 Bueno, pues llegamos a uno de los momentos más emocionantes, creo yo, de este mundo al vez, al menos uno de los momentos más emocionantes para mí, cuando el comité organizador del Comité decidió que iba a ser yo en el cuento de estar aquí. Lo primero que sentí fue, yo creo que el vertigo natural, te va a presentar una persona de la trayectoria, y empecé a tejer varios textos, escribí algunas de las presentaciones distintas, y a noche tenía otra más, pero esta vez, la última noche, he tenido otra, y esta mañana he decidido que ninguno de las presentaciones de la bibliografía implica también dejarse aprovechar, y cuando veas a alguien que está en la trayectoria, en order to find out about Richard Shetner's academic trajectory, you just have to Google him, and you'll get a lot of information, a lot of digital texts of his, and a lot of information that will also be impossible to share in just a few minutes. And I'm sure you're all excited to listen to him, not to listen to me, so I'm going to give you important information. I think that if there's something that Richard Shetner's work as an academic, as an artist, and also as a person, is generosity. Generosity and amplitude, amplitude, broadness of thinking. He is a performance body full of theater beauty and integrity. So today, I'm going to talk about the humanity of Richard Shetner, the humanity of those of us who have lived the world upside down, have been able to appreciate these past days. And yesterday, when we were in the car of the Boscata Nostra, I was thinking, you know, it's amazing to be ready for experience, and the word experience always has that double articulación, because it comes from Latin, from percussion, and her also means a carol. I was watching Shetner yesterday, sitting in that car, and I perceived the openness of his body, and it traded into bear footprints of a life trajectory, of a life path, full of experience. Platicando el generosamente en un café, me hablaba sobre un platillo francés, por el sal, de un platillo que se hace una sopa, que se hace con diversos pescados, que es una sopa que se hace a fuego lento, se lleve a fuego bajo. Pero no son los pescados, que me estoy investigando de hoy un poco. Y yo estaba haciendo mi research sobre los pescados, y esos son los pescados que quedan en el helo, pero en el mismo tiempo quedan deputados por todos los otros. Ellos son pescados, y ellos también son pescados por los otros pescados, porque esos pescados no son bonitos para los humanos. Me parecía maravillosa el relato que decía Shetner en ese café, porque pensaba yo en como de alguna manera, porque me parecía que su trabajo es como un pescado, como el pescado, como el pescado, como el pescado, como el pescado, como el pescado, como el pescado. Por otro lado, con una gran, gran y enorme vasta actividad de trabajo, por otro lado, en el otro lado, un otro trabajo que ha permanecido durante mucho tiempo en su vida, es el editor actualmente de la serie Enactments, publicada por el libro Seagull, y el editor de la serie Enactments, publicada por el libro Seagull, y el editor de la serie Enactments, publicada por el libro Seagull, publicada por el libro Seagull, publicada por el libro Seagull, en ese videohistor lo podemos entender y que como publicadora también podemos entender este exgeneralceso de2017, desde una diferencia de perspective, la gran cantidad de textos que la vida de su profesor, el profesor emerito en la edad, pero que también la ha permitido en YU, y él me lo decía, y al mismo tiempo cuando escuchaba YU que decía, y cuando estaba escuchando a él, me became aware of the fact that at that very moment I became one of his students, and if you breathe, for a while by walking next to him you get trapped by the energy of this teacher of the month. Su trabajo tiene un alcance internacional, ha sido traducido a un escopio nacional. Actualmente existe también el Centro de Estudios Richard Schechner, que son nada más para dar una muestra de hasta donde ha llegado su pensamiento. Tiene estas vidas tecidas, y Schechner me regaló dos imágenes de su propia vida que para mí fueron reveladas. Y que hablar justamente sobre esa generotidad, pero me parece a mí también que de la construcción no solamente de una vida anécdóticamente hablando, profunda, sino de la revelación que se entendía, el cuerpo como el lugar para producir pensamiento. Me hablaba y vuelvo al platillo del que les estaba hablando, porque me hablaba de ese platillo justamente contándome que había sido alguna vez cocina. En 1958, en Provincetown, mientras era, además, albergado por Mary Heaton Bors, le decía que era de New O'Neill. Él, dentro de la cocina, como cocinero, guardaba algunos bocadillos de esos que la gente no cocinía para alimentar a su grupo de actores. Entender el cuerpo del actor, alimentarlo, no solamente desde la generosidad de la comida, sino desde el espíritu constante de estar ahí, pensándose como cocinero, como directo, como aquel ser de vida y entiende el cuerpo de uno. Otra de las experiencias que me arreglo, fue que, en 1958 y 1960, él enlistó en la armada para probar una vida menos cómoda, para probar que era capaz de seguir las reglas de aquellos a los que jamás hubiera obedecido, para entender un otro cuerpo. Los que hemos leído en muchos años sus sectos, creo que sabemos que de alguna manera implica pensar el sistema desde otro lado. Para mí fue muy interesante saber que la vida llegaba a este experiencia y una manera voluntaria, a vivir este espacio, a pensarse de otro lugar, para entenderlo desde fuera, ni desde el prejuicio, sino desde lo que él también llama, encontrar puntos de fuga dentro del sistema. Él me aseguraba ayer que eso le había cambiado la vida. Yo pensaba que eso le cambió la vida. Y yo pensaba que eso le cambió la vida, porque también hemos entendido que los estudios del performance implican esa apertura de miradas. Implican sobre todo lo que nos permite hacer. Quisiera cerrar esta presentación, que es una presentación poco académica, insisto, tenía tres papers, pero ninguno de ellos daba cuenta de la experiencia de este mundo al revés ni de lo atravesado que está mi cuerpo en estos tres días. Ayer él me mostraba unas frases que tenía en su cartera, yo hoy tengo en mi cartera un boleto de metro del performance que acabamos de tener hace un ratito del Salón de Danza con el nombre de una de las chicas desaparecidas. Y pensaba eso, la cartera como el lugar del desguardo, la cartera también como el lugar para que performativamente haya cosas que no se nos olviden. Richard Schechner me mostraba cómo ha cambiado todas las carteras que ha tenido en su vida, esos mismos mensajes de unas galletas chinas. Y hoy para mí fue paradójico que antes de este momento recibiera yo un boleto que acabo de meter en mi cartera, que pasara muchos años también ahí. Y bueno, desde este lugar quiero también anunciar como mexicana, como profesor del Colegio Literatura, Dramática y Teatro, un compromiso, un compromiso con esta institución y un compromiso también a la trayectoria de Richard Schechner de impusar las publicaciones que creo que tendrían que haber estado aquí desde hace muchos años. Yo este encuentro lo hice pensando siempre mis alumnos y espero que lo que quede después de que todos ustedes, todas y todos ustedes partan sea una energía capaz de generar esos proyectos. Yo aquí quiero decir que ya he pactado con Schechner que vamos a hacer algunas traducciones. No sé todavía cómo lo voy a aconseguir, pero lo voy a hacer. Y la primera publicación será ese poema, ese poema, porque aquella traducción que tenemos en el Fondo de Cultura Económica ha implicado también problemas bastante fuertes. Yo esperaría que en este momento que la rae para los que quieran creer en ella y estén dispuestos a que sea lo que rija su vida