Begun in 1990 and concluded in 2020, Desatorador consisted of three activities separated by two fifteen-year periods of inactivity. Its performativity lies in a minimal ritual that establishes, in public life, the sense of a domestic hygiene routine to conjure a kind of ethical cleansing in the ties between civil society and the state.

In the activities, which last three full days, I walked through the great metropolitan Lima with a sanitary unclogging device that constitutes the intermediate instrument of the performative that enunciates the performance, proceeding with it to suck my breast (citizenship), the paternal home (in 2020) and the facades of buildings representing state powers, sectoral control and executive entities, financial, industrial, commercial, service, media and cultural companies, trade associations, political and non-governmental organizations, churches, higher education institutes and universities, as well as law enforcement.

The effort of walking for days on end, the unblocking of one's chest, and the constant repetition of the action highlight the responsibility that each generation of ordinary citizens has in the country's political and civic culture, from their own homes to the highest echelons of power.

A trace of communitas, however faint, may emerge in the feelings of complicity that may arise among passersby, faced with the eloquence of performing a social, cultural, and political unblocking. There is also the risk of unfortunate symbolization, of citizen disengagement when blaming others for that—be it underdevelopment, inequality, ineptitude, difficulty, corruption, etc.—whose unblocking is conjured up in the activity. In the tension between the two, communitas and blame, lies the struggle between performance and misfortune at every step, between each station of the unblocking behavior. And it is there that the drama lies.

On the other hand, periods of inactivity dissolve into a certain historical civic inertia, which makes each activity an intergenerational re-attempt to subvert, through a spell, the failure of our political society.