MARIA JOSE ARJONA
ALL POSSIBLE FORESTS
The title suggests a radical reimagining of existence and coexistence.
It opens an invitation to a collective journey through untapped potentialities, where multiplicity, transformation, and interconnectedness can resist singular and rigid structures. The invitation is to explore a space where bodies, histories, and futures converge, rooted in physical and metaphysical landscapes of renewal and growth
ALL:
- Totality and Potentiality: In this context, "all" suggests an openness to inclusivity and multiplicity. This resonates with Fred Moten’s notion of aesthetic resistance, which defies being confined to singular or hegemonic narratives. Moten argues that art—and particularly performance—is a refusal to be limited by dominant structures. It is the act of “appearing” in ways that evade the systems of oppression that seek to define or control the body. This refusal to be contained, to be reduced, is a radical act of imagination and resistance. In this, "all" is not just an invitation but a refusal to accept closure or finality, as Moten puts it: “Performance is the refusal to appear as a thing, but to be one” (Moten, “In the Break” 2003).
- Embodied Temporality: The “all” also reflects an embodied temporality, a sense of an ongoing process rather than a fixed endpoint. This echoes the dynamic concept of time found in performance studies, where temporality is not linear but fluid. It is a “living time” that is marked by encounter and transformation.
POSSIBLE:
- Plasticity: The word “possible” brings to mind Catherine Malabou’s concept of “plasticity”—the capacity for transformation, for reshaping oneself, one's body, and one’s reality. Plasticity in Malabou's framework challenges determinism, offering a space where new forms of existence and ways of acting emerge. It suggests that the potential for change is inherent in the material world, in bodies, and in social structures. This aligns with my work, where performance acts as a form of social and collective becoming, always in process, never fixed or determined. As Malabou argues in “The Plasticity of the Brain” (2008), “plasticity is the ability to reshape, to transform, and to be transformed.” This capacity for transformation is essential, especially in a moment where the dominant political structures seem intent on reducing possibility to a singular, predefined reality.
- Political Resistance: The term "possible" also implies a critical stance against oppressive systems that seek to limit the imagination. To evoke "possibility" is to envision new ways of existing and acting in the world—ways that resist what is imposed and envision what could be. This resistance is not only intellectual or aesthetic but deeply political, rooted in the desire to reimagine the world from the ground up.
FORESTS:
- The Body as Archive: Forests are archives—both literal and metaphorical. They hold histories of human and non-human interactions, of destruction and regeneration. In performance art, they serve as metaphors for memory, knowledge, and experience. Like forests, the body holds layers of memory and history, and in performance, these layers are excavated, revealed, and made present. The body itself, as an archive, resists being reduced to a static object. It is always unfolding, always in process.
- Aesthetic Resistance: Forests also function as metaphors for complexity, entanglement, and interconnectedness. The forest challenges linear, hierarchical thinking and invites us to consider networks of relation and interdependence. This resonates with Moten’s concept of “aesthetic resistance”, where performance resists codification and linearity, embracing instead a porous, entangled form of existence. As he puts it, "The work of art is the work of the outside” (*The Feel Trio*, 2018), where the margins, the fringes, and the entangled spaces are not just peripheral—they are at the center.
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Embodied Temporality: The cycles of growth, decay, and regeneration in forests mirror the temporal disruptions explored in performance, where past, present, and future intertwine and inform one another. In the forest, time is both cyclical and layered, just as in performance, where moments resonate across time and space, creating an embodied temporality that transcends linearity.
Publication / Action #3
Spanish Version | Photo: Palomino Laos
GRACIA
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La definición que proponemos no fija un significado, sino que activa una operación de infiltración: una invasión molecular del lenguaje español, que, aun siendo portador del archivo colonial, puede ser desbordado desde adentro. No buscamos representar el pensamiento amazónico a través de categorías occidentales, sino permitir que la selva lo atraviese, lo erosione, lo redistribuya. En este sentido, la “gracia” no es aquí un atributo estético ni una noción moral heredada, sino una forma de presencia relacional, sutil y desviada, que se manifiesta en la performance como gesto de afinación con lo múltiple: con fuerzas, cuerpos y tiempos que coexisten sin necesidad de ser reconciliados.
Desde esta perspectiva, la gracia se aleja de toda lógica sacrificial o redentora. No purifica, no embellece, no sublima. Es más bien un modo de estar-en-relación que escapa a la codificación, un movimiento que no busca ser visto, pero que actúa. Como en muchas cosmologías amazónicas, donde los cuerpos no se definen por su forma sino por su capacidad de relación, la gracia en performance es esa capacidad de devenir con el otro, de sostener el vínculo incluso cuando este atraviesa la disolución o la muerte. No hay aquí una promesa de salvación, sino la afirmación radical de una vitalidad que insiste, que se transforma, que se ofrece sin pertenecer.