ha autorizado ya y ha dicho que la palabra performance es español también ya en estos momentos. Yo esperaría que la siguiente traducción sea estudios del performance y no estudios de la representación. Y bueno nada más me queda, nada más me queda antes de ceder este espacio a Schechner decir que espero que vengan muchos años más de la mirada profunda de la templanza y de poder escuchar y sentir la maravilla que es este. Thank you. Before I begin, I need to do a couple of things. I want to thank Diana Taylor for conceiving and leading the Hemi and for shaping these encounters. She has changed the world. I want to thank the Hemi workers both in New York and here in Mexico for all the help they have given me. There are so many, but let me give a shout out to De Donahue Kent, Marcial Godoy and Natalia Sanjord. Let me also thank Emilio Mendez, professor of theater studies here at UNAM. Throughout my stay, Emilio has been a guide, a brilliant and passionate advocate for performance studies and a warm companion. And of course I thank the myriad artists, students, teachers, techies, workers, everyone who are making this en Cuentro such a deep learning participatory and fun experience. Muchas muchas gracias todos. Take a deep breath. We're going somewhere else now. An Englishman needing a pair of striped trousers and a hurry for New Year festivities goes to his tailor who takes his measurements. That's the lot. Come back in four days. I'll have it ready. Four days later. So sorry. Come back in a week. I've made a mess of the seat. Good. That's all right. A neat seat can be very ticklish. A week later. Frightfully sorry. Come back in ten days. I've made a hash of the crotch. Can't be helped. A snug crotch is always a teaser. Ten days later. Dreadfully sorry. Come back in a fortnight. I've made a balls of the fly. Good. At a pinch a smart fly is a stiff proposition. Well, to make it short the blue bells are blowing and he bollocks is the buttonholes. Damn you to hell sir. Now it's indecent. There are limits. In six days. Do you hear me? Six days. That made the world. Yes sir, no less. Sir, the world. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months. But my dear sir, my dear sir, look at the world. And look. There's a lot going on in Beckett's parable from Endgame. Not least with proper attention to the details we can make a better world but it's going to take great effort. Many mistakes corrected and a very long time. Also if we follow ancient tradition the world according to the book of Genesis we will end up in a mess. Indeed more than a million species are ending up and most definitely we are in a mess. About art too, Beckett's parable speaks. The world we actually live in, the world we make, fix, abhor, revise, never get right, feel pinched in, misfits over and over but can be made right. Those trousers, those trousers are the world of our own conceiving, gestating and doing, art, perfectable in theory at least. Tragedy's main theme is the rule of law and from that obedience to properly constituted authority. God, the fates, destiny, nature. People get into big trouble, fatal trouble when they go against the law. From edifices blinding as a reminder of what he refused to see to our collective swamp death at the conclusion of global warming, overcrowding and mass extinction. Disobey at the risk of catastrophe. No, worse. Disobey and catastrophe is inevitable. Comedy operates from a different premise. No authority is quote properly constituted unquote because power in and of itself is greed and corruption. Authority is exposed and mocked, turned upside down. Laws need to be broken. A lot depends on accident and chance, not quite the same. Gods play dice and descend in machines to reverse the inevitable. Youth defeating old age wins the end game and is happy. So which world do we live in? Both. And at the same time. Hollywood screenwriter Charles MacArthur and Charlie Chaplin were discussing comedy. MacArthur quote, how can I make a lady walking down Fifth Avenue slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the lady approaching, then she slips? Or do I show the lady first then the banana peel and then she slips? Chaplin. Neither. You show the lady approaching. Then you show the banana peel. Then you show the lady and the banana peel together. Then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole. So are we who have collectively stepped over plagues, famines and nuclear war to vanish into the consequences of our abundance? Chapter two. The end game is an old story. Seers, profits and crazies have predicted the end of the world untold times by fire, flood, rapture, cosmic collision, you name it. This time it's not God or an asteroid but ourselves who are to blame. The manhole chaplin placed at the end of the banana peel trail, the man-made hole we're falling into is our own. This time the difference is that scientists see it coming and it's not the end of the world but rather the extinction of species, the submerging of coastlines and island nations and the spoiling of habitats. The most recent and comprehensive forecast of doom is the May 2019, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, May 2019 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. That report is worth quoting at length and I will quote. The biosphere, which humanity depends on as a whole, is being altered to an unparallel degree across all spatial scales. Biodiversity, the diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems, it is declining faster than in any time in human history. Nature across most of the globe has now been significantly altered by multiple human drivers with a great majority of indicators of ecosystems and biodiversity showing rapid decline. 75% of the land surface is significantly altered. 66% of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts and over 85% of wetlands have been lost. Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before. Around one million species already face extinction. The global rate of species extinction is already at least ten tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past ten million years. Globally, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are disappearing. This loss of diversity poses a serious risk to global food security. The rate of global change in nature during the past 50 years is unprecedented in human history yet most international, societal and environmental goals will not be achieved based on current trajectories. The negative trends in biodiversity and ecosystem functions are projected to continue to worsen in response to indirect drivers such as rapid human population growth, unsustainable production and consumption, and associated technological development. The UN scientists do see a way out and continue. Nature can be conserved, restored and used sustainably while simultaneously meeting other global society goals through urgent and concerted efforts fostering transformative change. Achieving a sustainable economy involves making fundamental reforms to economic and financial systems and tackling poverty and inequality as vital parts of sustainability." But do you think we humans will make such a transformative change and effect fundamental change? More on that and on. The root problem is population of course. Too many people wanting the good life or in many desperate instances any life. In 1800 the global human population was one billion. It took until 1960, 1800 to 1960 to get to three billion. Today, roughly 60 years later, there are 7.5 billion. The upward trend is exponential and unsupportable. Thomas Maltus en his 1798 quote essay on the principle of population, foresaw it clearly. I know you all know Maltus, but I'll read two paragraphs. I have read some of the speculations on the perfectability of man and of society with great pleasure. I have been warmed and delighted with the enchanting picture which they hold forth. I ardently wish for such happy improvements, but I see great and to my understanding unconquerable difficulties in the way to them. The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Pardon the gender, I'll read his words. Population when unchecked increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with the numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second. 