TRICKSTERS OF THE SPECTATORial The decolonial proposals of performance artivism through the encounters with La Pocha Nostra and Freddie Mercado

In this research I explore artivist performance proposals that lead to an analysis of the spectator position intrinsic to the spectatorial, as a construction linked to colonial discourses of otherness. This investigation presents the encountering processes of the transnational troupe of La Pocha Nostra and the Puerto Rican persona of Freddie Mercado with their respective spectators, where local-global constructs of coloniality become unveiled, made and unmade spectacle through their re-reproduction of otherness. Side by side with performance art-life, I explore the deconstruction and de-linking possibilities of the spectatorial taking the work of these artists to build and develop the dilemmas and alternatives presented. From these complex hyper-othering performance practices I research the social implications on the spectatorial at a local and global level. The artistic proposals discussed are focused under the decolonial lens and researched as practices that make possible the co-creation of decolonial relationalities. I focus in the trans-possibility these ‘other’ encounters produce and are produced by. This work inserts the issue of the spectator within broader social concerns and it is under this umbrella that the ‘question’ of the Other arises within the mechanisms of the modern spectacle. These artistic practices exert diverse tactics that directly imply the figure of the spectator within this social configuration.