What does poetic resistance look like? How does/can one occupy a liminal space? Where does the predetermined nature of fate meet the real-world application of political agendas? These are just a few of the questions posed by the durational street performance, "Todo Estaba Previsto" (Everything Was Predetermined).

Over the course of four hours, this mobile artwork was wheeled through the central area of Mexico City’s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods as a poetic exercise in resistance, one envisioned via the role of language in raising awareness of our present moment - its contradictions, oppressive and destructive habits, as well as our resilience and potential for the creation of new futures. “Todo Estaba Previsto,” the phrase of which is borrowed from the Mexican street art movement Acción Poética, is intended as a critique of the present, but the phrase also asks us to question our position in the formation of the new.

Set against the backdrop of Mexico City’s urban infrastructure, its direct but open-ended language is subtly confrontational in tone: will we accept the inevitability of corruption and decay, or will we challenge the politics of the status quo? This occupation of the liminal shifts us away from capitalist notions of productivity and consumption and instead points us toward the more complex underpinnings of being – those that involve presence, remembering, attention, respect, and an acknowledgement of the temporal cycles of creation and decay.

Documentation: Natalia Gaia