It is better not to talk about certain things

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I presented this performance together with Gigi Scotellaro at the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center for Memory in the framework of the collective show of the Colectivo Nadie Olvida Nada. The purpose was the reactivation of memory in relation to the detainees who disappeared during the last argentine military dictatorship. I was interested in pointing out the way in which these facts were covered up by bureaucracy, concealment, laundering, destroying, murder; But my interest was also that through performance we could actuate the drawing of that veil, making it appear, bringing a body to life and doing this collectively.

So I used a typewriter, a symbol of bureaucracy, but hung on my body as if it were an accordion in which the sounds of horror could be typed, at the same time that I moved throughout space. Scotellaro used the roller and a work bucket full of paint, with which she was covering me, hiding me. Thus distorting my features, silencing my skin, slowing my movements. I then offered a cloth to those present so they could clean me. After several people approached, one of them put my hands on the typewriter and made me type. That gesture told me that the performance was over. But the footprints remained as a trace of the event.

Insist with presence to activate memory

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PLACE

Haroldo Conti Cultural Center of Memory. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires,

DATE

November 2014

CURATOR

Hugo O. Masoero

PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD

Paulo Scarlato