"’Investments Towards Returns’: Protest and Performance in the Era of Financial Crises".

This article explores performances that emerged in the context of the economic crisis of 2001 in Argentina as examples of how artists and protestors created structured embodied events to call attention to the dramatic consequences of transnational, speculative economics. I argue that these protest performances constitute paradigmatic examples of cultural production inviting a redefinition of the relationship between cultural production and political outcomes. Using a performance studies lens that attends to the ways in which the performances I analyze are crafted citing artistic trajectories and sociopolitical histories, I provide a different way to assess these performances' returns.