248, 1632, 64 versus 2468, 1012. This natural inequality of the two powers of population and a production in the earth and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectability of society. All other arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in comparison of this. I see no way by which man can escape from the weight of this law which pervades all animated nature. No fancy equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent could remove the pressure of it even for a single century, unquote. Malthus was wrong for a time. He was wrong in the time frame it took. Malthus forecast has been forced all by ever more productive farming and a seemingly endless store of lands, seas, rivers and lakes to settle, strip, cultivate, dam, mine and fish. Under the aegis of imperialism and scientific rationalism humans collectively operate as if there is always a somewhere to conquer, extract, exploit and profit from. But it's time to listen to Malthus because we no longer live in an endlessly bountiful world for humans to take and use. We need to recognize that Homo sapiens is an invasive species approaching an endpoint. I'll repeat that. Homo sapiens is an invasive species reaching an endpoint. Act three. What if humans went extinct? Would that be an Aristotelian tragedy? Philosopher Todd May took up the question in a 2018 New York Times op-ed, now, quote, philosopher May. In a drama, the tragic character is often someone who commits a wrong, usually a significant one, but with whom we feel sympathy. Sophocles' Oedipus, Shakespeare's Lear, and Arthur Miller's Willie Lohman might stand as examples. In this case, the tragic character is humanity. It is humanity that is committing a wrong, a wrong whose elimination would likely require the elimination of the species, but with whom we might be sympathetic nonetheless. To make that case, let me start with a claim that I think will be at once depressing and upon reflection uncontroversial. Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it. If this were all to the story, there would be no tragedy. The elimination of the human species would be a good thing, full stop. But there is more to the story. Human beings bring things to the planet that other animals cannot. For example, we bring an advanced level of reason that can experience wonder at the world in a way that is far and to most, if not all, other animals. We create art. We engage in sciences that seek to understand the universe and our place in it. Where our species to go extinct, all of that would be lost. Doesn't the existence of those practices outweigh the harm we bring to the environment and the animals within it? To address that question, let's ask another one. Listen to this, very interesting. Suppose a terrorist planted a bomb in the Louvre and the first responders had to choose between saving people in the museum and saving the art. How many of us would seriously consider saving the art? So then, how much suffering and death of non-human life would we be willing to countenance to save our art, our sciences, and so forth? There's a tragic aspect to all this, I'm still quoting May. In many dramatic tragedies, the suffering of the protagonist is brought about through her or his own actions. It is Oedipus' killing of his father that starts the train of events that leads to his tragic realization. It is Lear's high-handedness towards his daughter Cordelia that leads to his demise. It may also turn out that it is through our own actions that we human beings bring about our extinction. It may well be also that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off, and yet it would be a tragedy. I don't want to say this for sure since the issue is complex, but it certainly seems a live possibility, and that by itself disturbs me. Unquote. Of course, just as a tree falling on a desert island makes no sound, except in the ears of God, because no one hears it, the tragedy of homo sapiens is not such because there are no spectators, unless one regards as audience the animals who are spared by our species' demise, and also the mind of God. Or maybe it's not a tragedy, but a comedy, a farce even. We humans step over the banana peels of war and disease and down the manhole of extinction. But even worse than what's happening on Earth is the fate of Gaia's twin sister. Forget about Mars, guys, forget about Mars. Let's think of Gaia's twin sister, Venus. Nearly the same size and composition as Earth, and also within the solar system's habitable zone, Venus, and here I am doing a thought experiment, once thrived with life, including intelligent beings, very smart, highly evolved, also like us. Venusians enjoyed a carbon-based energy system. Alas, they let it get out of hand. A runaway hot house effect. Resulta en la Venus que observamos hoy, una atmósfera sulfuric-methane de CO2 colgando en el planeta, su temperatura de superficie es 870 °F. Los científicos creen que Venus ha tenido agua de superficie, como Earth hace en abundancia, pero hace mucho tiempo se ha evaporado. Hoy, Earth es un planeta blanco porque de las herosas. Venus es un blanco-red uno porque de su deslizamiento. 4. No tan rápido. Espero que sea eterno. ¿Qué podemos hacer sobre el mundo? ¿Cómo podemos hacer ese perfecto par de panes? En 2016, entomologist, naturalista Edward O. Wilson, proponía que los humanos se desplazan de una mitad de la superficie de la mundo con una reducción de agua de superficie, con una reducción de agua de superficie, para asegurar no solo nuestra propia survivación, sino la survivación de millones de otras especies. En su libro, Él escribió la mitad de la Earth, la única esperanza para la especie todavía viviendo es un esfuerzo humano con la magnitud del problema. La única solución a la sexta extinción, ahora en la flora, es ingresar las áreas de las reservas naturales inviolables a la mitad de la superficie de la Earth, esta expansión requiere los shiftes fundamentales y la razón moral sobre nuestra relación con el ambiente de la vida. Hay ciertas wildernesses alrededor del mundo que, simplemente, se quedan soltas, se desplazan de las wildernesses. Además, hay muchos lugares wildes en los que el ambiente de la vida puede ser rechazado cerca de su condición original, tanto por la remoción de un poco de especies invasivas o la reintroducción de uno a varias especies extirpientes, o de las dos. En la misma extinción, las landscapes son tan degradadas que la vida original debe ser rechazada de la tierra. Incertando el sol, microorganismos, una especie eucurrante, como algae, fungie, plantas y animales, en ciertas combinaciones y en ciertas secuencias. No habrá un desplazamiento inmediato en la población de todo el mundo. El shift a la fertilidad inferior puede suceder durante una o dos generaciones. En cada país donde mujeres han ganado un degree de social y de la independencia financiera, su fertilidad anulada se ha desplazado por una cantidad correspondiente a través de una opción personal individual. La Unidad de Naciones ha proyectado que, por 2100, la población del mundo, incluso cuando se desplazan, perdón, desplazan a nivel 0, alcanzará entre 9.6 y 12.3 billones. Eso es un grave desplazamiento para un planeta ya sobrepopulado, pero un desplazamiento desplazado