Beyond the Moment

Exploring cultural resistance by creating and archiving Latinx performance art Performance is often seen as ephemeral, a condition that seemingly reduces its activist possibilities. After all, not everyone can take part or bear witness. Beyond the Moment shows how Latinx artists have responded with a theater of dissent that endures-performance art that also documents and can itself be archived, creating opportunities for sustained solidarity and resistance. Through close readings of works such as Coco Fusco's multi-genre performance A Field Guide for Female Interrogators, Irene Mata theorizes what she calls "e;textual mentoring."e; This method involves tracing previous moments of resistance, archiving the creative process itself, and transforming the performance into a pedagogical tool. By means of textual mentoring, a work like The Panza Monologues becomes a lesson in confronting systemic oppression through collaborative storytelling. Mata also shows how the 2012 No Papers, No Fear Ride for Justice, a multistate immigrant-rights action, relies on a vocabulary of refusal of movements of the past-like the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights era-and continues its activism beyond its immediate performance context by digitally archiving its process. With an emphasis on intersectional critique, Beyond the Moment positions performance as a radical form of resistance that educates and inspires across generations and movements.