Duets and dialogs between objects from artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s “living archives” arranged alongside the items inhabiting David Ireland’s dining room.
On View through December 16, 2023 in the Dining Room at 500 Capp Street.
This evolving exhibition is the first in an ongoing project and residency between Mission-based organization La Pocha Nostra and 500 Capp Street through 2023 involving performative interventions, rare objects on view and conversations about artists personal collections, home museums and the collection and display of cultural artifacts.
Both partners have been investigating topics vital to a wider dialogue about decolonization and the nature and future of museums and collecting—including who is served and represented by museums, what it means to curate an archive for artistic reinvention, political exchange and spiritual survival.
During lockdown, La Pocha Nostra became obsessed with reimagining our two headquarters – one in California and one in Mexico – as utopian spaces for artistic conversations and community re-building, initially virtually and slowly reopening to in-person visitors & guest artists. It was during those days that we connected with the David Ireland House curatorial staff and began to conceptualize this collaboration.
The Dining Room displays objects from David Ireland’s travels in Africa and Southeast Asia. Before becoming a serious artist, Ireland ran an African import and safari business. With Gómez-Peña’s interventions, the audience are made aware of parallel dialogs and respective subjectivities of each artist. These themes will be explored, discussed and written about as part of our ongoing residency.
Curated by Emma Tramposch (La Pocha Nostra’s Executive Director and Curator of the Living Archives) and Lian Ladia (Curator, Exhibitions and Programs, 500 Capp Street).
To know more about Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s living archives, click on this link.
Past Events
FILM: 100 Ways to Cross the Border, San Francisco
2023
Join La Pocha Nostra for the first ever San Francisco screening of our documentary 100 Ways to Cross the Border at The Roxie.
Starring Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra.
Film by Amber Bemak
Original music score by Guillermo Galindo.
"This vibrant documentary celebrates Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the contribution his radical, queer, anti-colonial art has made to conversations around border-thinking, gender politics and Latinx identity."
Presented by Cine+Más 15 San Francisco Latino Film Festival
Tickets are on a sliding scale basis starting at $25
Shifting Possessions is an ongoing Salon Series of 500 Capp Street with artist and academic Việt Lê having dialogues and programming on queer(y)ing object collections, geopolitical connections and remediation strategies. This performance | dialogue featuring Guillermo Gómez-Peñais part of an ongoing project and residency between La Pocha Nostra and 500 Capp Street through 2023 involving performative interventions, rare objects on view and conversations about artists personal collections, home museums and the collection and display of cultural artifacts.
Việt Lê is the author of Return Engagements (Duke University Press, 2021). The art book White Gaze is a collaboration with artist | theorist Latipa (Sming Sming Books, 2019). Lê has presented their work at Bangkok Art & Cultural Center, Rio Gay Film Festival, Shanghai Biennale, the Barbican, among other venues. Lê cocurated transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (with Yong Soon Min: ARKO, Galerie Quynh, UC Irvine Gallery; YBCA, 2008-09) and the 2012 Kuandu Biennale (Taipei). A 2022-24 Headlands Bay Area Arts Fellow and ‘22 Stanford CCSRE Mellon Arts Fellow, Lê is currently Associate Professor and Chair of Visual & Critical Studies (VCS) at California College of the Arts. vietle.net_vietle
LIVE in San Francisco: THE MEX FILES: A Divination Ritual
2023
Photo by Piero Viti, 2014
La Pocha Nostra and 500 Capp Street present
THE MEX FILES: A Divination Ritual
Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Balitrónica
Thursday, August 3, 2023
Doors open at 6:30pm. Performance starts at 7pm. Duration 1 hour
Tickets are on a sliding scale basis starting at $30
No one turned away due to lack of funds, please contact visit@500cappstreet.org
La Pocha Nostra’s Artistic Directors Balitronica and Gómez-Peña will present a duet performance featuring excerpts from their most recent performance manuscripts and bank of ritual actions. Utilizing a casino roulette and several tarot decks, Balitronica will use various forms of oracular magic to select spoken word texts and props for Gómez-Peña’s live performance. The fate of the script and the performance are determined by methods of divination, chance, and direct contact with the spirits that be at the dining room of 500 Capp Street.
Also on view in the Dining Room starting August 3rd is an evolving exhibition of selected objects from Gomez-Peña’s own “living archives” arranged in dialog with the eclectic collection already inhabiting the room.
Curated by Emma Tramposch (La Pocha Nostra’s Executive Director and Curator of the Living Archives) and Lian Ladia (Curator, Exhibitions and Programs, 500 Capp Street).