en el primer 20 segundo de la década es inevitable. Eso es lo que me pregunto a pensar en lo largo termo. Pensamos, ¿qué está pasando en el encuentro de mañana? ¿Qué haré cuando vuelvo a donde yo estoy? En la próxima semana. ¡Oh, tal vez viviré 80 años! No pensamos en términos de décadas o de décadas de décadas. Si queremos resolver este problema, tenemos que pensar y comportar en lo largo termo. Y eso a veces significa un sacrificio por la gente en la línea del frente, que es más tu generación que mi, porque estoy muy viejo, pero tiene que ser hecho. Por lo tanto, en algún lugar en la línea, la próxima generación no ocurrirá, o será en una situación horrible, que no ocurrirá. El plan de Inherent and Wilson es la reconocimiento de un shift de paradigma de lo que los humanos son en relación a la naturaleza. Este shift ha estado sucediendo durante los últimos centros, acelerando mucho en los últimos 50 años, como la población humana más que double. Por lo tanto, los humanos han existido, hemos sido, en la naturaleza, contened por la naturaleza. El ambiente humana era dominante, los satélites humanos fueron relativamente escasos y escatados. Estoy hablando ahora, en términos de la especie humana, que llegó a este planeta, un par de ciencientos años atrás, proto-humas, sobre dos millones de años atrás, los humanos modernos, alrededor de 70, 80,000 años atrás. Así que estoy hablando de esos términos. En esos términos, hemos sido en la naturaleza, contened por la naturaleza. El ambiente humana era dominante, los satélites humanos fueron relativamente escasos y escatados. Se took courage and risk to, quote, explore, to climb mountains, cross seas, to, quote, conquer nature, even migrate. But as the number of people increased, so did the amount of land given to farming, mining and drilling. Networks of roads radically multiplied with the advent first of rail and then of automobile. And finally of air. Land, sea and air routes are open for millions from everywhere to anywhere. Even the most formidable places become more or less ordinary, witness the climber jam this spring at the summit of Mount Everest. Is there anywhere some safari booker, some cruise line operator or people smuggler doesn't go. Restrictions when they exist are political, not ecological. For enough money you can even rocket into orbit. Whatever land is deemed useful is used and overused. So-called nature, the wild animals, animals more or less left to themselves is increasingly rare and soon will no longer exist. Where previously we people needed protection from animals. Now the animals, even the fiercest legendary hunters, big cats, bear, sharks. In fact any animal of size and many smaller ones too need protection from us. Now we contain nature. The process is irreversible. Even if some species considered good viewing or entertainment are minimally repopulated by cloning or restored genes. Whatever. The days of vast herds of wildebeests or elephants like the American bison of earlier centuries will be gone. Wilson's noble plan, notwithstanding, the world of nature has become a performance enacted in parks, reserves, and zoos. Which brings me to the second scenario for a quote better quote outcome to the crisis of the Anthropocene. The tech fix. Tech is what people do very well and have been doing throughout the evolution of our species. Not new. Finding or inventing the means to solve specific problems. That we do very well. In the tech fix we humans learn to transcend our political, social, religious, and ideological conflicts. We concentrate our skills on hydroponic land farming and desalinization and de-deservatization. On ocean cultivation of the fish. On seaweeds and algae. We replace fossil fuels with solar, wind, water, and safe fusion, not fission, fusion nuclear. We protect key coastal cities with sea walls and pumps. We relocate people whose land cannot be saved. We settle territories made habitable by global warming and so on through whatever human genius thinks and devises. If this is what we do, the whole world would be profoundly humanized. Much of it urban because there will be twice the number of people as now and more. As I said, nature as we've known it will be restricted to reserves and even there it will be second nature, a performative simulation of what was. The tech fix is where we're headed now. Are iPhones and their progeny the best we can hope for? Yes, one could argue. Human nature is biologically coded to become wholly artificial. To evolve AI, cyborgs, robots, and the rest. Possibly. In such a world the sun sets will still be beautiful. But the world over which the sun sets will be a machine. Then there's the extraterrestrial fix. The first humans came out of Africa and wave slowly but systematically taking over the world, diversifying, expanding, hunting, gathering. And then as populations increased, settling, cultivating, building, conquering, colonizing and exterminating each other and non-human species too. Driving animals to extinction is not a modern trait. It's just that there are so many more of us and our means of killing have improved. And we are taking notice, even deciding that it's a bad thing. For most of the eons, humans have populated the world, killing other animals for food, sport, to demonstrate courage, the Hemingway ethos and to make more room for people has been the norm. But now that the world is overcrowded with people, some are aiming for the stars. Elon Musk is not alone in conceiving of the solar system and beyond as the quote new frontier, quote. Using a primeval conceptual model, common to our species. Once a group runs out of space and or resources or simply out of an inborn urge to adventure, it moves into quote new territory. And if someone happens to be there, dominate them, colonize them, exterminate them. You know, I was at the Temple of Mejor yesterday and I realized, you know, of course, the Spanish did what they did, but the Aztecs did what they did to the people who were before them. And the Spanish would not have been so successful if the ordinary people that the Aztecs ruled hadn't given them support. It's, you know, so this is not, it's an evil that's currently Western and European but it's inherent in the human species. This drive to exterminate, dominate, colonize. Once a group runs out of space and or resources are simply out of an inborn urge to adventure, it moves into new territory. So we postmodern humans will terraform the moon, learn to live on Mars or in one of Jupiter's or Saturn's moons before launching ourselves into the vastness of galactic space. Both the tech and the extraterrestrial scenarios are performative imaginaries in which we find ways to keep doing exactly what we've been doing from the origin of our species, expanding and dominating. The tech fix is possible while the extraterrestrial scenario is science fiction. Expanding into already habitable regions is what humans are equipped to do, going where there is at least air and water. Making the profoundly hostile environment of any planet or the moon, other than earth, livable for masses of people is less than likely. Maybe a few hundred, even a million or two, but not for billions. As for people zipping along near, at, or faster than the speed of light, which would be necessary to reach another galaxy or even other habitable planets in our own Milky Way galaxy, ask Einstein about it. Five. So what's to do here and now? And how can art generally and performance especially do its part? If we are not just selecting items for the orchestra of the Titanic to play, what might we do? We can be like Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old who in March and May 2019, organized student strikes against climate change. Students from 125 countries took part. We can fly