Allora and Calzadilla

Alan West-Durán’s contribution discusses the joint work of the U.S. artist Jennifer Allora and the Cuban Guillermo Calzadilla (A & C), both based in Puerto Rico. West-Durán considers several of A & C’s videos and installation-performances, which document the peace movement that led to the 2003 withdrawal of the U.S. Navy from Vieques, the island-municipality off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. A & C’s video Returning a Sound (2004) celebrates the success of this grassroots movement, while raising questions about the island’s future development. According to West-Durán, “Returning a Sound can be read as ‘noise,’ as a political statement that interrupts normal political discourse, especially those that are conventionally patriotic, and certainly counters the noise of militarization.” More broadly, A & C’s Vieques videos “deal crucially with the issue of sovereignty, be it at the real, symbolic, political, or spatial level.”