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This interdisciplinary book brings into dialogue research on how different fluids and bodies of water are mobilised as liquid ecologies in the arts in Latin America and the Caribbean. Examining the visual arts, including multimedia installations, performance, photography and film, the chapters place diverse fluids and systems of flow in art historical, ecocritical and cultural analytical contexts. The book will be of interest to scholars of art history, cultural studies, environmental humanities, blue humanities, ecocriticism, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and island studies.

The recent passing of Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela from 1999 till 2013, produced a juncture in the nation's imaginary that immediately sparked numerous and diverse commemorative practices. This article explores this sudden demand for a coherent and enduring memory of the late president by analysing different official postures and commemorative strategies. These are initially placed in the context of key historiographical tropes of the Bolivarian Revolution, and then analysed in light of such tropes. Specifically, the discussion identifies a thirst for ‘documents’, used in the broad sense proposed by Jacques Le Goff, which converged on the presidential body, the social body and public space as potential stimuli for memory. In this context, the initial possibilities of embalming Chavez's body, free tattoos of his signature and its use to decorate government buildings, appeal to the archive as a source of authority and as the commencement of history, as Jacques Derrida has it, while extrapolating the ...

The growth of internet penetration in Latin America, as digital culture scholars have revealed (Taylor & Pitman, 2013), has seen the emergence of tactical media practitioners who push the boundaries of aesthetic form and received discourses. This article examines the use of performance, photography and social media in works by Venezuelan artist Érika Ordosgoitti to assert that her use of Facebook is a deliberate form of “electronic disturbance” (Critical Art Ensemble, 1994) that expands the traditional spatial and temporal horizons of performance. By shorting conventional circuits for the circulation of art, Ordosgoitti’s practice engages broader audiences in critical debates about normative controls of photography and bodily representation in social media. Ultimately, the article contends that the depiction of artist’s nude body is a critical gesture that replaces the complacent selfie with a contestatory “shareware body”. La croissance de la pénétration de l’Internet en Amérique latine est témoin de l’émergence de professionnels des “media tactiques” qui repoussent les limites de l’esthétique et les discours conventionnels, dont les chercheurs de la culture numérique ont révélé (TAYLOR & Pitman, 2013). Notre article traite la performance, la photographie et les médias sociaux dans l’œuvre d’artiste vénézuéliene Érika Ordosgoitti. Je constate que son utilisation de Facebook fait partie d’une stratégie consciente de la "perturbation électronique" (critical disturbance) (CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE, 1994) qui élargit les horizons spatiaux et temporels traditionnels de la performance. En faisant une court-circuite de la diffusion conventionnelle de l’art, nous engageons un public plus large dans les débats critiques autour des contrôles normatifs de la photographie et sa représentation corporelle dans les médias sociaux. Á la fin, nous maintenons que la représentation d’Ordosgoitti en corps nu représente un geste critique qui remplace la complaisance de la “selfie” avec un "corps de shareware" contestataire.