One of the many events that’s been cancelled recently is Marcela Torres’ visit from Chicago. Torres was set to perform her work Agentic Mode this week as a part of Women to the Front. This exhibition was curated by Nancy Rivera, visual arts coordinator for the Utah Division of Arts & Museums in collaboration with curator and art critic Scotti Hill. As this Tribune article details, the visual arts portion of the exhibit has been postponed, but its unclear at this point if Torres’ performance will be rescheduled here in Salt Lake.
Late last year, Linda Frank conducted the interview excerpted here with Marcela for our print journal. You can buy our journal online to read the extended version here.
Linda Frank: So, I’ve been reading up on you. You say in one interview I read that fighting helps you communicate with a straight white male audience. Would you say you have a target audience? Would you consider the winning of a fight to be an effective metaphor for your performances?
Marcela Torres: Within my practice, my ongoing goal has been to share racially poignant narratives that reach individuals in many ideologies. In conjunction with performances, I also create workshops, objects and sound installations, allowing for many formats of access. I've often called myself a social strategist or even the director, producer or actor of the “production” to try to explain the multifaceted roles I take on.
My role as a performer, being viewed by others becomes just one part of the strategy. This multifaceted format is meant to include a wider array of people and reveal information, experiences and content slowly with each additional section of the project, like an onion peel. In the last few years I've used martial arts technique within my performance as a scaffolding to represent the relentlessness of fighting as a cultural state of being.
Torres in Agentic Mode, courtesy of the artist
The interview you're mentioning ran in Berlin ArtLink in 2018. I was speaking about my desire to have an expansive audience, not just one that was self-reflective. I want my audience to be full of People of Color, Queers, Women, like myself — as well as the cis men, white people, non-binary, people with more conservative opinions, everyone, to have an inclusive conversation. I'm strategically using martial arts to bring together a diverse group to witness the society they all live in yet experience differently. The ephemeral spaces I create during performances become both a location for similarly identifying people and for others to experience the nuance of their narratives, like, “Oh yes, I know what that pressure is like. This sound is deafening, like when I'm having a panic attack...”
Meanwhile, audience members who don't directly identify with me are entering a visceral experiential portal. They are seeing and feeling me as I go through an intensive set of gestures, replicating social tensions in an audience group of different bodies and histories. Martial arts and fighting can be used as a graceful physical logic and as a spectacle that can tap into mainstream mass media — as a tool of inclusion.
No Contest, 2017, Torres with Chase Calloway, courtesy of the artist
Demographically, more men watch MMA and Muay Thai so it’s in some ways using the master's tools as a way to access that attention and then shift it for new meanings. It’s like if a football game was also secretly a PSA about domestic violence against women.
In many of my works such as No Contest and Favored to Win, the concept of winning is explored as a socio-capitalistic motivation that pushes people of color towards exhaustion, with no real way of “winning”. There has actually never been any real “fight” in any of the work, instead fights are represented through scores of movement. The actual fighting I do is in my Muay Thai life, where there is a winner and a loser. In the artwork I find the murky tenuous position of unwinning to be more like real life.
Linda: I was taken by the mention of your work being selfish. How do you transition a work from being for yourself to being for an audience or community? Have you ever performed a work that was purely selfish? What is that selfishness?
Marcela: It’s funny for these questions to reference interviews from the past, it's hard for me to know exactly what I was talking about then! I think that selfishness is a characteristic of the work being self-possessed, of it being a true reflection of my bodily agency and enjoyment. I'm interested in this idea of racial violence because it's so prevalent, so affecting and persistent. I want to be able to point a finger at it. And on the other hand I take pleasure in consensual pain, it's a factor I want to play with. Most of the current work is not necessarily selfish, but it is a vessel I want to be in and maybe it felt selfish to be so me, me, me.
