“Especies Endémicas” is a performance that took place in Plaza de las Tres Culturas on October 2, 2012. This location became a death field during the student protest march in 1968, in which a military armed confrontation “disappeared” many students and murdered over 300 of them.

The postcard image with which the performance was announced is a montage of two landscapes in Mexico City: the first one is the stage where the confrontation occurred in October 2, 1968, and the second one is the sculpture space at National University, where endemic plant species are born and raised on a stone floor.

“Especies Endémicas” is a performance in which I was immobilized by a solid structure composed of plaster bandages. The piece began with me lying in the middle of a public place, the bandages dry and hard, representing a captive body. At this point I had been there for many hours and it was getting cold. As announced, the performance began at 7 pm. First, I sat up as straight as the plaster would allow, and I started to scratch it apart with my nails for some minutes until I was able to pull apart the bandages piece by piece. This continued for about seventeen minutes. People looked at me, some of them still waiting for the performance to happen. When the plaster bandages were all gone, I got up with difficulty, and walked away.

The importance of this performance lies in its quality as a tool to highlight the border between what is political and what is public.