Acting (on) Our Own Discomforts: BLW’s [Media] Performance as Research

Abstract

BLW (Borcila Lewison Wyman, “Be Like Water,” or “BeLoW”) is a process-oriented artist-activist collective, comprised of Rozalinda Borcila, Sarah Lewison, and myself. Since 2004, we have worked to develop an embodied mode of inquiry that uses performance to investigate political agency at a moment when oral competence and physical presence are being displaced by media forms. Our interactive performances take the form of re-speaking workshops and public meetings. The workshops invite audiences to perform, along with us, the memorization and public recitation of significant recordings in the history of radical media; public meetings convene audience and interested passers-by in urban locations that blend public and private space.