Dossier: Testimonial performance and the Poetics of Spiral Time in contemporary the visual arts.
Volume 7, Number 2 (2026)
In her 2003 book The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Diana Taylor (translated into portuguese in 2013), offers a scathing critique of the hegemonic forms of knowledge production and transmission in the West, highlighting how the the privileging of the archive, understood here as a collection of material, written, and durable records, sustains colonial epistemologies that marginalize other forms of knowledge. In contrast, the author develops the concept of repertoire, which refers to embodied practices, gestures, performances, and lived memories that that are embodied and transmitted through bodily practice. By shifting the axis of memory from the document to presence/the body, Taylor demonstrates that knowledge resides not only in what is preserved, but also in what is performed, in what is continually actualized through lived experience.
In this shift, the archive ceases to be understood as the sole instance of historical legitimacy, opening space to conceive of the body as a site of inscription and transcreation of knowledge. As the author states, it is not a matter of radically opposing archive and repertoire, but of understanding their tensions and interdependencies, recognizing that the predominance of the former has historically been linked to colonial projects aimed at erasing the latter. Thus, recovering the repertoire also implies reactivating modes of existence that resist fixation, capture, and standardization.
This perspective finds resonance in the thought of Leda Maria Martins, who, in Tempo espiralar: performances do corpo-tela. (2021), proposes a conception of temporality that departs from modern notions of progressive linearity. Thus, she understands that spiral time constitutes a dynamic of return and reinvention, in which past, present, and future intertwine in continuous renewal. The body is understood as a canvas upon which ancestral memories, gestures, and narratives are inscribed and reinscribed, not exhausted, but reactivated in each performance and every testimony.
If modern thought insists on organizing experience into an evolutionary sequence, spiral time invites us to perceive the persistence of lived experience, the coexistence of multiple temporal layers. What returns is not repetition, but reconfiguration; what is actualized is living presence. In this sense, the performative body produces time, produces memory, produces the world, and produces what may be understood as “performance-testemunho” (testimonial performance).
As we bring these reflections closer to the field of the visual arts, we consider the notion of “performance-testemunho” (2025), as elaborated by Geovanni Lima, as an extension of these critiques of dominant epistemologies. “Performance-testemunho” constitutes itself as a practice in which the body bears witness to historical, social, and affective experiences that unfold within spiral time. It is an operation in which the artistic and performative gesture also becomes an act of enunciation, a way of making visible and tangible what has been silenced or rendered invisible.
We can say that “testimonial performance” operates at the intersection of archive and repertoire, while simultaneously destabilizing them. In bearing witness, the body produces a situated, embodied memory that summons the presence of the other and establishes a field of relation. Thus, testimony is an event, an act that transforms both the performer and the witness. In this context, the body is a living archive, a repertoire in action, and a witness implicated in shifting the criteria for legitimizing knowledge. It matters which bodies perform memories. It matters which experiences are recognized as knowledge. It matters which gestures persist and which are interrupted.
In contrast to hegemonic narratives that privilege stability, fixity, and universality, these approaches invite us to think of knowledge as a process, as a relationship, and as an event. Memory expands its logic of conservation to also become continuous creation. The body ceases to function merely as a support. Performance ceases to be representation to become a practice of the world.
Based on these reflections, the aim of this dossier is to explore the potential of performance as an immanent practice, one that unfolds within the interplay of bodies, times, spaces, and narratives. It seeks to understand performance as both a language and a methodological approach within artistic production. The goal is to conceive of a “poetics of testimony,” in which art not only communicates but also creates conditions for presence, listening, and sharing. In what ways does artistic practice operate in the activation of embodied memories, the reconfiguration of temporalities, and the creation of bonds between individuals and communities?
The poetics we seek here must consider the inseparability of body and memory, understanding image- and text-making practices as sensorial and shareable forms of production, making artistic practice an open language, a gesture that articulates memory and presence, archive and repertoire, testimony and creation. it is not merely a matter of exhibiting works, but of activating them through processes of encounte, of producing other times and bodies.
Thus, we propose to bring together in this dossier works that engage with these questions, contributing to the expansion of the field of the poetics of testimony from the following perspectives:
- Artistic practice and the activation of repeated and ancestral behaviors;
- Performance and testimony in the articulation of experiences;
- Performance and action for the creation of narratives and possible worlds;
- The body as a living archive and a field for the inscription of temporalities;
- The relationships between image and temporalities of presence in artistic production.
Contributions may be submitted until July 31, 2026, for the sections articles, reviews, essays, interviews, and translations, ranging from 25,000 to 35,000 characters, as well as visual essays (authorship and curatorship). The dossier will be published in the second half of 2026. Access the guidelines for authors at https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/revistaestadodaarte/about/submissions.
The template and guidelines for authors can be found on the Estado da Arte journal website: http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/revistaestadodaarte/index.
Editors and organizers of the dossier:
Geovanni Lima
Visual Artist and Professor at the Institute of Arts of the Federal University of Uberlândia IARTE/UFU
Adriana Magro
Professor in the Department of Languages, Culture, and Education at the Federal University of Espírito Santo DLCE/UFES
References
LIMA, Geovanni. Performance-testemunho no campo das artes visuais. 2025. Tese (Doutorado em Artes Visuais) – Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Campinas, 2025.
MARTINS, Leda Maria. Tempo espiralar: performances do corpo-tela. Rio de Janeiro: Cobogó, 2021.
TAYLOR, Diana. Arquivo e repertório: performances culturais na América Latina. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2013.
Editorial Note: Authors must comply with the guidelines established by CNPq ordinance No. 2,664, of March 6, 2026, which institutes the Policy on Integrity in Scientific Activity. Submitted works must adhere to the principles of ethics, transparency, and responsibility in research, including the proper citation of sources, the accuracy of the data presented, and the disclosure of the use of artificial intelligence tools, when applicable. Cases of plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, or improper manipulation of information will result in the rejection of the submission.