Trespassing the percepticide: Note per recuperare la voce
Trespassing the percepticide: Notes on reclaiming one’s voice
BA thesis, Iuav Univerisity of Venezia, Multimedia arts curriculum, march 2026.

Written under the supervision of professor Annalisa Sacchi.
Book design by Beatrice Savoldelli.
Printed and bound by Skillpress, Fossalta di Portogruaro (VE).

Read the thesis (in italian) here.

AbstractTrespassing the percepticide investigates the disappearance of the voice – and its subsequent collective reappropriation – through a research project that moves across sociology, philosophy, performance theory, and a critical perspective on contemporary media.
The starting point is an analysis of percepticide, a term reactivated by Diana Taylor in 1997 to describe the invisibilization of violence that dominated Argentina during the Dirty War. Percepticide constitutes a mutilation of the senses that makes it impossible to see or hear beyond what power allows to appear: this occurs not only through forms of authoritarian terror, but also through a far more pervasive redirection of attention within the digital sphere. Thus, the aim is to fracture the collective dimension, disabling any possibility of community formation.
The text first examines the biopolitical normalization of bodies – that technology of power which, according to Michel Foucault, incorporates individuals down to their biological existence, regulating even their sensory experience. As a consequence of this perceptual fallacy, the capacity for speech of those subjected to violence becomes mutilated. The thesis explores precisely this lacunary space of human communication, tracing several ways in which this void takes form: the untestifiability produced by the horrors of the concentration camp; discursive regimes and violence that transform the subaltern into a “thing”; the difficulty of trusting the documentary value of the photographic image; the reproduction of imperial violence through archival structures.
At the same time, Trespassing the percepticide seeks to identify possible tools of resistance within selected artistic practices. The normalization of authoritarian symbols in public space is dismantled through the performative self-determination of Sofia Jernberg and the dialogical-architectural work of DAAR; Saidiya Hartman and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay propose strategies for reconfiguring the archive as a way of rethinking the present; Arkadi Zaides employs choreographic tools to critique the socialized incorporation of violence, while Bashar Murkus excavates the deep lacuna of mourning in order to dismantle the theatrical apparatus itself.
Finally, observing how our attention is today fragmented by digital space and hyperpolitics, I locate the transformative value of these examples in a relation to reality that extends beyond aesthetic qualities: these are alter-pedagogical practices capable of structuring a dialogue that does not end with the reception of the artwork, but continues far beyond it. In this way, artistic work can ignite a spark for a subsequent overcoming of percepticide.

francesco fochi

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