From lack, possibility—Santiago Cao discovers performance when crisis renders painting untenable. With body as medium, Santiago intervenes in museums, universities, public spaces; provokes debate through action. Pes(o)soa de Carne e Osso questions "human resources." A scale, artist on one side, flesh and bones on the other. It's seven hours until a woman frees him. In Márgenes y (peri)ferias, Santiago lives unhoused before an art fair, revealing biases in the idea of "public" access. Recognized as artist, he is applauded; but when he appears homeless, he is expelled. Who is allowed to be the public? Art's power lies not in itself, Santiago contends, but in how we wield it—a tool for understanding, a trigger for change.

About The Artist

Santiago Cao is a performance artist, urban planner, educator, and investigator of public spaces, born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina with a Master’s in Urbanism from Universidad Federal de la Bahía in Brazil and a degree in Visual Arts from Universidad Nacional de las Artes in Argentina. Throughout the past decade, Cao has spent his time living nomadically, splitting his life between Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. With regard to his art practice, Santiago Cao enacts performances that largely explore the topics of Bodies in public spaces, the social rules that govern them, and the cultural significance bestowed upon and evoked by the body. As Santiago lives a nomadic lifestyle, his performance also takes place across a multitude of different cities throughout Latin America.”

​About The Host

Anya Miller (she/her) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Sociology and Design. More importantly, she is a student of life—on a radical journey of learning and unlearning, each and everyday. As a human and as a scholar, Anya is passionate about the intersection of art and activism; public art and spatial production; ethnographic research, podcasting, and photography; social justice curation; and intersectionality. She hopes to continue gathering knowledge from the animate and inanimate environment that surrounds her in hopes of, one day, utilizing her energetic passion for humanity to leave this world a better place than she found it.
 Picture​self-portrait​, by Anya Miller
                 















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English Script


AM
It wasn’t until years into creating works as a performer that Santiago Cao actually learned what performance art, as a discipline, is.
Welcome to season 2 of Reckoning and Repair: The Art of Resistance in Argentina. In this season, we explore the stories and legacy of art activists from Bueno Aires and beyond. This is your host, Anya Miller, a lifelong scholar, activist, and admirer of art. I invite you to be present as we dive in. Though trained as a painter, Santiago Cao was forced to explore other artistic mediums when the Argentine economic crisis made it impossible for him to purchase art materials. As a result, he turned his focus inward to explore how art can be made with the body: through performance. 
In our conversation, we open by discussing how these circumstances led Santiago Cao to find his way to performance as an artistic medium, followed by a deep dive into several of his works, addressing Santiago’s central theme of the body and its symbolism in public spaces.
  
SC
I didn't know that performance art existed. I didn’t even know that the term “performance” existed. It began when I was struggling to find a place to live. I went from living in a small boarding house to losing that space and having to share a studio with a friend. 
Before all of this, I was a painter, but during this time, I had to stop painting with pigments. We’re talking about after the economic crisis in Argentina when everything became very expensive, so we couldn't even afford to buy the pigments to paint. At that time, I was in the School of Visual Arts, and my painting practice was forced to shift to collecting elements from the street and transforming them into art materials, but when I began to live with my friend in our tiny shared studio apartment, there was no space to continue generating works.
So, I started writing down ideas in a notebook for when I had a space to live to be able to work on them. And, I realized that ideas occupied less space than matter. And I came to understand one day through some provocation, some joke, that I could generate actions with my body, that ideas could be put into action—my ideas can occupy space. And I knew, of course, that regardless of economic crises and other disasters, my body was the one thing that I knew I would have with me wherever I went—as long as I’m alive. And with this in mind, I began to generate interventions: interventions in museums, invading museums with actions, and then interventions in public spaces and interventions within the university. It was a way of provoking situations—to raise a topic and start a debate.

And after a few years of working in this way, someone at the university, an art professor, approached me and asked if I'd be interested in participating in a performance festival. Remember, I didn't even know that the term “performance” existed. I started searching the internet, and there I discovered that there was  a branch of art action called performance.
But I believe that the fact of not having been familiar with performance art, but starting to work on them made my practice expansive in a way.  I was interested in the fact that what I did didn’t fit neatly into one box; it was a hybrid. And, in that space of hybridity is where I’ve gone about creating my performance work—in particular, in public spaces.


AM
When coming up with these performative interventions, how do you prepare for and rehearse these acts that rely so heavily on the public reaction and interaction with your works?

SC
I don’t rehearse; I never rehearse. Even in my practice, when I aim to create a clear action to generate a discourse, I don’t even rehearse at that time. What I take care of are the details of the performance. If the action needs clothes, what clothes will I wear? And, If the action requires me to be naked, I ask, “But why am I going to undress?” It’s not like it’s an interest or a pleasure like, “Oh, I just love being naked!” No! It's offering the body so that the body can provoke a situation—the body as a symbol. It's never rehearsed, so I don't know what's going to happen. I know how it's going to start. I know what I want to compose as the initial situation, but if I rehearsed it, I would run the risk of losing control of the action—and the response—that interests me.

