| Description |
The recent performance work of Ernesto Pujol complicates the notion of site-specific art, extending into the tension of what--or who--constitutes a site. This project considers Pujol's April 2010 site-specific performance entitled Awaiting as a case study in the decidedly complicated relationship between the discursive or fluid nature of the body and the constructed notion of place. Awaiting used performance to call attention to what Pujol identified as an unspoken but omnipresent "culture of waiting" in Utah. However, rituals of shared dress, gesture, and extended rhythms punctuated by spatial and temporal gaps simultaneously invoked and transformed the cultural, historical, and social landscape in which Awaiting was situated. Looking to the various uses of gesture and mapping within Awaiting, I argue that Pujol's invocation of "site" prevented him from creating a space that matched his intention to transcend the constructed nature of site. Rather, the embodied representations of Salt Lake's local identity infiltrated and transformed Awaiting. Consequently, I use Pujol's intentionality in Awaiting as a foil to examine the possibilities and limitations of site-specific performance. I conclude that Awaiting's site-specificity originates not only in its allusion to a culture of waiting, but rather in its resemblance to a ritualistic history characteristic of Utah starting with the definitive utterance of "this is the place." |
