La Pocha Nostra: A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society marks a transformation from its sister book, Exercises for Rebel Artists, into a pedagogical matrix suited for use as a performance handbook and conceptual tool for artists, activists, theorists, pedagogues, and trans-disciplinary border crossers of all stripes. Featuring a newly reworked outline of La Pocha Nostra's overall pedagogy, and how it has evolved in the time of Trump, cartel violence, and the politics of social media, this new handbook presents deeper explanations of the interdisciplinary pedagogical practices developed by the group that has been labeled "the most influential Latino/a performance troupe of the past ten years." Co-written by Guillermo Gómez-Peña in collaboration with La Pocha Nostra’s artistic co-director Saúl García-López and edited by Paloma Martinez-Cruz, this highly anticipated follow-up volume raises crucial questions in the new neo-nationalist era. Drawing on field experience from ten years of touring, the authors blend original methods with updated and revised exercises, providing new material for teachers, universities, radical artists, curators, producers, and students. This book features: Introductions by the authors and editor to Pocha Nostra practice in a post-democratic society. Theoretical, historical, poetic, and pedagogical contexts for the methodology. Suggestions for how to use the book in the classroom and many other scenarios. Detailed, hands-on exercises for using Pocha Nostra-inspired methods in workshops. A step-by-step guide to creating large-scale group performances. New, unpublished photos of the Pocha Nostra methods in practice. Additional texts by Reverend Billy and Savitri D., Dragonfly, Francesca Carol Rolla, VestAndPage, Micha Espinosa, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Praba Pilar, L. M. Bogad, Anuradha Vikram, and Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, among many others. The book is complemented by the new book Gómez-Peña Unplugged: Texts on Live Art, Social Practice and Imaginary Activism (2008–2019).
Gómez-Peña Unplugged is an anthology of recent and rewritten classic writings from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a figure who stands alone as unique and ground-breaking in the history of performance art and as the artistic director of transdisciplinary performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Throughout this collection, Gómez-Peña tackles literature, theory, pedagogy, activism and live art in an eclectic mix that demonstrates how the process of writing is simultaneously a performative exercise in embodied language. The writing stands as a call for action, utilizing what Gómez-Peña terms “imaginary activism” and “radical citizenship”; it invites the reader to embrace a borderless, polygendered, crossgenerational and race-literate ethos. This timely anthology comes straight from the heart of a troubled Trump-era United States and a crime cartel–ridden Mexico. Artists and writers are prompted to engage in radical performance pedagogy within the civic realm and to think of themselves as public intellectuals and “artivists” participating in the great debates of our times. By encouraging emerging artists and writers to wildly imagine their practice beyond the normative art world and academia, this book is a fundamental read for scholars and students of performance art, political theatre, cultural studies, literature, poetry, activism and race and gender politics. Performance Art, Live or Time-Based Art, Cultural Studies, Experimental Poetry, Multiculturalism, Social Practice, Chicano/Latino/Border Art & Literature, Relational Aesthetics, Public Art, Artivism, Activism, Psychomagic Ritual, Literary Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Ethnic & Gender Studies, Queer & Women Studies, Post-Colonial Theory, Techno-Art, Cyborgian Studies, Exoticized & Fetishized Identities, Deconstruction Stereotypes & Binaries, Anti-Essentialism, Anti-Nationalism, Radical Citizenship, Anti-Racism, Race & Gender Literacy
A ground-breaking publication by MacArthur Fellow and American Book Award winner Guillermo Gomez-Pena and his collaborator Roberto Sifuentes: confess your innermost fears and desires about Mexicans, Latinos, and the Border.
This anthology of Gómez-Peña's performance chronicles, diary entries, poems, essays, and texts, sheds an extraordinary light on the life and work of this migrant provocateur.
Inspired by the pre-Hispanic codices that escaped immolation during colonial invasions, this artists' book opens out in accordion folds expanding to a length of over 21 feet. Rice has created a series of beautiful and jarring montages in which the mixture of languages, slang, poetry, and prose of Gomez-Pena's performance texts are woven through and around Chagoya's collages filled with pre-Hispanic drawings, colonial-era representations of New World natives, and comic book superheroes. Irreverent to the last, Gomez-Pena and Chagoya employ iconic figures and persistent stereotypes to overturn the fantasies of nationalism, ethnocentrism, and historical amnesia that cloud international relations. Rice's masterful typographic compositions orchestrate the text's many voices and views, offering a history of the Americas which must be read forward and backward, in fragments and in recurring episodes - in short, as history itself tends to unfold. About the Authors Guillermo Gomez-Pena was born in Mexico City in 1955 and came to the U.S. in 1978. His work, which includes performance art, poetry, journalism, criticism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues and North/South relations. He is the recipient of an American Book Award for The New World Border (City Lights) and a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, among many other honors. Enrique Chagoya is a Mexican-born painter and printmaker who has been living and working in the U.S. since 1977. The recipient of two NEA Fellowships, his most recent show of paintings was at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. He currently teaches at Stanford University. Felicia Rice is a book artist, typographer, printer, and publisher whose work has earned her many honors. She lectures and exhibits internationally, and her books are represented in the collections of various museums and libraries. She currently directs the graphic design and production program at the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension.
