Mariana Castillo Deball developed a series of lecture performances for If I Can’t Dance’s Edition I beginning with Black Boxing in Festival a/d Werf. This lecture looks at the idea of authority and invisibility. Deball refers to the phenomenon known as black boxing, which is a term used to describe when a piece of technology becomes so successful that you no longer know nor care how it actually works. It becomes invisible – it becomes just a means to an end. Using images and drawings, Deball traces her own interest in the performative moment of doubting such seamless structures. At the end of the reading she encouraged the audience to come forward and smash a large hanging piñata in the form of a Mobius strip – the classic mathematical shape for infinity. Suddenly this pathetic cracked open shape, which leaked candy over the floor, became the evidence of a
cathartic collective public moment.