Both partners have been investigating topics vital to a current conversation about decolonization and the nature and future of museums and collecting—including who is served and represented by museums, what it means to curate an archive for artistic reinvention, political dialog and spiritual survival.
International Summer School: Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico
2023
JUNE 12th - 18th, 2023
La Pocha Nostra returns to MERIDA, YUCATAN, MEXICO to offer a 7-day International Performance Workshop
APPLICATION DEADLINE: March 15, 2023 (Applications are now closed)
“La Malinche 3.0" 2021 Photo: Robert Gomez Hernandez, Baruk Serna and Federico Tello
La Pocha Nostra will host a 7-day intensive workshop in the gorgeous city of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. This exclusive workshop will include a selection of 12 International artists, 6 Mexican national artists; and 10 artists local to Merida, interested in exploring the intersections of identity and how to transform your artistic and personal practice psychomagically.
La Pocha Nostra wants to reactivate performance artists and communities to experiment with our pedagogy exploring the possibilities of creative adaptability. We also aim to share our personal performance strategies and techniques for outlasting these times.
Locos y locas del Arte Vivo, let’s reunite and cross borders together!
About the Pocha workshop:
This school consists of 7 full days where participantswill beimmersed in our performance art techniques and exercises with a focus on the human body as a site for creation, reinvention, memory and activism. We will place particular emphasis on the relationship between the human body, Mexican mysticism, psychomagic & the politics of identity. This amazing cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary and cross-generational laboratory will host a both local and international artists. We consider our performance workshop intensives to be our most important pedagogical endeavor of the year.
The ‘Pocha workshop’ is internationally recognized as an amazing and rigorous artistic and anthropological experiment in which carefully selected artists from several countries and every imaginable artistic, ethnic, multicultural, and gender persuasion begin to negotiate common ground. Performance becomes the connective tissue and lingua franca for our temporary community of rebel artists.
As always, space will be very limited and is expected to fill quickly. La Pocha Nostra will help you with official letters of invitation if you need them for travel or funding purposes. We encourage all interested applicants to submit your application as soon as possible. Application guidelines are included below.
What will be taught?
The exciting 6 hour per-day workshop will offer two parallel processes: Participants are exposed to La Pocha Nostra's most recent performance methodologies, an eclectic combination of exercises borrowed from multiple traditions including performance art, experimental theater and dance, the Suzuki method, ritual shamanism, performance games and live jam sessions. Parallel to this hands-on process, the group will analyze the creative process, the issues addressed by the work, its aesthetic currency, cultural impact and political pertinence.
Who should attend? Performance artists, experimental actors, dancers, theorists, activists and students interested in the topics addressed by La Pocha Nostra. Ages can range from 18 to 80 years old. Applicants must have some performance experience and must be familiar with La Pocha Nostra’s work. The workshop is extremely fun but both physically and intellectually rigorous.
What is the application process?
International participants will be carefully chosen by a selection committee composed of Pocha Nostra Core members. Please fill the application form online and answer the corresponding questions. Responding to the economical challenges of our times, notifications of acceptance will be given within one week of having submitted your application giving you time to plan accordingly.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: March 15th , 2023
Please note that we will be accepting participants on a rolling basis and strongly encourage submitting your application in advance of the deadline to assure a place. Space is limited and expected to fill quickly.
TUITION: International artists: $1,000.00 USD The tuition for the 7-day workshop includes access to all sessions. To secure your place, a non-refundable deposit of $450 USDtowards the full tuition fee of $1000 USD is required to confirm your place in the workshop by April 1st, 2023. The balance of $550 is due by June 1st, 2023.
Steps for applying:
Fill out the application online HERE (English / Spanish).
The form will ask you to include the following:
*A 300 word MAX personal biography
*A sample of your work is accessible online (video or photographic documentation). Clearly describe the medium, title and any other contextual information.
*Past workshop participants: Participants from prior LPN workshops all you need to do is fill in the form and indicate where you met LPN.
Please note that La Pocha Nostra is not offering full or partial scholarships. If you plan on applying for outside funding, please answer the corresponding questions in the application form and we will help you with letters of support if helpful.
For further information please contact all three core organizers:
Saul Garcia Lopez (Pocha Scholar - Manager of Pedagogy) saulagarcialopez@gmail.com
Federico Tello (Manager of Mexican Programs & Operations ) fede29r@gmail.com
Multiple Journeys: The Life and work of Gómez-Peña
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.
