FLOODESIGN

1. Senses In the darkness, the work's first offerings are sonic: the horn fanfare of arrival (or the start of a hunt) and a silence broken by death metal music. Sensory deprivation and overload are tools of torture and the theater, visceral intensities made to exploit embodied experience. Angélica Liddell's "Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne" opens with a pageant of viscerality: an assault on the audience's ears, a stripped body on stage, blood and penetration. One might feel disgust, fear, aversion, but also desire, gratification, wonder. Our embodied viewing allows for both empathy and exclusion, to our excitement, dismay and relief. Devotional music — Bach, indigenous American tribal song — locates the work across continents, cultural affiliations and fantasies sustained by the gaps therein. As an audience, we inhabit one and many distinct bodies, as do the performers we watch. 2. Seen/Unseen The choices and structures that determine what is concealed versus what is on display are worth scrutiny. When we see someone or something that is rarely shown on stage, it's worth reflecting: for whose and what benefit? What would be worth keeping invisible and unnamed? Angélica Liddell's "Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne"BY SOPHIA WANG Sensory Subjects: Ange´lica Liddell in "Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne." Photo: Isabelle Meister 60 www.peakperfs.org "Performances of the senses reveal histories — they propose practices, privilege materials, mirror social conditions and implement techniques. And in each of these steps, a body is constructed — even if momentarily — even if just for the duration of one particular performance." —LEPECKI, A. AND BANES, S. "THE SENSES IN PERFORMANCE"

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