This performance took shape through a dialogue between the poets Joel Craig, Luis Felipe Fabre, and artist Kirsten Leenaars about the violence in both cities and a shared history of police brutality. Questioning what it means to be a witness, or to be a media consumer of this violence. From the point of the view of the archive, forgetting is the ultimate transgression. According to Huyssen, we suffer from a hypertrophy of memory. Through social media we have amassed archives so thorough that real time is cannibalizing present time. In an era when eyewitness testimonies, photos, and videos are tweeted seconds after a catastrophe, mainstream media’s power to bear witness now feels outdated and inherently passive. To just bear witness, consume feels utterly passive, yet we do it all the time. Hence the seed of this entire work is an attempt to solicit responses from the audience and taking on a point of view. I will talk like you will talk like me / Yo hablaré como tú hablarás como yo – Mexico City is a follow up on the performance that took place on October 18th, 2014 in Chicago. While addressing the same issues, the content differs from the first iteration.