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Journalist: “What do you do when a writer or a curator wishes to deport you from performance art history?’”GP: “You mean someone like Rosalee Goldberg?…You write yourself back into it on your own terms. Chicanos taught me that.”Journalist: “What do you do avoid being typecast and confined to a one liner in the history of art?”GP: “You have to constantly remind the art world that you work in multiple terrains and that some of them are invisible to them.”
A brand new spoken-word monologue & “live-action juke-box” by Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Balitrónica
La Pocha Nostra and the artists are thrilled to present excerpts from their most recent performance manuscripts and bank of ritual actions. Utilizing a casino roulette and traditional tarot deck, Balitrónica utilizes various forms of oracular magic to select spoken word texts and props for Gómez-Peña live performance. The fate of the script and the performance are determined by methods of divination and chance.
In this new project, the artists are unplugged, thinking out loud and articulating the challenges and possibilities of reinvention in the midst of multiple pandemics. The performance includes new texts written during the past two years combined with “classics” from Gómez-Peña’s own living archives.
For more information visit Buzzcut Festival website.
Gray Area is pleased to present TECHS-MECHS, a new survey of ten works by renowned media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
Celebrate the opening of the exhibition on March 16 with a performative reading of the manifesto Tech-illa Sunrise by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and eminent performance artist and anti-border activist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Then come dance under the glimmering lights of Pulse Topology as Lozano-Hemmer presents a tropical gothic, cumbia, sit-hop dance party as DJ Tacostán.
About TECHS-MECHS:
Spanning immersive installations, kinetic sculptures, generative animations, and large-scale shadow theaters, TECHS-MECHS presents canonical works from the artist’s oeuvre alongside a rich chronology of technological cultural history in the artist’s native Mexico.
A brand new spoken-word monologue & “live-action juke-box” by Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Balitrónica
La Pocha Nostra and the artists are thrilled to present excerpts from their most recent performance manuscripts and bank of ritual actions. Utilizing a casino roulette and traditional tarot deck, Balitrónica utilizes various forms of oracular magic to select spoken word texts and props for Gómez-Peña live performance. The fate of the script and the performance are determined by methods of divination and chance.
In this new project, the artists are unplugged, thinking out loud and articulating the challenges and possibilities of reinvention in the midst of multiple pandemics. The performance includes new texts written during the past two years combined with “classics” from Gómez-Peña’s own living archives.
Arrive early for a surprise pre-performance appearance and photo opportunity with The Phantom Mariachi!
Presented in conjunction with the Latinx Visions: Speculative Worlds in Latinx Art, Literature, and Performance conference held at the University of New Mexico. Generously supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and United Way DEI Fund.
LIVE at HIGHWAYS, Santa Monica
2023
Sat, Jan 28 | Highways
The Pandemia Chronicles: A performance & film screening
A brand new spoken-word monologue & “live-action juke-box”
by Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Balitronica Gómez with EmaLee Arroyo aka “Emz Especial”
Time & Location
Jan 28, 8:30 PM – 11:00 PM
Highways , 1651 18th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404, US
La Pocha Nostra and the artists are thrilled to present excerpts from their most recent performance manuscripts and bank of ritual actions. Utilizing a casino roulette and traditional tarot deck, Balitronica utilizes various forms of oracular magic to select spoken word texts and props for Gómez-Peña live performance. The fate of the script, the performance and films screened are determined by methods of divination and chance. In this new project, the artists are unplugged, thinking out loud and articulating the challenges and possibilities of reinvention in the midst of multiple pandemics.
About La Pocha Nostra’s latest filmmaking process: Over the course of the pandemic, La Pocha Nostra got to work developing a collaborative filmmaking format, drawing directly from our own performance methodology and responding to the immediate artistic constraints posed by the multiple pandemias and prevailing culture of fear. The complete process of making the performance films is de-centered, experimental, and collaborative, defying traditional filmmaking practice. Moviemaking against all odds but by any means necessary. We are currently working on 6 films and this event will present several in process.
LIVE at the Momentary: Open Letter to the Museum of the Future and other Divinations
2023
AN OPEN LETTER TO MUSEUMS OF THE FUTURE:
AND OTHER DIVINATIONS
GUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PEÑA & BALITRONICA GÓMEZ
PERFORMANCE | RØDE HOUSE
JAN 21, 7:30 PM
Join us for a brand new spoken-word monologue and “live-action juke-box” by artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Balitronica Gómez.
La Pocha Nostra and the artists are thrilled to present excerpts from their most recent performance manuscripts and bank of ritual actions. Utilizing a casino roulette and traditional tarot deck, Balitronica utilizes various forms of oracular magic to select spoken word texts and props for Gómez-Peña’s live performance. The fate of the script and the performance are determined by methods of divination and chance.
