The performance of images and the performative gesture of photography in its dialogue with art

Abstract

This article establishes approximations between images from the film “In-out (antropofagia)” (1973), by Anna Maria Maiolino, with the sequence of six images from “Ação 3” (2005), by Yuri Firmeza, to reflect on performativity of the contemporary photographic image in its intersections and contaminations with other artistic expressions. We argue that Maiolino and Firmeza, by expanding the contact between photography and performance, reveal to us the performative potential of the image itself, that is, the work of producing operations that rearrange and disorganize things, making evident the intervals between utterances, speeches, gestures and ways of life. The game space opened by the performativity of the images that Maiolino and Firmeza produce seeks to reconfigure the relationship of intelligibility and experimentation of the world, in addition to preserving the distance that makes it possible for the spectator to reflect on the meanings of what is figured in the image.