How to Write a Tropical Disease
How to Write a Manifesto
[with diásporas crÃticias]
How to Write a Tropical Disease How to Write a Manifesto (2016-2017) documents a performance-reading held in Guayaquil, Ecuador, September 2016. Poets and writers Maria Auxiliadora Balladares and Francisco Santana read a script constructed from quoted fragments of archival documents sourced from the Guayaquil Historical Archive pertaining to the yellow fever epidemic related 'hygiene campaigns' run by the Rockerfeller Institute for Medical Research in the city of Guayaquil between 1890-1919. These are responded to by quotes from the work of various poets and activists who have responded to the moral dimensions of the discourses on hygiene throughout the 20th & 21st centuries.
The archival / performance project considers the lasting impact of the scientific and social construction of narratives of contagion on life in city centres and situates present gentrification processes as part of a historical trajectory of social control and surveillance of public space that flourished in the context of epidemics in the 19th century. An interview with personnel at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where we attempted to introduce the project's publication into the institution's archive, further reflects on the porosity and limits of official histories of disease and hygiene discourses.
The archival / performance project considers the lasting impact of the scientific and social construction of narratives of contagion on life in city centres and situates present gentrification processes as part of a historical trajectory of social control and surveillance of public space that flourished in the context of epidemics in the 19th century. An interview with personnel at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where we attempted to introduce the project's publication into the institution's archive, further reflects on the porosity and limits of official histories of disease and hygiene discourses.
Screenings
"Guayaquil Archipelago"
[Exhibition], Museo Antropologico
y de Arte Contemporaneo (MAAC)
& UArtes Guayaquil, curated by Sara Baranzoni, 2019.
"VIII ASAB: Tiempos Migratorios",
[Biennial] curated by Pedro Pablo Gomez
and Dalida Maria Benfield, 2017.