In this new project, the artists are unplugged, thinking out loud and articulating the challenges and possibilities of reinvention in the midst of multiple pandemics.
This site-specific performance will feature Gómez-Peña’s An Open Letter to the Museum of the Future. Originally performed via video in 2021 for the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, Gómez-Peña’s performative keynote imagines a future where museums work with artists to create utopian spaces for social transformation and fostering healthy and vibrant communities through art. Ultimately, Gómez-Peña’s message is one of hope where museums, artists, curators, and communities work together to reimagine their neighborhoods and lives as living works of art.
This event is a part of our focus exhibition Entre/Between, a multi-sited exhibition presenting works that speak to Latinx histories living within and between the United States. Surveying a visual history from 1851 to the present, the exhibition consists of paintings, photos, sculpture, works on paper, and video exhibited at Crystal Bridges, while video works and performances will be featured at the Momentary.
VIRTUAL: Gómez-Peña at the TATE
Keynote: An Open Letter to the Museums of the Future
2022
Friday, September 16, 2022
KEYNOTE PERFORMANCE BY GUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PEÑA
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MUSEUMS OF THE FUTURE
Featured as part of the Tate's initiative Reshaping the Collectible: Learning Through Change
Reshaping the Collectible: Learning Through Change(September 14, 15, 16) brings together different voices from within and outside the museum, including artists, collection managers, conservators and curators and from different fields within academia. This international conference provides opportunities to share research and reflect on an ongoing dialogue, exploring new questions and perspectives.
The conference finishes with a performance by Gómez-Peñathat challenges contemporary art museum practices and calls for an open discussion and response to radical restructuring(s) from within.
This is followed by a guided retreat on writing your own letter to the museums of the future led by La Pocha Nostra's Managing Director & Curator of the Living Archives, Emma Tramposch.
Full conference program with times (all in British Standard Time) available here. All sessions are free and open to the public. Most will be recorded to view afterwards.
TO VIEW THE KEYNOTE ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16:
The session with GP's keynote begins 6:50 am Pacific Standard Time/ 2:50 PM British Standard Time.
Direct link to join the conference is below. Please note that the format is Zoom Events and requires the latest version of zoom. Click the link below, choose 'Join Lobby' and then join 'Session in Process'.
For more information about LPN's the Museum of the Future project visit here.
LIVE IN SAN ANTONIO: The Pandemia Chronicles
2022
LIVE in Roswell, NM: The Pandemia Chronicles
An Evening with Gómez-Peña and Balitronica
2022
FILM: Experimental Film Night at ATA
2022
JOIN US FOR AN EVENING OF UNDERGROUND CHICANX CINEMA
On July 13th, at ATA, San Francisco (8:00 pm) the macabre duo of legendary underground Tijuana Filmmaker Gustavo Vázquez and Chicanx Performance Artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña present an evening of experimental film including their most recent film SF Apocalypse (2021) a “portrait of the creative city gone wrong” and also their classic Chicanx sci-fi film The Great Mojado Invasion (1999). Screenings will be followed by a performative talk back by the artists.
Free and open to the public.
LIVE IN SF: We Are All Aliens
Excerpts from a Border Opera
2022
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.
7:00p: Doors open for a performative happy hour featuring performances and music by DJ Mad Mex (We encourage the audience to arrive at 7p!)
8:00p: Live music, spoken word and additional surprise performances begin.
Please come dressed as your favorite "Alien Other".
Produced by Emma Tramposch & Aranza Cortes-Karam
Protesting immigration policy in California: Gómez-Peña during The Cruci/Fiction Project, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 1994. Photo: Cynthia WallisJamming at LARVA (Laboratorio de Arte Variedades) with local artists, Guadalajara City, Mexico, 2016.
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.
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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.
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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-PeñaEditing & Intro/Closing Filming: Robert Gómez-HernandezFilms Curated by: Gómez-Peña & Emma TramposchFeaturing 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
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 PERFORMANCE: Gómez-Peña Unplugged
July 2020
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
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
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.
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.
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 & PedagogyTwo 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.
We Are All Aliens (Colorado Springs, CO) POSTPONED
Feb 18, 2020
POSTPONED
Presentation of new solo performance WE ARE ALL ALIENS – And other tales of Radical Imagination (2020) with BALITRONICA GÓMEZ.
This event is free and open to to the public.
We Are All Aliens (Venice, ITALY)
Jan 18, 2020
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.
