Photo: James McCaffry
Ladies & gentlemen,
What a strange time to be an artist…
In this time and place, what does it mean to be “transgressive?” What does “radical behavior” mean when the Tea Party lunatics are perceived as defenders of democracy and Glen Beck as a defender of free speech? When our most intelligent newscasters are comedians and Angelina Jolie is considered an activist? Remember the Bush era? What the hell is performance art, pregunto, when a theological cowboy runned the so-called “free world” as if he were directing a spaghetti western on the wrong set? And half a million civilians die during the shooting of the film? And we let him do it? What does radical performance art look like when the images from Abu Ghraib look like radical performance art? What is science fiction when creationism becomes official policy? When some US politicians are sincerely waiting for the rapture and believe that the UN is the anti-Christ? What the hell is performance when Conan the Barbarian became governor of California twice in a reality show called “California?"
Coño, I ask myself rhetorically, what else is there to “transgress?” Who can artists shock, challenge, enlighten? Who is listening? What else should I do or say tonight? Should I improvise more? Give birth to yet another performance persona on stage, “America’s most wanted inner demon?” Should I burn my bra or my green card at the steps of the Museum of Contemporary Art? Bear my soul at the altar of despair? Masturbate in the name of democracy and freedom? Curse Jehovah or Allah? Show up naked at the Alamo with my red stilettos and black cane? Auction my left testicle on eBay?
You tell me…kemosabe. Tonight I am your intellectual surrogate… Or rather, your house Mexican.
Can we start all over again? Can we? May I? Mearlos?
Guillermo Gómez-Peña is artistic director of La Pocha Nostra. Born and raised in Mexico City, he came to the US in 1978 to study Post-Studio art at Cal Arts. His pioneering work in performance, video, installation, poetry, journalism, photography, cultural theory, and radical pedagogy explores cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, the politics of the body, “extreme culture,” and new technologies. A MacArthur Fellow and American Book Award winner, he is a regular contributor to National Public Ratio, and a writer for newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and Europe.
La invasión de la política
Graciela Montaldo
Arte ≠ Vida: A History and Reflection on the Project
Deborah Cullen
O re-enactment como prática artística e pedagógica no Brasil
Tania Alice
An Art of Nooks: Notes on Non-Objectual Experiences in Venezuela
Gabriela Rangel
Translocas: Migration, Homosexuality, and Transvestism in Recent Puerto Rican Performance
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
Performing Rio de Janeiro: Artistic Strategies in Times of Banditocracy
Eleonora Fabião
Reflexiones Suicidas
Sandra Ceballos Obaya
Step and Repeat
Nao Bustamante
American Gold
Regina José Galindo
Excerpt from Philosophical tantrum, 2005
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
This is Mystery: Linda Montano's Roman Catholic Performance Art Manifesto
Lydia Brawner
"Despolitizar" como acción política en la centroamérica contemporánea
Anabelle Contreras Castro
A Complicated affair: Performing life on the margin between art and politics
Nicolas Dumit Estevez
error 404 a hemifesta 2011
Ricardo Dominguez
¿Arte ≠ Política?: In Defense of Performance Praxis
Lissette Olivares
My Contribution
William Pope.L
Video Selections from the Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960–2000 exhibition
Arte ≠ Vida: A Chronology of Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960–2000
Male trouble: Masculinity and the performance of crisis by Fintan Walsh
Daniel Lukes
40 años de performances e intervenciones urbanas de Clemente Padín
Yael Zaliasnik Schilkrut
Historia de la clase media argentina: Apogeo y decadencia de una illusion by Ezequiel Adamovsky
Jennifer Adair
Antología: un siglo de dramaturgia chilena 1910-2010, compilado y editado por María de la Luz Hurtado y Mauricio Barría
Isabel Baboun Garib
Liberalism at its Limits: Crime and Terror in the Latin American Cultural Text de Ileana Rodríguez
Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba
Nor-tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World by Alejandro L. Madrid
Nuria Net
O Corpo em Crise: Novas Pistas e o Curto-Circuito das Representações by Christine Greiner
Cristina Rosa
Orgullo. Carlos Jáuregui, una Biografía Política de Mabel Bellucci
Mauro Orellana
Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment by Rebecca Schneider
Lara Nielsen
Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness by Nicole R. Fleetwood
Joshua Javier Guzmán
Juan Downey: The Invisible Architect by Valerie Smith
Sarah Montross
Gloria by Allora & Calzadilla, Epicenter/Epicentro: Re Tracing the Plains by John Hitchcock in collaboration with The Dirty Printmakers of America
Jessica L. Horton
La labandera de Felipe Rivas San Martín
Matías Marambio de la Fuente
Las rutas de Julia de Burgos
Vanessa Pérez Rosario
Becoming Transreal: A Bio-Digital Performance by Micha Cárdenas and Elle Mehrmand
Corbin Zara
Aventuras Familiares by Cheto Castellano, Daniel Benavides, and Lissette Olivares
Jian Chen