The body as memory and resistance in Marton Robinson's performance art

Résumé 0

This essay proposes an analytical approach to the video-installation performance "Don't tell my right hand what my left hand does" by the Costa Rican artist Marton Robinson. To showcase the complexities of this piece, we analyze the artist's live performance of the same name that took place in Costa Rica in 2021. Robinson`s work challenges and expands the diversity of meanings and strategies around video installation performances. The artist uses his body as a living archive and challenges the traditional conceptions of the role of documenting and filming the performance, thus contributing to the debate about how this type of artistic practices are recorded, documented, and archived. Robinson's work is an interesting case to address the fine line between the definition of performance and the immediacy of the body in a particular time and space, and the purpose and definition of the resulting testimony of the live-action in Central American contemporary art.