Punctum.

By: Edgar Vite and Jorge Urueña

ABSTRACT

This study examines the intersemiotic relationships between the body, images, and new media, having as key reference the development of videodance in Latin America, as a politically and socially engaged artistic language. Our approach incorporates ideas from performance studies, as developed by Diana Taylor, and the embodiment perspective of Falk Heinrich and Celia Balbina Fernández, who reflect on the connection between performance and technology, how this implicates the participation of remote bodies and relates to faraway places. In Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, the development of the interdisciplinary language of videodance is related to sociopolitical struggles, originating in narcotraffic violence, corrupt governments, guerrillas, and other complex realities. The semiotic configuration of situated videodance has a therapeutic function that allows us to imagine and construct new ways of living and coexisting. For this purpose, we semiotically analyze the local theoretical categories developed by Alarcón, Contreas, Celis, Mangieri, Monroy, Fernández, Vargas, and Arellano, among others, as applied to videodance works by Colombian and other Latin American choreographers, dancers, and filmmakers; showing how this artistic language constitutes an act of resistance and social transformation, which allows the healing of collective injuries and the revindication of synesthetic memories of bodies in violent contexts and territories.

 
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