About the performance

Every Four Years is a participatory performance lecture with video art. It examines how cultures of fear (re)enforce values that shape identity through embodiment.

In the first half a performer embodies images of a martyr as a strategy to subvert ideological manipulation. By withdrawing the image spectating of death while providing sound, minimal text, and movement lacking emotion they create a situation where the spectator can be objective. The goal is to prove objectivity subversive in this context. The repeatability of these (re)inhabitations and the repetition of trauma (changing the action from passivity to activity) has the potential to transform a violent, iconic event.

In the second half of the participatory performance, spectators are invited to be collaborators and  engage in activities drawing upon autoethnographic methods and practice-as-research methodologies that prompt them to consider how fear impacts the way they move, what constitutes movement enforcing fear, and what denotes fearless movements. The goal during the last half of this performative intervention is to challenge to what extent is mimesis subversion or reiteration with the intention to use hybridization to consolidate fear and fearlessness. This creates another presence or performance quality that is used to enact alternative forms of political participation.

This project was first commissioned by Mare Culturale Urban in Milan, Italy. One of the video artworks in Every Four Yearswas screened in the group exhibition, Parallel Screens, curated by Brunno Silva at 1805 Gallery. The video artwork commemorated the ten year anniversary of the Green Movement in Iran.