The worldwide pandemic of 2020 has changed how humanity interacts and communicates. Around the globe, people now have to think carefully about their social habits, cultural exchanges, physical presence, and art production practices. In a matter of months, the virulent threat has put into question our social, political and economic structures, our physiological and psychological states as well as our own performance art practices. The balance we thought we once had has crumbled. We have learned to wear masks, wash our hands compulsively, remain confined to our homes, and above all, we have tried to maintain ourselves in our own bubbles, our private universes, our states of Liminal Fatigue.

“LIMINAL FATIGUE” is an online durational performance art project that treats the psychological and physical states of mind altered as a result of living in pandemic times, under the fear of contagion, and guided by regulations that encompass most corners of daily life. “LIMINAL FATIGUE” evokes a psycho-somatic human condition which is at the threshold of critical and chronic exhaustion without a possibility of a prompt relief or cure. In that light, “LIMINAL FATIGUE” addresses a similar condition particularly related to Performance Art as the art world and the performance art community have moved to online programs where we, as performance artists, have been presenting works while adhering to strict regulations about our physical presence.

Divided in three different sections, the one-hour generative performance is an exploratory experience of time and corporeal presence framed by the constraints of the screen and the degrees of visual relay through computational vision. The first section is characterized by wearing a glass helmet until the pressured glass is covered in my own exhausted breath and thick sweat. In the second part, the slow movements of my upper extremities—hands and fingers in particular—cover the entire frame of the screen to reference the possible haptic virtual connection with the other - the viewer, the observer, at the other end of the streaming spectrum. The third section is an experimentation with physical presence referenced by the capacity of the digital camera. This part acknowledges a possible territorial demarcation in relation to the mechanical third eye—the built in camera.

Following a series of exploratory curatorial and personal projects initiated and presented in 2020, “LIMINAL FATIGUE” was my last performance addressing notions of confinement while attempting to find modalities for self-expression and tele-presence in my Performance Art practice.