'BORDER CLASICOS' By Guillermo Gómez-Peña
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Presented by Centro Cultural de la Raza and La Pocha Nostra. Back to San Diego borderlandia, a must see iconic one-time show by performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña - writer, activist, radical pedagogue & artistic director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. In this solo performance monologue, performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña presents a selection of classic texts from his vast “living archives” alongside recent work written over the past four years.
Artist Statement: My current performance represents the fruit of my life’s work in all its iterations: live performance, lecturing, archiving, literary work, mentoring, community activism, all coming together to address the dangers of the times we live in with its disregard for human life and insidious undermining of democracy.
At this time in my life I am thinking as much about legacy as I am trying to continually produce socially conscious experimental artwork that is simultaneously plugged into the national debates. I have learned from decades of touring performance material to locations beyond the Border that a call to action - in the form of a work of art - has the power to elicit compassion and inculcate a desire for social justice.
For me performance art is a form of radical democracy and citizenship which depends on the presence of the audience/community to succeed. I view my approach to creating this hybrid piece as "performing the archives" for multiple contexts: The art world, academia, community and the media. I am particularly interested in connecting with a new generation of audience members who may not have been exposed to the history of my generation, performance art and the Chicano movement.
