Parallel Screens, curated by Brunno Silva at 1805 Gallery. The video artwork commemorates the ten year anniversary of the Green Movement in Iran.
Before the video art was installed in a gallery space it was screened on a rooftop of a hotel in downtown San Diego, California.
Every Four Years is a work-in-progress.