to fewer conferences because airplanes pipe mighty amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. We can avoid plastics, use cloth shopping bags, walk and bike instead of driving or taking Uber, eat vegan or at least cut down on beef tacos. And on through a very long list of actions that make difference while raising our own and others consciousness. And of course we can do art about the animals, about mass extinctions, about our existential situation. We can demonstrate and intervene. We can admire the yes men for exposing and sending up the bad guys and myriad other artists, many of whom are in this room too, who are doing powerful, excellent work. But I ask my colleagues, my students, I ask all of us, can we drive enough pressure to fundamentally change governments and corporations? It's more than a tough question. Let's take for example, and I'm sorry that my Dean Alice in Green isn't here to hear this. Let's take for example, New York University, home of the Hemispheric Institute for performance and politics, of performance and politics. I taught there at NYU for 50 years, including five years at NYU's grand campus in Abu Dhabi. The physical campus there cost billions. The operating charges are not cheap. The money is petroleum dollars. Will I go back to Abu Dhabi if invited? Yes. Ask me why doing the Q and A, or even privately. Is NYU New York and the Hemi implicated? Yes. Even if not directly, the whole thing is a system. There's nothing outside the corporation broadly defined. Remember, for example, that the Rockefeller Foundation is money derived from oil and the Ford Foundation from automobiles. I understand foundation money used to support good causes to be reparations. We should demand that they pay it all out and quick. Take a deep breath. Let's go back to art. Hemi's stated purpose for this en quentro is, quote, to theorize and instrumentalize satire, humor, laughter, music and noise in their broadest senses in order to make visible, unfold, denounce, fracture and revert the assemblages of power behind these alarming processes, unquote. So we are instructed to bite the many hands that feed us. I ask, perhaps naively, perhaps slyly, perhaps with an old man's immunity, can we really do this? Or must we be satisfied with playing at doing it? That is performing in the weak sense of that concept. The problem of extinction will be solved either by a fundamental transformative change in consciousness, behavior and political action or to put it bluntly, our species along with millions of others are going down. Can we really respond to the call to, quote, fracture the assemblages of power, unquote. Novelist P.D. James saw it coming in 1992 when in the children of men she wrote, quote, of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, 960 million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by want and extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions, it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time, unquote. But back then, and it does seem long ago, doesn't it? Although it's only 27 years. James foresaw extinction by natural causes, not by murder or maybe suicide, though she was a crime writer. An eye detect a wink rather than a blink in James's eye. She is talking about what she thinks won't happen anytime soon. However, not so Elizabeth Colbert, author of the sixth extinction, who put it very differently in February 2019, a few months ago, at Princeton University. Now I'm quoting Colbert, quote. I always say, if you're not pessimistic, you're not paying attention. It's very hard to look at the trend lines and the numbers and the political situation and not be extremely disturbed right now. I know there's a lot of energy and I'm hopeful that some of that energy will translate into action. But if you look at what's actually happening, it's pretty bleak. If I were king of the world, I would say we should try to put pretty big swaths of the earth that are still relatively intact, aside for those creatures that currently reside in them. I think that's our best hope at this point, unquote. So Colbert goes back to Wilson's half-earth proposal. Gaia's best hope. But as I stand here before you this evening, unlikely to happen. Six. So here we are. The world as it is, left holding betkits and game pants. In 1992, not long before he died, in the same year as James's, the children of men, John Cage at Stanford University read his, quote, overpopulation in art, unquote. A mesastic poem where vertically kept, which vertically kept repeating the phrase overpopulation in art. The impetus is Cajian activism that is passive and optimistic to the point of unhered ecstasy. Let me select from Cage's poem and I hope my great translators will do it justice, quote. About 1948 or 50, the number of people living all at once equal the number who had ever lived at any time all added together. The present, as far as numbers go, became equal to the past. We are now in the future. Has it doubled? Has it quadrupled? All we know now for sure is the dead are in the minority. They are outnumbered by us who are living. What does this do to our communicating? To stop the estrangement between us to overcome the patriarchal thinking, the authoritarian structures and the coldness, the human not togetherness. The necessity to develop a culture that consciously opposes the ruling culture. A culture which we create, we determine which overcomes the passive consumers attitudes and which is not ruled by profiteering. Even though the future is already here, many are still living in the past. All governments are striking examples of what's out of date and inappropriate to our proper business, our revolution. Though there are more of us, all of us live in the same place, the planet earth. There is no difference between what happens to some of us and what happens to others. Whatever happens, happens to all of us. Our problems are not various. They are identical. The purifying of water and air, stopping the removal of fossil fuels from the earth, developing solar energy, etc. We begin by believing it can be done. Getting rid of pessimism, blindly clinging to optimism. The planet has become a single person. Unquote. After his 25 minute performance and you can get to it on YouTube, it's worth seeing, Cage answered some questions. He concluded, quote, I have tried to bring together my thoughts that are of an optimistic nature and I have been unhappy in recent times with conversations and what I read and so forth that are so gloomy and that are so hopeless. I brought together something that could give us reasons for hope as much as I could. And the audience at Stanford applauded and went home. Seven. My last chapter. Saguanalist Eric Erickson, coiner of the phrase identity crisis, developed a theory of human life cycle. Eight phases. From infancy to adolescence to adulthood to old age. At each phase a person immersed in and to some degree determined by social circumstances comes to a crisis literally a crossword roads and makes a choice often unconsciously. The crisis choice of old age is between despair and disgust and integrity and wisdom. After Eric's death in 1994 Joan N. Erickson his collaborator and wife of 67 years completed the work on the life cycle emphasizing the final stage. She pointed out that the root of the English word wisdom is the Sanskrit word Veda to see, to know but to see what. The destruction of the world as we've experienced it or some better future urging humility Joan Erickson wrote quote, old age demands that one garner and lean on all previous experience maintaining awareness and creativity with a new grace part of the human condition is to lack wisdom about ourselves and our planet we must become aware of how little we know unquote but she doesn't