Essai for the Performative Tracing of Matter

Discursivity and Agency of the Residual-Precarious in a Situated Artistic Practice

Abstract

From the visual arts we are in a position to problematize those figures that, in every social order, are diverted from hegemonic narratives with the purpose of keeping hidden the fractures of the prevailing “normality”. In this case, located in the downtown area of the city of Córdoba, Argentina we complexize situations that, due to their permanence and insistence, end up being naturalized and absorbed as part of the local scenario, invisibilized and ejected towards the margins of an existential abyss. With the objective to understand and question how the means of production, the modes of consumption and the logics of work –gears of material culture– impact on the construction of identities and life trajectories, a tracing of precarious and residual materialities is carried out. This practice follows the Latourian approach that understands things as actants –non human entities that play an active role in social interaction– involved in the process, as they are the shuttles that connect points of meaning in the fabric of realities.