LONDON.- Iniva and the Department of Curating Contemporary Art at the RCA presents Talks and Screenings at Rivington Place. Performing Localities is a two-day programme (5 – 6 May 2009) of talks and screenings exploring recent developments in Guatemalan performance art on video.

Since the mid-nineties, when Guatemala emerged from several decades of devastating civil war, artists have been investigating their country’s traumatic past and current realities through recorded performances and actions. Screened here for the first time in the UK, the works in this programme provide a plurality of responses to this shared context and history.

Performing Localities refers both to the localised conditions within Guatemala and to the artist’s body as a locality, a site for addressing these conditions. The artists presented investigate the complex and contradictory relationships between indigenous traditions, patriarchal systems and corporate globalisation that define their country of origin.

Artists include Regina José Galindo, Anibal Lopez, María Adela Díaz, Jessica Lagunas and Sandra Monterroso.

Speakers include Guatemalan critic and curator Rosina Cazali, Professor Oriana Baddeley, Deputy Director of TrAIN (Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation), Dr. Julian Stallabrass, Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art and London based curator Joanne Bernstein.

Organised by first year students of the Curating Contemporary Art MA at the Royal College of Art in collaboration with Iniva at Rivington Place. Supported by the Monique Beudert Fund.