stop there she writes quote I made a further discovery thousands of years ago the word for ear and for wisdom in the Sumerian language seems to have been one in the same if wisdom is conveyed through sound as well as sight then singing, rhythmic gesture and dance are included as its conveyors and amplifiers now we can see that wisdom is a world of actuality to which our senses give us access it is with our senses that we understand through sight and hearing enriched and supported by scent, taste and touch for all animals have these gifts and attributes unquote Joan Erickson further discovers that the word integrity the partner to wisdom is etymologically rooted intact as in contact intactile tangible and touch the ancients understood that wisdom and integrity were actually felt, sung and danced story told transmitted by all the senses performing in harmony harmony yes but sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter sometimes smooth, sometimes sharp pointed if Beckett's Taylor worked by stitching textiles that is stitching textiles until he accomplished his endgame pens then let us wear these trousers to our dances and fiestas our dramas, farces and tragedies and that is where I am my brain is in despair disgusted by how badly so many humans are behaving while my belly my integrated senses offers me the wisdom and appetite with cage I blindly cling to optimism thank you while they are fixing that there are microphones here I want to say something before I take what questions I have no idea what time it is so first of all what time is it please so we have about a half hour that we can have a discussion it may be shorter it can go a little bit longer that one I mean so I want to say that you know I've done a lot of writing in my life this was one of the most difficult pieces I've ever written simply the physical writing but the visceral encounter with what I was writing it brings tears to my eyes because this is not a master's thesis I have one this is something that after doing this research I'm convinced is true I'm not a religious person in the rapture end of the world sense I don't think the world will end I think probably humans will continue in some way but I don't I can't stomach the kind of life and so it's with that as I wrote I found out and that perhaps someone out here will have some ideas and of course we must dance even if it is on the bank of our own deck of our own titanic but we must generate the power for this transformative change if not in our generation in the next generation don't fall for CNN's breaking news the news that's been facing us has been breaking for thousands of years we're getting a grasp of it now it will take time to put that grasp into action walking backwards is more difficult than walking forwards it will go slowly but we must begin to take the reasonable loving backward steps and our generation your generation can do it through consciousness and slow steps that's why I said a plastic bag a cloth bag and rather than plastic these are trivial things but the trivial begin to change and you bring them to your students to your children and it will happen but we can't become impatient even in the safety I'll use the titanic metaphor one more time they could have gotten everyone off if they had rehearsed lifeboats and if they had gone to the right lifeboats and they were all there was enough room but they panicked and they went down 1700 of them didn't have to there was enough room there was enough time but they went down they panicked do not panic there's enough room there's enough time and step by step step by small step let me ask you please if you have a question stand in line Richard your talk is so urgent so important while I was listening to you I thought there are two perhaps we could think of two performatives that are happening right now out of these horrible bad news warnings that are coming out of the UN I read recently that there these programs called Good Grief people are going to good grief therapies to cope with this because it's so depressing how do you explain to your children how do you deal with this and on the other hand all these mindfulness wellness therapies and then on the third front for this performative and aesthetic maybe like anesthesia to cope with something like this is the golden age of television which deals with performance as well actors are being employed playwrights are being employed for this boom of binge watching television so we are kind of addicted to that and to the applications and to all this technology and I think the other performative that might have a response is the synesthetic not the anesthetic but the synesthetic performance of live encounter and that's why theater and live performance and dance is so urgent and when I talk with my students about this it's like why hasn't theater disappeared in light of all this technology and all this because it's urgent and it calls for live action and I think what this encuentro calls for is that urgent live action right now yes I agree I would add add only and I try to do this with my grandchildren my children obviously are adults is to neither scare them nor lie to them to go to the natural history museum and see a dinosaur and say what happened and say how we are to some degree in a similar state for different reasons but to also as cage says even though one of the things I know as a theater director if you do it even if you don't believe it you will believe it so you make believe leads to make believe so you have to cling to this blind optimism but not but operate pessimistically and propagate optimistically that's what I would say operate pessimistically get it done propagate spread the news optimistically long term that's what I would say thank you Antonio hello my name is Bronte and I'm grateful for your offering and see your reverence for life and your compassion for life and the urgency of what you shared and I also feel it's important to name what I sense into the danger of speaking to population control and the ways that that's predicated on eugenics eugenicism and also white supremacy and the many ways that questions about who we speak of when we speak about humanity at large and who we speak of when we speak about the Anthropocene so I'm curious if you would take me out to dinner for a longer combo um um to delve into as someone who feels who sees you as my elder and who's going to inherit this earth um to speak about how we might see how we might find where we can be in concert with one another on what you share okay I have two an answer and then a proposal I'll do the proposal first because at my age I forget things so uh not too much so the proposal is in quensborough would give me a room I'll take a few hours either tomorrow or friday or saturday and just be there with uh my friend gritoff's you say an open seminar I'll just be there and you come and talk will there be cool and and I won't play marina abramovich I'll actually talk and whether I look into your eyes or not doesn't matter okay now to uh to answer your question directly I put it in my paper I'm not for eugenics I'm not for the chinese system I'm not for I'm re and he's put it empower women raise life uh living standards and the birth rate will fall that's the long term solution that's the way to do it empower women raise living standards and the birth rate will take care of itself right otherwise what you're saying is correct but I said that in my paper if if I publish it I will make that clear but that's very very much the program and that's a long term thing we're gonna have to go through a lot our women impregnating themselves I'm curious about how who are we who are we demanding to shift it's not for me it's not about who not because if we're if we're requiring that