Corpo dopo corpo

Kidnapping as political language and spectacle of power, from post-unification banditry to exploring the logic of violence in global capitalism.

Kidnapping is an act that runs through history like a dark constant, a practice in which economics and violence merge in a brutal calculation. But what happens when kidnapping ceases to be a simple tactical tool and becomes a political language and a spectacle of domination?

This research stems from a temporal and geographical paradox: the idea that a limited phenomenon such as post-unification brigandage could influence the logic of organised violence in 21st-century global capitalism.

Through visual narration, the work aims to trace a critical genealogy of kidnapping as a hybrid technology, to drop anchor in the ocean of gore capitalism (term coined by Mexican feminist theorist Sayak Valencia) discourse.

The central hypothesis is that kidnapping, from a rudimentary guerrilla tactic, has evolved into a sophisticated weapon of global communication, in which the spectacular value of violence surpasses and replaces its military strategic value. From this perspective, brigandage ceases to be a historiographical artefact and becomes a lens through which to observe the pathologies of the present.

The solution to violence and suffering lies in a bodily politics that recognises that our bodies are vulnerable and interconnected. For this reason, my work enters into this debate as a critical practice, with the aim of transforming trauma into a collective discourse.