In Exercises for Rebel Artists, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes use their extensive teaching and performance experience with La Pocha Nostra to help students and practitioners to create ‘border art’. Designed to take readers right into the heart of radical performance, the authors use a series of crucial practical exercises, honed in workshops worldwide, to help create challenging theatre which transcends the boundaries of nation, gender, and racial identity. The book features: Detailed exercises for using Pocha Nostra methods in workshops Inspirational approaches for anyone creating, producing or teaching radical performance A step-by-step guide for large-scale group performance New, unpublished photos of the Pocha Nostra method in practice Exercises for Rebel Artists advocates teaching as an important form of activism and as an extension of the performance aesthetic. It is an essential text for anyone who wants to learn how use performance to both challenge and change.
What does it mean to be documented or undocumented? How do these terms work across borders and boundaries, languages and nations? These are the questions fueling the experimental artwork-in-a-box, Documentado/Undocumented, a book art piece that explores the intersection of printmaking, typography, performance, video, sound art, and installation. In its traveling exhibition, a finely crafted aluminum traveling case is on display, opening into a tri-partite mirrored vanity containing a playful kit of objects, inviting the participant into an intimate space of engagement and transformation. Illuminated buttons trigger layers of audio, and a set of instructions invites the viewer to "Reimagine yourself / tell a new story / collaborate with others." Also on display is an exquisite, vividly illustrated codex created by book artist Felicia Rice, with texts drawing upon Mexican performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena's experiences and observations of the political, geographic, social, and psychological boundaries between the United States and Mexico. A video loop of Gomez-Pena performing various ritual acts is projected onto the gallery walls. Doc/Undoc presents this multi-media, multi-disciplinary artists' collaboration in book form, documenting a unique and wildly ambitious adventure into the experimental realms of modern book arts. Included are a lush, photographic recreation of the installation, a reproduction of the codex, an essay by art historian Jennifer A. Gonzalez who situates the project in the context of bookmaking, performance art, and cabinets of curiosities. An introductory essay by Felicia Rice tells the story of the collaboration: its genesis, development, execution, and its ongoing intention. In addition, the book is packaged with a USB drive containing the installation version's original sound art by Zachary James Watkins and video art by Gustavo Vazquez. "Felicia Rice is one of the most exemplary book artists in the United States. Her collaborations with Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Enrique Chagoya have transcended every tradition and formal expectation that we have concerning the book as a work of art. Her new collaboration with Gomez-Pena, Doc/Undoc, is a brilliant exposition of the best of two worlds--art and political action."--Peter Rutledge Koch, The Codex Foundation "The bleeding flaming heart of this book is a cornucopia of shamanic defenses against racism. It's a magical toolbox filled with implements to use for safe border crossings, a prayerbook for the deconstruction of oppressive stereotypes, and a guide for the creation of liberated identities and revolutionary entities. This is not a book to be just read, it's a book to be performed, enacted and realized."--Marshall Weber, Artist/Curator at Booklyn
This anthology of Gómez-Peña's performance chronicles, diary entries, poems, essays, and texts, sheds an extraordinary light on the life and work of this migrant provocateur.
Inspired by the pre-Hispanic codices that escaped immolation during colonial invasions, this artists' book opens out in accordion folds expanding to a length of over 21 feet. Rice has created a series of beautiful and jarring montages in which the mixture of languages, slang, poetry, and prose of Gomez-Pena's performance texts are woven through and around Chagoya's collages filled with pre-Hispanic drawings, colonial-era representations of New World natives, and comic book superheroes. Irreverent to the last, Gomez-Pena and Chagoya employ iconic figures and persistent stereotypes to overturn the fantasies of nationalism, ethnocentrism, and historical amnesia that cloud international relations. Rice's masterful typographic compositions orchestrate the text's many voices and views, offering a history of the Americas which must be read forward and backward, in fragments and in recurring episodes - in short, as history itself tends to unfold. About the Authors Guillermo Gomez-Pena was born in Mexico City in 1955 and came to the U.S. in 1978. His work, which includes performance art, poetry, journalism, criticism, and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues and North/South relations. He is the recipient of an American Book Award for The New World Border (City Lights) and a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, among many other honors. Enrique Chagoya is a Mexican-born painter and printmaker who has been living and working in the U.S. since 1977. The recipient of two NEA Fellowships, his most recent show of paintings was at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. He currently teaches at Stanford University. Felicia Rice is a book artist, typographer, printer, and publisher whose work has earned her many honors. She lectures and exhibits internationally, and her books are represented in the collections of various museums and libraries. She currently directs the graphic design and production program at the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension.
Through the performance ritual, the audience vicariously experiences the freedom, cultural risks, and utopian possibilities that society has denied them. Audience members are encouraged to touch us, smell us, feed us, defy us. In this strange millenial ceremony, the pandora box opens and the post-colonial demons are unleashed. - Guillermo Gomez-Pe?as Performance Diaries Guillermo Gomez-Pena has been variously described as among the most significant of late-twentieth-century performance artists - The Village Voice; a peacemaker in the worlds culture clash - Vanity Fair; and a wizard of language - The Chicago Tribune . He is without doubt, a unique outsider-artist who crosses the border and talks back. In Dangerous Bordercrossers, Gomez-Pena continues his epic, artistic journey through globalisation, the commodification of identity, and the continuing culture wars. His writings, like his performances, point towards a borderless future and a poetics of hybridity. This latest anthology of his performance chronicles, diary entries, poems, essays, and texts, sheds an extraordinary light on the life and work of this migrant provocateur.; He documents and illuminates his brilliantly inventive collaborations with Roberto Sifuentes and Sara Shelton-Mann, among others, and reveals, for the first time, what it's like to be a Chicano on the road. Dangerous Bordercrossers is at once sexy, scary and inspiring. Be prepared to be provoked.
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