uh I'm not requiring anything I didn't say require I said empower women so whatever the applause indicates take it and do it and raise living standards and as a byproduct of that the birth rate will fall I'm not uh that's what happens you know just I'm curious if it's more people being born or if it's the concentration of resources in a population of a demographic of people which are predominantly rich white men and so is it the question about is who are we speaking to when we're talking about making different choices and what if we were more specific about who has currently endangered our planet and it brings me deep grief to it is about empowering women but underneath that it's really about who is willing to surrender their resource who's willing to who's willing to shift their complicity correct I I couldn't agree more those in power are not willing to surrender their resources so the question then is I use the word transformation and not revolution because the history of revolutions have not been particularly happy that certain what they come up with because as you stated the world is still hegemonic and it's still for all the progress to a large degree patriarchal patriarmonic so I am for what the applause is garnering but I am you know I don't think however that even if we redistributed all the wealth if the population keeps growing there's not enough to go around many will get a little better off and reach above subsistence and okay the very wealthy will be exterminated that's okay but the overall standard of living will be quite low we need to make a fundamental change that's what I'm saying and that fundamental change is tied to fewer people it's not like it never happened in 1960 how many of you were alive in 1960 how many just raise your hands so smattering okay when you were alive there were 2 billion less people on the earth than there are now so we have to recognize that and it's a limited sphere so if you have another way of accomplishing it I'm all for that that's why I'd like to have a deep meeting as polemical as it might get but hopefully not polemical I don't feel polemical on this issue I feel like I want to accomplish it and I also think it's an and question not an either or question I think you can take power away from if we generate the right way from corporations evil governments etc etc and empower women and lower the population it's not a question of this or that I don't think this or that is what has driven us for too long and I'm curious about I guess it would be about this is my last question I promise and I think this is really important that I'm speaking and taking up space and and and I'm here for the planet speaking from this knowing I'm curious about when we and we could talk about this tomorrow in the meeting with the food and the water about how do we my question that we'll go into tomorrow is how do we decolonize our needs and how do we shift what the standard of living we're talking about is because a redistribution of iPhones is not maybe what we're talking about or a redistribution of huge that it's the idea of the standard of living that is unsustainable so what is the standard of living we're speaking to what do we really need to be on this planet and with one another and to survive I agree totally I'm not talking about the endless proliferation iPhone so let's meet and discuss that I don't have answers to these problems me either yes and to even expect me to have one is to be unconsciously you know propelling the system that you're wanting to destroy so I don't have answers to the problem okay thank you for your concern and I hope to see you wherever it's determined I'll be tomorrow okay let me know wow I've stepped into a really wild sharing it with you all so Shakespeare says that you know the world the stage and we are all actors and there's some other person that says when there's only there's a particular I don't know the exact quote but it's like when there's a group of people that are in a room together there's a particular unique thing that those people can work together on that no one else can and so I'm you know this is a question for you Richard in the room this is my first hemi and quentro and it does seem very emergent and I'm a climate justice migrant justice drug policy activist I really do put my body on the line constantly and we can talk about that later but my question is how can we adjust how we relate to each other for the rest of this week considering that we did use up fossil fuels that are from our dinosaur ancestors to get here we might you know we don't know what the future is going to be like it's not guaranteed so how can we make the most out of this hemi and quentro in 2019 it's about to be the 50th anniversary of Woodstock which I bring up because the war on drugs was a response to the counterculture movements the third world liberation movements that were emerging in the 60s so I really think we have a unique chance to do something here I'm really fertile with ideas so just ask me because I do spend a lot of time on the border and I have disrupted Trump in a Las Vegas hotel in the past year and I'm really about it you know so my question for you Richard is what are some interventions that we can use how can we own this emergent process to reshape how we engage with each other for the rest of the week given you know the bleak future if we don't act more radically with our relationship to performance well, again I see there are many working groups out there who are working on these things that's what the structure the thing that makes the in quentro great and perhaps worth the jet fuel of those of us who flew is these not only the brilliance of the performance but these working groups which are doing exactly what you're doing so I attended one briefly I couldn't go to all that Marianne Hirsch was moderating on decolonizing the mind and I think that speaks directly to what you're talking about so I can't tell what you do the rest of the time but there are many groups out there get like minded people start networks it's what cage said in 94 that I read you know we're in this together and therefore although we have oppositions we work at them and of course through them we also have commonalities and we should try to identify them I do feel maybe the profoundest in the scientific sense word I'm asking for a change in our nature human nature to another kind of paradigm because that which was so successful for our species if you take the long run this is successful for certainly not for other species and possibly not even for our own species so they're you know the working groups and whatever and you've identified yourself and then you should say ok I'm going to be out in the lobby people who want to talk about this meet with me now and we'll set up a time to meet later I don't have recipes for solutions I don't have them yours are going to come up with good things to do you must ok, then I volunteer to coordinate with you all very unique happening where we take up public space together before the Hemi Encuentro is over I'll be outside later what is your name? I go by La Pacha Mami nice to meet you nice to meet you everybody my name is Ricardo Peña y me quiero decir a to share an experience of mine I studied hydrobiology hydrobiology is a study of life and water and like three years ago I was part of a project where we went to save a lot of species a lot of animals reptiles, birds, fish crustaceans y tres años en México en Cancún en la Tajama region hay un ecosidio en todos los medios y todos los medios hablamos de todo con unos compañeros ambientalistas y unos amigos de mi ambientalistas y nosotros demostramos la Secretaría del Medio Ambiente en el ambiente hemos demostrado que el crimen había sido cometido