Edge Zones Festival Finds Rituals for Uncertain Times

Still image from “Inherited Gestures” by Nicole Combeau. (Photo courtesy of Edge Zones)

Edge Zones is marking two milestones: the 15th edition of its Miami Performance International Festival and, in November, the 30th anniversary of the nonprofit arts space founded by artist Charo Oquet and now co-run with her daughter Gabriela Keddell.

Running Thursday, Sept. 3 through Saturday, Sept. 5 at Edge Zones’ Allapattah home and online, the festival brings together 25 artists and artist groups from South Florida and beyond under the theme “Rituals for Uncertain Futures.”

The program opens with a series of video performances streamed on Edge Zones’ YouTube channel. An artist talk follows on Friday, moderated by Oquet and co-curator Estefanía Papescu, the Argentine writer and curator behind Simetría Doméstica. The festival ends Saturday  with an evening of live performances.

Among this year’s participants is Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the Cuban performance artist and co-founder of the San Isidro Movement. He arrived in Miami in July after completing a five-year prison sentence in Cuba and being granted humanitarian parole in the United States. His imprisonment for his art and activism drew international condemnation.

In a city where cultural organizations, restaurants and even neighborhoods can change almost overnight, Edge Zones’ three-decade history is unusual. Oquet credits its longevity to a willingness to adapt without abandoning its purpose.

“Edge Zones has survived for 30 years because there has always been a reason for it to exist,” she said. “From the beginning, our mission has been to help Miami become a great art city by creating opportunities for artists. … We have never allowed ourselves to become fixed. We have stayed committed to the same fundamental mission, but we have been willing to change the way in which we fulfill it.”

Still image from “Tossing Up, Catching Down” by Kitayama Seiko. (Photo courtesy of Edge Zones)

That adaptability has allowed Edge Zones to remain a constant in Miami’s shifting cultural landscape. It also suits performance art, a form built around bodies, time and transformation.

Performance can be ritualistic by nature. Repeated and rehearsed movements take on new meaning when enacted before an audience, while ordinary gestures can become charged through repetition. Papescu hopes viewers will come prepared to encounter forms of ritual that may not resemble their own.

“It would be wonderful for people to attend with an open mind, ready to encounter other realities and worlds,” she said. “Everyone has their own preconceived notion of what rituals are, but here they might encounter things that are completely different—works that are harsher, deeper, more banal, or that reflect another form of spirituality. That is precisely what we consider enriching.”

For Miami photographer Nicole Combeau, whose work appears in the video program, the ritual is intergenerational and physical. Reading her own writing aloud, Combeau recreates the gestures and postures of her ancestors while positioned beside family photographs. The performance gives bodily form to ancestral memory.

Many people know family stories: how their grandparents met or what they endured through the wars and political upheavals of the 20th century. But who remembers exactly how a grandmother held herself for a photograph? How many descendants unknowingly repeat the same gestures and mannerisms, carrying a physical legacy they cannot name?

The festival’s title also speaks directly to the unease of the present. South Floridians face intensifying heat, a punishing cost of living and anxiety over immigration enforcement. Several artists in the video program respond to that instability by turning inward, finding meaning in familiar spaces and repeated actions.

Still of William Cordova’s “alacamericayamericalac mí (pa Ogun y Atahualpa)” (Photo courtesy of Edge Zones)

The home in Cinthya Escorcia’s “La Visita,” the neighborhood block in Lucia Von Sprenger’s “Corre Sangre Bajo los Pies” and the public park in Seiko Kitayama’s “Tossing Up, Catching Down” become sites for intimate exploration.

In Kitayama’s video, the artist repeatedly tosses a ball into the air in the middle of a park. People pass, children play and dogs wander through the frame, while her attention remains fixed on the ball’s rise and fall. The simple action becomes a meditation on focus and presence amid the distractions of city life.

Other artists move in the opposite direction, placing their bodies fully within natural environments as a form of grounding. Karma Davis, William Cordova, Jatun Risba and Mileidy Artiles, whose video is titled “Like the Fire in the Ashes, I Am,” use animals or landscapes to explore instinct, unpredictability, sexuality and appetite.

In Davis’ “Cunnilingus,” the artist appears to mimic the sex act suggested by the title, directing the gesture toward a pool of opaque white sap inside a severed tree branch. The image is mesmerizing and disconcerting, charged with sexual suggestion although nothing explicitly sexual occurs.

Still image from “Cunnilingus” by Jatun Risba. (Photo courtesy of Edge Zones)

Performance art can be difficult for audiences unfamiliar with contemporary art, and it often receives less commercial and institutional support than work that can be bought and displayed. For Oquet, that is precisely why the festival remains necessary.

“I felt Miami needed a festival that could bring strong international performance artists here while also giving local artists a place to develop their own practices,” she said. “Performance also fits perfectly with Edge Zones because it encourages experimentation. The performance festival is really an extension of Edge Zones’ larger mission: creating a space for exchange, risk-taking, collaboration and discovery.”

WHAT:  Miami Performance International Festival

WHERE: Edge Zones Art Center, 3317 NW 7th Ave Circle, Miami

WHEN: 5 to 6 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 3| video festival, online via YouTube; 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, Sept. 4, artist talk, Edge Zones Art Center; Saturday, 6 to 10 p.m., live Edge Zones Art Center

COST:  Free

INFORMATION: (305) 303-8852, www.edgezones.org/

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