Poets performers of memory

Abstract

The article aims to present creations in performance and poetry, by Latin American artists Maria Evelia Marmolejo, Nelbia Romero, Regina José Galindo, Cecilia Vicuña e Mónica Carrillo Zegarra, thinking of them as an art of memory, as poetics that promote the ethical gesture of not allowing people to forget and the suggestion of forms of symbolic restoration. By making present the memory of catastrophes in Latin America, they uncover links between the violence that drives historical processes ranging from enslavement and colonialist territorial expropriation to repression, incarceration, disappearance and deaths during military dictatorships. Keeping the memory and the intrinsic relationship between these forms of violence alive constitutes a policy that opposes the historical denialism and memorialization that characterize current practices of the extreme right. In addition to the memory of catástrofes, the artists presented here bring the memory of knowledge and incorporate practices that were historically banned and whose survival allows openings to other epistemologies and cosmogonies.  Keywords: Politics of memory; Art of memory; Performance; Poetry; Latin America.