Vortragsreihe "Kunst - Forschung - Geschlecht"

Frida Robles Ponce

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Students please sign in at https://base.uni-ak.ac.at/courses/2022W/S04395/ by 5 October 2022, other interested persons please send an email to gleichstellung@uni-ak.ac.at.

© Salma Millán, La Cabra Salvaje at Plaza Santo Domingo, 2020

“I do not understand love stories”, was the starting point of an investigation about romantic love; activated by an act of public writing. For three months Frida Robles worked as a scrivener at the Santo Domingo public square in Mexico City. Her scrivener service was to write love letters, for free. Public scriveners are the professionals that write letters or documents for legal purposes, or for people who cannot read or write. Mexico City still maintains this dying tradition and a community, of approximately 40 scriveners, goes to work every day at the arcades of the Santo Domingo public square. The public scrivener writes in the public space and their writing is affected by the other, the client.

This long-durational performance searched for the intersections between public writing and the possibility of intimacy. After having engaged with the letters for some time, Frida Robles wrote a speculative history of the ghosts of the Santo Domingo square. Inscribed in the space were the prisoners of the Saint Inquisition, the Aztec city buried under the Spanish one, the passersby and the quotidian killings of women in the country. Can speculative storytelling be a means to re-think her approach to love?

Frida Robles is an artist and curator. Her artistic practice has varied from public art installations to performances to textual work. Her most recent performance, „Sessions with Frida. A performance on the possibilities of healing“ was constructed around a psychoanalysis session on stage. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.