Creating awareness about the interaction of physical, affective and cognitive components that move us to action in this complex sociopolitical arena is Aranzazu Araujo’s main interest. Her work is multi-disciplinary and explores gender roles, politics of migration, and their effects, implications and consequences in the construction of identity and performativity. Creating opportunities to contemplate, to become aware, to notice. By embarking on journeys of time and its relativity, Araujo concentrates on achieving a heightened sense of awareness. It is only through this that individuals are able to make informed choices: the first step in personal and social change.

Lutxa (luz&lucha) is a socially-engaged project and durational performance that focuses on creating bonds amongst the Latinx community. With the creation of a collective, individuals will create a space to experiment with meditation, somatic, and social practice in a process-oriented journey to envision ways to strengthen community, visualize futures, to talk about sociopolitical arena, and discuss ideas to be there for one another and resist.

As a Mexican female immigrant, Araujo’s work explores identity, gender roles, and politics of migration, from understanding the self and environment by integrating bio-behavioral (scientific) research and contemplative practices into an aesthetic articulation of specific tasks over long durations. It proposes movement as a change in (physical/affective) states, locations, or as a force to change current (sociopolitical) situations. Her performances propose that only through a deep awareness of the interaction of the self in relation to the social and political milieu and what moves us to action do we take the first step in personal and social change.

Through thorough research, both scientific and philosophical, she deconstructs behavior to understand it. Through neuroscience and meditation, she immerses herself in the public arena to investigate, as if the public space was a laboratory.

The durational meditative performance will present five luminous beings orbiting a center, using larger-than-body LED suits that will allow performers to shine in a dark moment; to be present as a form of resistance; to present Latinx bodies spreading light. Performers’ kinetic energy will be converted to electricity through wearable circuitry, to power the LED costumes using their own energy and exploring ideas of self-sufficiency within communities. GPS technology will allow the suits to be responsive to each other’s proximity, tracking the movement through space. When two ‘bodies’ find each other, there is no eclipse. Instead, the light shines brighter.

Participants will enter states of heightened awareness where they practice the understanding of ourselves, and the interconnections with the environment. The audience will be invited to join in the orbital action of the work and place themselves amongst circling lights and allow the lights to shine on them.

The complex relationship between the U.S. and Latin America has created refugee-seeking realities: caravans embarking in the journey for survival and individuals looking for a home.Through this collective action, Araujo will embark on a journey, step by step; a meditation on this history and a gesture towards liberating the self into the future. Through this project she seeks to create community; a “hermandad.”