Imperceptible Bodies: Haptic counter-pleasures in the work of Marcelo Evelin

In this article I investigate the choreographic practice and work of Marcelo Evelin as a specifically haptic mode of what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call becoming-imperceptible. In times where power dynamics become ever more supple and non-localisable, the notion of becoming-imperceptible is an apt conceptual figure in naming both the conditions of power as well their modes of resistance. On this basis, I analyse Evelin’s practice of massa in its choreographic hapticality as a collective process of desubjectification, in which bodies become prismatic as they refract one another in a pluralistic field of agency. I then turn to Evelin’s group piece, A Invenção da Maldade (2019), which, in my view (and among other things) expands this haptic and prismatic field to include the audience. By doing so, the piece can be said to engender what I call haptic space. Through an in-depth analysis of the work I argue that haptic space is an asignifying and appositional mode of co-existence that has the capacity to problematize contemporary forms of power by intensifying affect-ability and virtual tactility. Finally, I contemplate the psychosocial effects of the loss of haptic spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic