La Pocha Nostra & Saint Joseph’s Art Society present
WE ARE ALL ALIENS
Excerpts from a Border Opera
A project by Gómez-Peña, Allison Lovejoy & La Pocha Nostra
(Featuring Balitronica Gomez, Muza de la Luz, Neto Paul and a cast of wild performance artists and musicians)
For the first time in two years, La Pocha Nostra presents a large-scale live performance in San Francisco at Saint Joseph’s Art Society on May 19, 2022.
This special one-night-only event includes a performance dialogue between a concerto pianist and an indigenous musician alongside a mix of new and classic spoken word texts presented by Gómez-Peña. La Pocha Nostra & surprise guest artists from the US and Mexico will also present live art images in a layered performance environment. This event is the beginning of a long-term residency of La Pocha Nostra at Saint Joseph's Arts Society.
La Pocha Nostra’s premiere of ‘SF Apocalypse’, a new film by Gómez Peña, Gustavo Vázquez and Lalo Obregón (the film includes performances by San Francisco artists like Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, Allison Lovejoy & the 7 deadly Pleasures, Rupa & The April Fish, Adrian Arias and many other local luminaries)
Monday's film premiere includes live performances by Balitrónica Gomez, Muza de la Luz and Aranza Cortés Karam, performance poetry by Norman Zelaya, Francisco Orrego, Ralfka Gonzalez and Gomez Peña.
Locas, locos and loquex in the Bay Area. Don’t miss it!
Portland Events March 16 and 18
2022
Two opportunities to see La Pocha Nostra in the Pacific Northwest on March 16 and 18, 2022!!
Pacific University's School of Arts and Humanities is proud to present performance artist, writer and activist Guillermo Gómez-Peña in the 2022 Benjamin and Elaine Whiteley Distinguished Lecture: "The Pandemia Chronicles." This evening also features a performance by La Pocha Nostra senior member Balitronica Gómez.
In “The Pandemia Chronicles,” Gómez-Peña presents his most recent performance texts from the past two years combined with classic work from his living archives. Utilizing a casino roulette spinner to select his live spoken word texts and props, he is unplugged, thinking out loud and articulating the challenges and possibilities of reinvention during confinement and in the midst of multiple pandemics.
Join the lecture Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the lecture starts at 7 p.m. in the Taylor-Meade Performing Arts Center, McCready Auditorium.
Pacific University's Benjamin and Elaine Whiteley Distinguished Lecture is an annual offering of the College of Arts & Sciences funded through an Oregon Community Foundation grant. A longtime Portland business, civic and philanthropic leader, Benjamin Whiteley Hon. '01 was a Pacific University Trustee Emeritus until his death in 2017.
A ritual performative lecture involving an epic performance poem/chronology and utilizes literature as a means to recapture memory.
Multiple Journeys: the life and work of Gómez-Peña is a performance lecture that invokes text and historical photographs to chronicle the performance art practice of post-Mexican writer, artist and activist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. By tracing his family life as well as his past 35 years in performance, visual and literary forms, the artist discusses his work in context to the larger evolution of the field as well as to the main political and social events of the times.
For the past 15 years, with the archival assistance of Emma Tramposch and other colleagues, Gómez-Peña artist has been going through the process of cataloging his extensive personal collection of original photographs, slides, videos, audio-art, books and ephemera documenting his interdisciplinary arts practice. In the process they have come across unique historical materials that lend perfectly to this form of artistic and educational presentation. In keeping with the hybrid spirit of his work, he has translated his archives into this one-hour performative audio-visual lecture.
An evening of performance poetry, musica and spoken word with the pochex, pachucos, and 24th street banda!
Come join us for a gathering of poetry, deviant thoughts in times of pandemia, barrio memories and sounds. Chicano poet and performance artist, Gullermo Gomez Pena, Pocho poeta Josiah Luis Alderete, and poeta Francisco Orrego will be sharing live readings and spoken word. Open mic at the end don’t miss it!
Francisco Orrego, poet and painter born in San Francisco’s Mission District. Lived in Medellin Colombia from 10 to 18. Son of a santera from Nicaragua and a father from El Salvador. A proud Latin mutt exploring personeal, political or mundane themes that define his experience as a man of color in the United States.
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho Spanglish speaking Poeta and left handed callejero of Aztlan.
Gullermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, intellectual DJ, reverse anthropologist, pedagogue, deviant shaman, Public Citizen residing in the Mission since 1994
This event will be in-person for a limited capacity (with proof of vaccine) and also live streamed.
There are multiple upcoming opportunities to intersect with Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra's largest ongoing project of 2021 including an immersive exhibition, virtual screening and workshop plus two LIVE and in-person performance events in October in Chicago at the UIC and the Jane Addams Hull House.
Full information about the total project and all public programming here
UPCOMING IN-PERSON EVENTS ~ GGP and La Pocha Nostra LIVE in Chicago:
“One-day and one-night in lock down” ~ Gómez-Peña returns to Chicago for his first LIVE and in-person solo performance since lockdown began. This new solo performance monologue features new writing responding to the multiple pandemias including rantings and confessions. Featuring a cameo by conceptual artist, performer and storyteller Robin LaVerne Wilson aka DRAGONFLY.
Thursday, October 21st: 2:00-5:00p
Join Gómez-Peña & La Pocha Nostra for a fully immersive and performative activation of the Casa Museo exhibition for an afternoon of interactive live imagery, music, poetry, guided tours and calls for action by the audience. La Pocha Nostra invites you to come dressed as your favorite covid desire or fear and if you like please bring an object you are ready to purge and add to a growing exhibition curiosity cabinet & time capsule.
About the exhibition:
For Gómez-Peña’s Casa Museo: A Living Museum and Archive (September 9, 2021—May 29, 2022), pioneering conceptual-performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña takes up residence in Jane Addams Hull House Museum. The exhibition layers one house museum on top of two others, in San Francisco and Mexico City, highlighting the many affinities between the ideologies pursued by Gómez-Peña, Addams, and Hull-House.
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border offers multilingual live radio and archival audio programs addressing “the multiple pandemics of racism, sexism, xenophobia and neo-colonialism on steroids in the Trump Era.” Throughout his life, Gómez-Peña has worked in audio art and radio across multiple genres, from poetic journalism to Spanglish spoken word, and from radical storytelling to collaborations with musicians, poets, and activists. This ongoing series will present samples of his previous work (1980–2015) and newly recorded material created in the last two years and during lock-down.
Gómez-Peña’s Casa Museo: A Living Museum and Archive
For Gómez-Peña’s Casa Museo: A Living Museumand Archive, pioneering conceptual-performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña (Mexican-American, b. Mexico City, 1955), takes up residence in Jane Addams Hull House Museum. The exhibition layers one house museum on top of two others - in San Francisco and Mexico City, highlighting the many affinities between the ideologies pursued by Gómez-Peña, Addams, and Hull-House.
Through sound and image, Gómez-Peña and his ever-evolving performance troupe, La Pocha Nostra, inhabit Jane Addams’ office, the original Hull-House library, Jane Addams’ bedroom, and other spaces throughout the Hull home. During its seventy-five-year history, Hull-House Settlement was home to nearly one hundred Residents—advocates, doctors, scientists, writers, and artists—who lived on the upper floors of the settlement. The Residents and their immigrant and migrant neighbors worked toward, what Jane Addams called, the common good. In residency at Hull-House, Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra, present a borderless world where geographic, municipal, gender and other borders are dismantled to allow public institutions to reflect and serve all publics.
Zen Cohen, 2014.
Chicago Residency [Virtual] Kick Off
2021
On October 1st and 2nd La Pocha Nostra will host two free virtual events marking the official launch of our upcoming residency in Chicago!
Friday Oct 1: Join La Pocha Nostra for the virtual film screening and Chicago premiere of The San Francisco Living Archives of La Pocha Nostra. Core members will present a live performative poetic introduction to the film followed by a screening of the 1.25 hr film anthology.
Film Screening begins 6:00p Chicago time with a poetic introduction by troupe members and is viewable online at:lumpen.tv
About the Film Anthology:
The San Francisco Living Archives of La Pocha Nostra is a video anthology, created over multiple decades and includes works at the intersections of performance art, experimental video and “artivism.”. Watch raw performance documentation filmed at iconic Bay Area artist-run spaces including the LAB, Galeria de la Raza and SOMArts alongside street-style interventions and candid interviews with perplexed tourists. The Anthology results in a conceptual autonomous zone for the poetics of the virtual body in times of pandemic.
Saturday Oct 2: Anyone wishing to engage in La Pocha Nostra's performance pedagogy, please sign us up for LPN's afternoon workshop on Saturday, Oct 2 lead by core members Paloma Martinez-Cruz and Saula Garcia Lopez. Space is limited and will close once full.
For fuller descriptions of the upcoming residency and current exhibition on view at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum please visit here.
FILM PREMIERE: The Pandemia Chronicles 2021
2021
Gómez Peña & La Pocha Nostra present the premiere of The Pandemia Chronicles 2021: A curated selection of experimental films to survive the Apocalypse.
The Pandemia Chronicles 2021: A curated selection of experimental films to survive the Apocalypse consists of a collection of performance videos generated by artists from Mexico and the United States. The event aims to create an autonomous zone for the poetics of the virtual body in times of the pandemic. This performance film is a conceptual experiment, a radical reinvention project in times of pandemic; a guide to crossing borders in cyberspace.
Transart Communication is a performance lecture-based event about performativity in different contemporary art branches, art genres, cross-genres, non-art fields, such a politics, activism, science, but also social art, curatorial practice, conceptual art or architecture.
RADIO: WEEKLY PROGRAM THROUGH 2021 ~ THE MEX FILES
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border
2021
La Pocha Nostra in Partnership with Lumpen Radio, Public Media Institute & Smart Museum of Art & Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago)
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border
SHOWS AIR EVERY WEDNESDAY AT 4:30p PST / 6:30p CST
Listen LIVE every Wednesday via the Lumpen Radio website
For a full archive of past shows, follow us on MixCloud
Photo by Zen Cohen, 2014.
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border offers multilingual live radio and archival audio programs addressing “the multiple pandemics of racism, sexism, xenophobia and neo-colonialism on steroids in the Trump Era.” Throughout his life, Gómez-Peña has worked in audio art and radio across multiple genres, from poetic journalism to Spanglish spoken word, and from radical storytelling to collaborations with musicians, poets, and activists. This ongoing series will present samples of his previous work (1980–2015) and newly recorded material created in the last two years and during lock-down.
"In a first-ever partnership, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Public Media Institute, and the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art present a year-long series of experimental audio performances from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist, writer, activist, and MacArthur Fellow, class of 1991. The series is an initiative of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, a multi-venue exhibition and program series organized by the Smart Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows program throughout 2021."
VIRTUAL KEYNOTE: WE ARE ALL ALIENS
A New Solo Performance by Gómez-Peña in Lockdown
2021
WE ARE ALL ALIENS
A New Solo Performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña in Lockdown
Thursday, February 11, 4:00 PM PST / 7:00 PM EST
Internationally acclaimed performance artist and radical pedagogue, Guillermo Gómez-Peña combines theory, poetry and performance texts in the wake of the Trump administration and under the throws of multiple pandemias.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña has an obsession with confronting, rewriting and restaging so-called “Western Art History” while highlighting colonial legacies of systematic exclusion, demonization and fetishization of Brown, Black, and indigenous bodies.
Later in the series, Gómez-Peña will be joined by invited luminaries in the field who will offer their own responses to the Museum of the Future.
FILM SCREENING: The San Francisco "Living Archives" of La Pocha Nostra (An experimental video anthology)
2021
The San Francisco "Living Archives" of La Pocha Nostra
(An experimental video anthology)
Premiere weekend ~ Saturday, January 30th & Sunday, January 31st
This feature-length anthology of films highlights La Pocha Nostra's 30+ years of experimental video work created in San Francisco.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the premiere weekend! If you missed the film, please write to us and we will let you know when it is available for viewing again. If you are a presenter interested in this film for any upcoming project we are interested in hearing from you too.
About this ongoing project:
"This video anthology features a careful selection of short films from over three decades of work created by La Pocha Nostra within San Francisco.
The compilation depicts a rebel troupe working at the urban intersections of performance art, experimental video and “artivism” but represents only a sampling of the vast video work in La Pocha Nostra’s "living archives".
These videos were created over multiple decades, and therefore they are eclectic in content, format and aesthetics and - like La Pocha Nostra - represent a permanent work-in-process. The scope of material includes raw performance documentation filmed at artist-run spaces like the LAB, Galeria de la Raza and SOMArts; Street-style interventions filmed on a handheld VHS camcorder and candid interviews with perplexed tourists downtown and in Fisherman’s Wharf plus weird, experimental collaborations shifting the borders between filmmakers & performance artists.
We believe performance art is a form of social justice and anti-colonial practice and can provide an antidote to the malign forces of gentrification and pandemics. We also believe that even in times of total lockdown, there is still a bohemian community and an aesthetic thriving in San Francisco that needs to be supported. And we are part of this total reinvention process."
Special thanks to Grants for the Arts.
Produced by: Róbert Gomez-Hernandez, Emma Tramposch & Gómez-Peña Editing & Intro/Closing Filming: Robert Gómez-Hernandez Films Curated by: Gómez-Peña & Emma Tramposch Featuring La Pocha Nostra troupe members past and present, collaborating filmmakers & countless rebel artist accomplices...
RADIO: Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border
GP at his home broadcasting station, Mission District, San Francisco. Photo by Zen Cohen.
Jan 28, 2021
La Pocha Nostra in Partnership with Lumpen Radio and Public Media Institute (Chicago)
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border offers multilingual live radio and archival audio programs addressing “the multiple pandemics of racism, sexism, xenophobia and neo-colonialism on steroids in the Trump Era.” Throughout his life, Gómez-Peña has worked in audio art and radio across multiple genres, from poetic journalism to Spanglish spoken word, and from radical storytelling to collaborations with musicians, poets, and activists. This ongoing series will present samples of his previous work (1980–2015) and newly recorded material created in the last two years and during lock-down.
"In a first-ever partnership, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Public Media Institute, and the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art present a year-long series of experimental audio performances from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist, writer, activist, and MacArthur Fellow, class of 1991. The series is an initiative of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, a multi-venue exhibition and program series organized by the Smart Museum to mark the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows program throughout 2021."
Ongoing Virtual Programming by La Pocha Nostra during Pandemia
2020
Since lockdown began in March 2020, LPN has presented an ongoing series of Zoom broadcasts. We have hosted bi-monthly virtual events including spoken word solos, poetry slams, intellectual salons, classroom visits, international performance workshops & festivals - involving all Pocha Members and special guests from around the world.
If you are interested in hosting a virtual event featuring LPN please contact us! pocha@pochanostra.com
FILM SCREENING: Gómez Peña y La Pocha Nostra en confinamiento
Performance para sobrevivir el Apocalipsis
2020
Friday 11/13/20 at 3:00pm PST!
Los gigantes de la Performance ”LA POCHA NOSTRA” estarán como invitados en Trienal Deformes mañana Viernes 13, a las 20 hrs.-Chile, con el ESTRENO de la Performance virtual: "Gómez Peña and La Pocha Nostra in confinement: Performance to survive the Apocalypse." El vídeo estará disponible desde las 20:00 horas Chile (CLST), San Francisco 15:00 (PST) , Mexico City 17:00 (CT) NYC 18:00 (EST) y tendrán acceso a través del siguiente link (si entran antes de la hora, no aparecerá):https://vimeo.com/476645572
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: 2020 Virtual School of Dreams & Psychomagic: Live Art + Film Marathon
Featuring Artists from La Pocha Nostra's Virtual Summer School
Sep 2020
Performance artist Aquarius Funkk.
THIS UPCOMING WEEKEND!! Starting this Friday (Sept 4, 2020) at 12:00p PST, LPN is showcasing our Live Art + Film Festival featuring work by the incredible participating artists from our first ever Virtual School of Dreams & Psychomagic.
Last weekend this virtual festival live-stream was abruptly impacted by tropical storm Laura.
LPN’S 2020 VIRTUAL SCHOOL ALUMNI ARTISTS ARE: Freyr Marie, Marcus Kuiland-Nazarioh, Irisdelia Garcia, Marie Markovic, Elisabetta Lambertini, Tanya Marie Vlach, Christopher Michael Gutierrez B. Aquarius Funkk, Noelle Ghoussaini, Shannon Rose Riley, Susana Plotts-Pineda, Kayla Chambers, Natacha Voliakovsky, Courtney Desiree Morris, Leni Hester, Kate Barry, Pocha Pena, Victor Payan, Alex Bradley, lwrds duniam, Eréndira Bravo, Indira Montoya, ximena huizi, Claudio Carvalhaes, Amber Phelps Bondaroff, Angie Bautista, Brock Hessel, Jessica Fitzgerald, Vinicius Davi, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, Lorena Peña, lo bil, Chelsea Markuson & Rae Goodwin
VIRTUAL PEDAGOGY: La Pocha Nostra's School of Performance Dreams & Psychomagic
Aug 5, 2020 to Aug 19, 2020
Full Information & Registration Information online HERE.
In 2020, La Pocha Nostra hosts our legendary performance workshop online with sessions held once a week over 3-weeks in August. We welcome artists & activists from everywhere to participate! This year’s intensive will be instructed and produced by LPN core members Gómez-Peña, Emma Tramposch, Balitronica Gómez, La Saula & LROD.
Sessions will also include surprise guest artists and luminaries of the performance art world!!
Themes of exploration for this year’s workshop: LPN’S pedagogy focuses on the human body as a site for creation, reinvention, memory and activism. This year - in response to our immediate present - we will focus on the following themes: Artistic tools & strategies for combating systemic racism, the politics of isolation, virtual “presence”, ritual strategies to connect with humanity, notions of self and collective, cultivating community, action and activism outside of the public realm, the possibilities for presenting live art & pedagogy in the virtual.
Virtual Space.
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: Gómez-Peña Unplugged
Jul 4, 2020 6:00 PM
Gómez-Peña Unplugged
July 3rd, 2020 6:00 pm PST
UPDATE: The complete files of Gomez-Pena Unplugged are currently censored. As soon as the entire event is available we will post it here. Thank you for joining us, muchas gracias!
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: How to Survive the Apocalypse
Presented by La Pocha Nostra and Grace Space (NYC)
2020
Curated by Gómez-Peña & La Pocha Nostra in dialogue with Grace Exhibition Space NYC
HOW TO SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE
An evening of body-based performances & strategies to cross virtual space.
Grace Exhibition Space (NY), La Pocha Nostra (US/Mexico) & The Norwegian Theater Academy (Norway) join forces to host an unprecedented evening of experimental performance involving artists from multiple countries performing in simultaneity alongside a live electronic composer and a vocalist.
FEATURED ARTISTS:
La Pocha Nostra ~ LROD & La Saula (USA/Mexico), The Ecosexuals Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens (US), VestAndPage (Germany/Italy), Kira O’Reilly (Finland/Ireland), Eleonora Fabião (Brazil), Marilyn Arsem (USA), Willem Wilhelmus (Finland), Cesar Martinez (Mexico), Martin Renteria & Sharmel Altamirano (Mexico), Music by Ulf Knudsen (Norway)& Vocals by Micha Espinosa (The Borderlands).
This event is free to but we are strongly encouraging donations to the individual artists & Black Lives Matter.
PRESS RELEASE including link to view the event HERE.
Photo: La Saula by Juan Carlos Ruiz Vargas.
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE - Glosolalia Posnacional 3.0: Spanglish in times de Pandemia
Dreamocracy in America & La Pocha Nostra present a binacional ZOOM performance.
Fifth ‘encuentro’ trans-fronterizo of poetry performance and inverted languages. A Remix of glitch, tongues, multi-lingual spoken word, spanglish, gringoñol, and more locuras…
Sliding Scale Donation $5-$15 USD (to help keep the doors of La Pocha Nostra and Dreamocracy in America open) Limited capacity: First come first served - 200 max.
The event features the following artists from Mexico: Lechedevirgen Trimegisto, Rocio Cerón, Eugenia Chellet. And from the USA: Micha Espinosa, Logan Phillips, Jose Torres-Tama, La Pocha Nostra (Saula, Emma, Balitronica, LROD, Gómez-Peña) with Democracy in America (Pocha Peña & Victor Payan) and Dramaturgical Support by Paloma Martínez Cruz.
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: Dreamocracy in America
Apr 11, 2020 6:00 PM to 2020
This video contains a series of excerpts from Gómez-Peña's collaborations with Dreamocracy in America featuring spoken word texts commenting on the current two global pandemias alongside earlier work from his "living archives". This was his first virtual performance during lockdown.
Gómez-Peña, Saula, Balitronica & LROD are in residency at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater in Tallinn, Estonia leading a 2-week pedagogical project with students as part of the "Contemporary Physical Performance Making" Program. Information about the program online HERE.
We Are All Aliens (Columbus, OH) POSTPONED
Mar 21, 2020 8:00 PM
POSTPONED
Presentation of new solo performance WE ARE ALL ALIENS – And other tales of Radical Imagination (2020) with BALITRONICA GÓMEZ.
"Miss Illegal Alien" takes selfies with audience members. LACE, Los Angeles, 2016.
Touring Projects Postponed until world re-opens.
2020
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Ongoing performance salon series open to the public, solo performance premiere by Gómez-Peña and presentation of WE ARE ALL ALIENS border opera featuring Allison Lovejoy.
OSLO, NORWAY - La Pocha Nostra's annual return & residency partnership with the Norwegian Theater Academy.
OAXACA, MEXICO - Large Scale exhibition and International Winter Workshop
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND - In collaboration with Public Act Theater
An International Summit of Live Art & Pedagogy
Two established international troupes - Vest & Page (Germany/Italy) and La Pocha Nostra (US/Mexico) have joined forces in the last three years to produce large-scale pedagogical and performative adventures with an international scope involving up to 50 artists, including “special guests,” instructors/tutors and alumnae always in dialog with the local arts and intellectual community. Currently seeking sites and co-producers for this project.
Glosolalia Book Launch (Mexico City, MEXICO)
2020
10-day Pocha Nostra Posnacional residency in Mexico City. Featuring a performative launch for the brand new Glosolalia book - Spoken word events open to the public during the first week of March.
"Glosolalia” es un fenómeno que se refiere a los estados alterados de conciencia que producen sonidos y fonemas más allá de la semiótica y lo inteligible, como el mentado ‘tecno-speak’ Hoy en día, es ‘lingua franca, poluta e disoluta,’ en el mentado “international poetry slam movement.” y los chicanos son la mera vanguardia sin proponérselo.
Radical Pedagogy + Premiere of his new solo performance WE ARE ALL ALIENS – And other tales of Radical Imagination (2020) with BALITRONICA GÓMEZ. Link to information HERE.