contra los animales llegaron las máquinas se sorprendieron a todos se sorprendieron a todos y terminaron la Tajama mangrove dentro de cinco horas lo que la naturaleza tardó lo que la nación lo que la nación lo que la nación lo que la nación destruyó ese ambiente me invitaron a participar muchos maestros no querían ir por miedo a perder su trabajo yo elabré yo elabré y demostramos que si había ocurrido una posible y yo estuve ahí monitoreando estuve caminando por la zona 0 la zona afectada y con mis ojos pude ver como las iguanas estaban espantadas porque había las máquinas y se encendió una lucha contra las autoridades y y bueno se encendió una lucha y bueno y bueno se encendió una lucha y bueno se encendió una lucha y bueno se encendió bueno se encendió y bueno se encendió y bueno se encendió y bueno y ahora esta hispano me invitaron a estar en la zona 0 la lucha y bueno y bueno me invitaron a ser a la zona 0 Mi pregunta es la siguiente, usted está hablando de que estamos viviendo una era prácticamente de exterminio donde las futuras generaciones van a sufrir, en cuanto al impacto ambiental que está ocurriendo en todo el mundo, yo lo que le quiero decir es que como le vamos a hacer para ganar esas batallas, ¿dónde vamos a ganar esas batallas? Si sabíamos de cómo vamos a ganar esas batallas, yo habría empezado mi conversa con eso, y habría rompido las batallas, y habría ganado las batallas. Ok, muchas gracias. Hasta luego. Gracias. Ricardo, muy breve, solo una minuta. Yo soy un discípulo chicano de Shisek, y me da mucho problemas con mi mujer femenina de Sudamérica, o a la base de los días, pero en un sentido, veo la filosofía reciente como un tipo de Shisek de las Américas, un tipo de intelectual, un ingeniero intelectual que es constantemente navegando en las bordas entre distopia y utopia. Y lo que quiero decir es un poco de testimonio, ¿cómo decirlo? Un testimonio, chingao, como se diga. ¿Como dice eso? La Pocha Nostra decidió que el último proyecto político era el proyecto pedagogico. No el proyecto de arte. Así que decidimos cambiar la atención desde el último proyecto pedagogico, no engañar a los activistas y artistas de varias culturas, géneros, complexidades, en el proceso de creación, fue el proyecto de transformación. En el momento, tuvimos dos tipos de estudios, tuvimos los estudios que vinieron de la Unidad, de Alemania, Suecia, Canadá, etcétera, que tenían todos los expensos y que estaban en sus escuelas. Y luego tuvimos, por supuesto, los participantes del tercer mundo, que siempre les dieron escuelas. Era como un menú de ataco. Ahora, 10 años después, en la nueva Estera Internacional, debajo de la Trompera, las personas que se aplican a nuestros trabajos son personas que han sido abiertas recientemente, personas con terminales, enfermedades físicas, personas con las habilidades mentales, personas que han justificado la brutalidad de la policía, personas que están en el proceso de ser abiertos, personas que son los grandes equipos de asalto sexual, y estos son nuestros nuevos estudios. Entonces, todo lo que quería decir es que, sí, el testimonio que La Pocha puede proporcionar ahora es paralel to this world of dystopian utopian ideas that my beloved Padrino Richard Schechner is explaining. Thank you. Thank you for your time, Franchering. I too believe that art is an amplifier, but my concern is that we've been kind of preaching to the choir. And if we cannot move those who are not in this space, then that's going to be a challenge. We have to get beyond, before we can even attack something like climate change, we have to begin to see the other as ourselves. And I don't think people in here have a problem with that, but there are those who do. Thank you. I entirely agree. And the real problem there is that those who are poor and there are multitudes want to be unpoor. And the quickest route to unpoverty is not through ecological responsibility. So the great problem is how do we get to unpoverty, to abundance in a different way? I don't have the answer to that. But if we try to preach to the unconverted who are really desperately poor and say, you know, do this, do this, do that, it's not going to work. So that's a huge problem. That would be a huge conference to how to address the dual problem. That people who have very little really want and deserve more. And that sometimes some of the things that I'm talking about is the process is a privilege. I recognize that as a problem. I have not thought through to the end of it. I'm going to try. Hola, buenas tardes. Hello, good afternoon. My question goes back to the Titanic metaphor. And you said that the privileged, I understand that the privileged are the ones who save themselves. And I was thinking about the ship. I was thinking about the Titanic. And I think there are populations to which the Anthropocene already arrived. I don't know if we still have time to organize ourselves. I want to believe that we do have time. And as regards performance, I was watching Jesús Rodríguez's videos on the Mexican Senate, you know, her video about corn or the pork tacos, the carnitas tacos. How efficient can performance be to move the indifference of the privileged as it concerns the people who are already the target of Anthropocene? Very, very briefly. I very deeply admire and appreciate what Jesús is doing. And other performances I've seen here also, Las Miserables, for example. And I think, you know, two things. One, we do what we can do. Don't throw your hands up and say, because I can't get to everyone, I'll get to no one. We do what we can do. And so if your task is to make the already converted, more converted, and make their waves, things have repercussions. And I feel that some of the popular art in Mexico, I mean, there's a huge heritage of pop art, street art in Mexico, you know. Diego Rivera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's where you start to talk to the, quote, unconverted. Talk to the taxi driver. Be prepared for a pushback, but still have the conversation. You know, we're meeting people all the time who are not, quote, privileged, quote, as we are. So the question is, how do we engage? Because this is a question I feel of life and death for their children, if not for them, you know. And therefore, we're doing a service to ourselves, to them, et cetera, et cetera. There are multiple ways, and I do think we should have a conference to discuss different strategies. One room, how do you talk to the converted? One room, how do you talk to the unconverted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are multiple ways to go about this. And I also think, and this is what Cajer's saying, we shouldn't lose our sense of joy, participation, making art, having fun. It's no good to turn in this horrible thing and make us all protestants. It just won't work. Don't go the guilt-shame route. Go the have-fun-and-change route. Have-fun-change, not guilt-shame-die. ¿Sí? Gracias. Bueno, pues... You know, when you start something used to have a relationship, and I know that right now there are a lot of people who wanted to ask a question, they wanted to communicate, y no dejamos de hacerlo para eso, estamos acá. Pero también es cierto que estamos en un espacio en el que hay una maravillosa marca técnica que ha estado apoyando esto, y esto está terminando por ahí. Creo que uno de los primeros principios para relacionarnos tiene que ver también con esto. Con lo principal que estamos conscientes de la actividad del otro, del cuerpo del otro, del otro persona's body, del otro persona's light, y bueno, les agradecemos muchísimo esta noche, especialmente el placer. Y a Teatro Unam, a todo el equipo Teatro Unam, muchas gracias. El programa del encuentro sigue hoy. Nos vemos a las 10 y media en el vicio para el trasnocheo.