Performing Loss: Materiality and the Repertoire of Absence

Abstract

This chapter focuses on ideas of generational agency and performance in Lola Arias’ Mi vida después (2009) and a range of contemporary Argentine photography (2001–2013). Through a discussion of the work of Diana Taylor, the chapter questions whether a new understanding of how memory is transferred between and within generations in contemporary Argentina may allow us to address the on-going tensions between collective public memory and individual, private narrations of the past. The chapter engages with recent concepts of materiality and performance in order to argue that such dynamic and performative interpretations of the past allow the artists discussed to move beyond melancholic repetition and towards a productive, present understanding of the position that this history occupies in their own lives.