Making presence: Regina José Galinto, “Earth”

Abstract

In Earth (2014), Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo stands naked next to an ever-widening pit. She performs an event recounted by survivors of genocide at the trial of the ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. The testimony tells of how people were forced to dig a massive pit and then stand in front of it, to facilitate their execution and interment by the armed forces. In this one art acción, Galindo captures the historical violence of biopower from the conquest to the present. Using the methodology of the performance itself, chapter 4 separates the never-ending tragedy into three isolated (but internally contiguous) scenarios that meld almost imperceptibly from conquest, colonialism, ongoing coloniality, and imperialism. What does the performance do or transmit? Is the performance itself a form of testimony? Art from the space of death shows the now and always of criminal practice, as genocide and as environmental ruin.