AM
I think there is something so powerful about not rehearsing your works; it is as if you and the public are on this equal footing, this shared experience, and I find that to be really beautiful, which brings me to the work Pes(o)soa de Carne e Osso, a public work which features a giant scale with nets on either side, one holding you, Santiago, and the other holding raw meat and bones equivalent to your weight. Now this work is a play on words from Portuguese: Pes(o)soa de Carne e Osso—”peso” being weight, “pessoa” being person, and “carne e osso” being meat and bones. It can be understood in English as, “The Weight of a Person of Flesh and Bone.” Talk to me about that work and the situation that your performance provokes using the body and public space.

SC
Well, I play a lot with words, which led me one day to consider the term, “recursos humanos”—“human resources"—that companies typically use. Human resources? But at what point did the human being convert into a resource? It's not a software, it's not a tool, it's not something you can copy, it’s not something you can sell or discard—that is a resource. We have reduced the body to a resource. I questioned: What is the weight of a person? 
In thinking about weight, I asked myself, “What is a person when we remove that attribute of humanity—when they become a ‘resource’?” Flesh and bones! And, so I kind of built the idea of a large scale where on one side, there will be a net with my body inside and on the other side, you will see meat and bone. Let’s see what weighs more.
What interests me is how the action calls the public to play a role—to get involved. After about seven hours, a woman offered me water, and with the help of two other men, she cut the net so that I could be free. The action will be perceived and understood in a million different ways, and I do not intend to control that narrative, but what I realized through this action was that even if I don't use my voice, the action still speaks.

AM
I love how your work forces the public to find answers, rather than feeding explanations to them,  and I find it to be especially moving how, in your performances, the body itself becomes a site of discourse; the personal is political. Keeping this idea in mind, I want to move to another work of yours, “Márgenes y (peri)ferias."
Once again, this title is a play on words. On the surface, “Márgenes y periferias” translates to “margins and peripheries,” but here the first part of the periferias is in parentheses, leaving the word “ferias,” which translates to fair or exposition, standing alone, thus centering the importance of the location in the name of this public intervention. Can you walk us through this act and the response by the public?

SC
That action was for the Bienal de MercoSur—MercoSur Biennial in 2015, which is a very important art fair in Brazil. For years, I had wanted to be one of the artists at this fair, but I had lost interest in it by this time as a matter of personal politics. I decided that my action was going to be a surprise, and described it in very vague terms in my contract so that I had legal cover.My plan for this action was to arrive in Porto Alegre, where the biennial was located, three days in advance. I told the committee that this was because my work was going to require exploring the city—the vicinity of the museums—and incorporating elements of it into my performance. In reality, what I had actually planned to do was to live on the street for three days and to incorporate the context of unhoused people. What is it like to be homeless in an unfamiliar place? How does it impact one’s body? So, I spent three days living on the street in the cold, in the sun, with discomfort, with hunger. 
My idea was that three days later, when I tried to enter the museum for my performance, the security guards would likely throw me out based on my appearance. I’ll provoke a situation that gives a social commentary because the Biennial is a public event financed with public money. If this is a public space, what then are the audiences admitted to this public event? And what people are not even socially accepted as part of the public at a public event in a public building? If you are perceived as an unhoused person—barefoot and poorly dressed socially—you will be expelled. But if you are a performer and you get naked or enter with clothes but without shoes as a performer invited by the institution, you can enter barefoot and naked. But an ordinary person who does not have the role of guest artist will not be able to enter without shoes. I questioned: What power do we artists have that we can do things that the general public cannot? All of that was my base of work during the action. So, I did this action, and I wore a small camera around my neck disguised as a necklace of sorts, and I attempted to enter each building of the Biennial, and in all of them they threw me out—everywhere. The next day, I revisited one of the locations, where the performance discussed in the contract was set to take place. And not surprisingly, I was expelled as well, but on the way out, a photographer recognized me and said, “The artist is present!”
The people began to applaud me. And I questioned the role of the artist in that moment. When we are present for the gaze of other people, as artists, we can do almost anything. We can get naked without being stopped. We can enter a museum barefoot. We have this power granted to us by society. The same staircase, the same building, but one day I am an artist and the other I was not even though I was dressed the same, barefoot and all. It brought into question: For what and for whom do we work in the art world?

AM
Your works bring about such a strong social and political commentary. It’s a site of awareness, change, and hope. Do you see art as revolution—as society’s liberator?

SC
Art is not liberating, not in and of itself. Art is a tool. Let’s say, I have a screwdriver. The screwdriver is not going to save you. It’s not going to open a door, not if you don't use it. It is a tool that must be questioned. In performance, the artist pulls the initial trigger by using their body to call for the situation. What interests me is this situation as a tool to understand and to shift society, not the actual work of the artist. Art does not save. Yes, it has power, but only if you use it.

AM
The way that you have framed art as a tool is truly empowering as it leaves the agency in the hands of the public. Art is nothing without the people, and it is up to us to use it for good. Thank you so much for your time Santiago. This conversation has truly opened new avenues for thinking about performance, art, and activism, and I appreciate you and this space that we have created today.

Thank you for listening to Reckoning and Repair, a Center for Experimental Ethnography podcast. You can learn more and listen to extras at rnrphilly.com.


Santiago Cao: Audio Credits (in the order in which they appear)