Alchemies of Accountability: Comparative Indigenous Methods Towards Embodied Justice

Theater and Performance

SPEAKER: Lilian Mengesha, Tufts UNIVERSITY

Artists and activists consistently teach us that current methods for historical accountability are inadequate. Linking embodied actions around construction of objects, this paper charts alternative forms of accountability, ones that are grounded in practice and material, particularly metal nails and their historical relationship to West African power figures. Focusing on transformation, I describe these performances as alchemies of accountability— a manipulation of metal objects like nails that enact collective transformations and promises of return. This talk will trace this alchemy across three works: Rebecca Belmore’s durational performance and sculpture 1,181 (2014), Tania Bruguera’s Destierro (1998) and Sanford Biggers’ Duchamp in the Congo (1999). In each of these works, materials transmit promises between performers, objects and audiences. By using the word alchemy, I draw from the word’s etymological use of transforming the state of metals, and in this context, the transformation of the metal nails into collective promises. An alchemy of accountability does not operate under punitive justice and instead relies on models of world-historical forms of collective accountability, offering a process that is neither punitive nor transformative, but somatic.

About the Speaker

Lilian (Lily) Mengesha, PhD is the Fletcher Foundation Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Tufts University. Her research lives at the intersection of performance studies, critical Indigenous studies and gender and sexuality studies. Her current book project, Critical Dreaming: Performance and Decoloniality in the Americas, argues for dreaming as a critical tool for decolonial practice in contemporary performance art across Indigenous spaces.