I'm very focused on audience-ship. I can perform, but then I can also take a step back and teach a workshop or be a mentor. Being a teaching artist has been a huge part of my life, its empowering for me to think about what I've learned to do and to find legible ways of teaching others to feel the strength or vulnerability I'm feeling. To channel that out. I think being a professional artist can feel selfish because it's making a career on just what you like or your research. So many of my performances might feel selfish, but I'm giving so much to my audience, hours and hours of training to share the story with them because I think it's important. Maybe the right word isn't selfish.
Linda: How would you say the body transcends the object within your practice? What rituals do you use to get into the zone?
Marcela: In undergrad I studied sculpture and although I enjoyed making objects, I didn't feel like they were as dynamic as the performative work I was making. I'm a fan of sculptors like Doris Salcedo, Mika Rottenberg or Simone Leigh that do in fact evoke so much power through their sculptures, but I'm not sure I'm that astute. Objects have become tools that heighten my movement.
In Agentic Mode I built boxing bags that have embedded microphones, they're activated through a series of striking combos, the sound repeats through a loop pedal and becomes a soundscape. I've trained in Muay Thai for the last five years and although the moves are impressive I wanted to create objects that could resonate the movements and transform the scenario. Sound was the solution.
As far as rituals, I don't have specific spiritual processes for performances, but I am very systematic about logistics in order to cope with intensive anxiety. The pieces I perform are often extremely involved technically, physically and emotionally and I need a framework of professionalism and routine to feel calm. I find when I challenge myself physically by running, or hitting pads, or dancing I can transcend my mind. I can find a place of peace and stability.
For performances I train as if I'm going into a fight, daily exercise, line rehearsals and no alcohol. Day-of I rest and harness energy inward with no energy to socialize. I'm soft with myself, I eat happy things and sleep well, pamper myself to feel calm. I like to run through tech, check sound and stretch, while continuing to care for myself.
After the performance I usually need an isolated space where I can cry and release the emotions of being seen. I enjoy having intensive control of the production of my performance, so when I get onto the stage I can be intuitive and flow, knowing the structure I built will hold me safely and I can tell my story.
Like most artists and grown people I've had to find ways to feel love for myself. It's a challenge for every person, no matter what situation we were born into. There’s so much against us.
One of my personal solutions is martial arts, in order to feel like I can defend myself, like I'm smart, like my body is a technical miracle, a place to put my anger, a way to respect people different than myself. Martial arts also provide a non-western lens to give diverse body types value. I enjoy taking these small things I've learned and being able to facilitate them with others.
I've developed a self-defense course that pairs social emotional learning, personal narratives and community bonding with Muay Thai techniques. Each time I teach it I'm committed to the community it will be given to. For the non-binary group I taught in Munich, they needed a form of escape to exercise their strength outside of the physical voicelessness they face. In Den Haag, I taught this course to an LGBT Youth group, we had moments to write personal declarations, each person met each other person and became a team. We talked about things that might feel scary in an open way, full of support, everyone shared resources.
I'm a catalyst for these moments of healing, my skills and vulnerability open up the door but it’s the energy of everyone else to buy in and be there for each other.
Linda: Is installation a large part of your practice? Or are objects within your exhibitions sculptures, readymades or props for the performative material?
No Contest, 2017, Torres with Chase Calloway, courtesy of the artist
Marcela: Right now, yes, for sure installation is hugely important to my practice. I enjoy building these spatial portals as context for my performances. It's like making a habitat, one's own kingdom, and creating the way you want to be seen and exist to others. In real life, I'm a very different person, I can be shy or evasive or nervous. People are often shocked when they meet me, because my power is not always exposed.
In my performances, the set is a playpen to release my energy and to make my concept understandable. If in my research I decide I need an element or a sound, it’s a call for me to learn a new making process. I sew all the leather, I’ve mastered foam pouring, I know about sound, etcetera. I can see myself continuing to work this way but adding more and more skills.
Linda Frank is a multidisciplinary artist based in Philly. She holds a BFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and co-directs The Space Program.