Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas

This book offers an innovative examination of the utopian impulse through performance as a proposition of practical engagement in the contemporary Americas. The volume compiles unique multidisciplinary and exploratory texts, applying diverse critical and artistic approaches. Its contributors reconceptualize utopia as a creative and theoretical method based on a commitment to sociopolitical transformation. Chapters are organized around notions of mapping utopias, indigenizing practices, political manifestations, and the construction of social identities.

Creates a necessary discussion on the topic of rethinking the current relevance of utopia, in a climate of global instability Compiles reflections of academics in dialogue with artists and community organizers on the subject of utopia Focuses on crucial, pioneering research being conducted by leaders in the academic and artistic field in order to create a discourse on utopia

Autorentext

Kim Beauchesne is Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Alessandra Santos is Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Utopian Interventions and their Relevance in the Contemporary Americas - Kim Beauchesne and Alessandra Santos.- 2. A New (Anti) Manifesto for the Americas. Version 2015 - Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Saul García López, and Michèle Ceballos Michot.- 3. tangible cartographies: surviving the colonial/welcome to my house - Jayce Salloum and Manuel Piña.- 4. Flash: Butoh, Hip-Hop, and the Urban Body in Crisis - Michael Sakamoto.- 5. Writing. First. contacts? - Ayumi Goto and Peter Morin.- 6. Colonial Blanket for Peoples Who Refuse to Vanish - Afuwa Granger and Aerlyn Weissman.- 7. Masking Revolution: Subcomandante Marcos and the Contemporary Zapatista Movement - Brianne Orr-Álvarez.- 8. Utopic Cannibalism in Fausto Carlos, Leonardo Sette, and Takuma Kuikuro's As Hiper Mulheres - Sarah Shamash.- 9. Real Utopias - Erik Olin Wright.- 10. No Suture: Rethinking Utopia through J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, the Occupy Movement, and Idle No More - Dan Adleman.- 11. Utopian Discourse andthe 2008 Global Financial Crisis: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Curtis Hanson's Too Big to Fail, and Antonio Muñoz Molina's Todo lo que era sólido - Gabriela Badica.- 12. El Che de los Gays and Hija de Perra: Utopian Queer Performances in Post-Dictatorship Chile - Manuela Valle.- 13. Could Bilingual Radio Be Utopian? Latin American Sound Performance through Radio in Western Canada - Carmen Miranda Barrios.- 14. Revisiting Utopias from the 1970s in Argentine Cinema (20032012): The Case of Benjamín Ávila's Infancia clandestina. Memory and Subjectivity - Rita De Grandis.- 15. The Utopian Impulse in the Videos of Pola Weiss (Mexico City, 19771990) - Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda.- 16. Utopia in Ruins: The Ochagavía Hospital - Jon Beasley-Murray.