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• Your title is: GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA / POCHA NOSTRA - A multi-arts, community-based organization • Warning: Your title is too long for the search engines Lycos and Webcrawler. : 1. Guillermo Gomez-Pena 2. La Pocha Nostra 3. Performance art 4. Multidisciplinary art 5. Latino art 6. Chicano 7. Experimental art 8. Border culture 9. Politics 10. Community art 11. Techno art 12. Hybrid culture 13. Hybrid personas 14. Post-colonial art 15. Art museum 16. Politics and art 17. Contemporary art 18. Mexico 19. Mexican art 20. San Francisco art 21. Californian art 22. Mexterminator 23. Experimental film 24. Kari Hensley 25. Intercultural identity 26. Globalization 27. Immigration 28. Politics of language |
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| LA POCHA NOSTRA "not exactly a cult not an investement firm not a mafia of cultural traitors but a cross-cultural/grassroots/experimental art cartel." A multi-arts, community-based organization, La Pocha Nostra produces, manages and presents experimental art and community events dealing with contemporary intercultural issues. With an international performance history that spans more than 500 events over the past five years, La Pocha Nostra‚s projects include solos, duets, large-scale performance/installations and town meetings as well as videos, radio shows, publications and digital arts projects. La Pocha Nostra seeks to provide both a support network and forum for artists of various disciplines and ethnic backgrounds. In these projects, performers, filmmakers, musicians, curators and artists of various disciplines discuss issues of race, immigration, language, interracial sexuality and new technologies.Is it a Spanglish performance, ethno-porn, Tex-Mex shamanism, Chicano sci-fi, Mexican Butoh or a political peepshow? What to make of all this high kitsch, chicken nudity, unnecessary violence, crucified "aliens," Mexican Frankensteins and transvestite mariachis? "It‚s a sight to give Pat Buchanan a coronary." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------- BROWNOUT: BORDER PULP STORIES A solo performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña In this performance, Gómez-Peña is back as a spoken word brujo/poeta to explore fear of immigration, the dark side effects of globalization, the digital divide, censorship and interracial sexuality. The artist uses multi-lingualism, humor and hybrid literary genres as subversive strategies. His personas include, El S&M zorro, El Webback and El Travelling Medicine Vato. Continually developing multicentric narratives from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña creates what critics have termed "Chicano cyber-punk performances," and "ethno-techno art." Cultural borders have moved to the center while the alleged mainstream is pushed to the margins and treated as exotic and unfamiliar, placing the audience member in the position of "foreigner." Different versions of this project have been performed in theaters, museums, churches, prisons, television and radio stations. Technical requirements are minimum. For more info. on this project write pochnostra.aol.com or contact Innovative Arts Management at (415) 863-2441 "Warrior for Gringostroika demonstrates Gomez-Peña‚s extremely developed eye for the baroque extremes of Mexican self-identification, his ear for hybrid rhymes, what he calls the Border‚s Œpolysemantic‚ quality...he is a political artist of the first order." -Ed Morales, Voice Literary Supplement "His award-winning solos combine languagesÚSpanish, English, Spanglish, Ingleñol, Nahuatl, wild theatrics and guerrilla satire to convey a new internationalism, a borderless ethos." -Jan Breslauer, L.A. Times "Gómez-Peña is magnificent, melodramatic, robustly hilarious and precisely, exquisitely witty...I emerge from his performances somewhat dazed..." -Lucy Lippard"Gómez-Peña is a wizard of language." -The Chicago Tribune ------------------------------------------------------- LECTURES Besides his performance, installation and video work, Gómez-Peña has been a lecturer, keynote speaker radio commentator and animateur of public debate. Often accompanied by slides and/or video, his "performative" lectures disrupt traditional concepts of theory and practice. He has lectured extensively in international symposiums, think tanks, museums, and universities such as Brown, Yale, Cambridge, MIT, UCLA, NYU, Penn-State, Uni-Rio(Rio de Janeiro), and the School of Arts(Lisbon) He is currently touring two new lectures: Ethno-techno art: In search of a new aesthetic is an audio-visual chronicle of his main performance projects in the past 5 years. He uses this material as point of departure to discuss the cultural side effects of globalization, the digital divide, corporate multiculturalism, xenophobia and the culture of "the mainstream bizarre" and how this developments impact on the Chicano/Latino community, and notions of the body in performance. "Border Chronicles." Using the format of radical storytelling, Gomez-Peña embarks his audience in a literary and performative journey to the outposts of Chicanismo. In this journey Gomez-Peña reflects on identity, pop culture and politics. From urban violence in Mexico city and Bogota, to the California culture of apocalypse; and from his trips to unlikely places like the ex-Soviet Union, and Finland to his conceptual adventures in cyberspace, he presents "a compassionate yet uncompromisingly critical view of the human condition in the new milenium." For more info. on this project write pochnostra.aol.com or contact Innovative Arts Management at (415) 863-2441 -"Twenty years of wildly interrogations have put Guillermo Gómez-Peña at the center of the immigration debate." -The San Francisco Bay Guardian -"...a peacemaker in the world's culture clash." -Vanity Fair "These fractured (border) realities are analyzed by Gómez-Peña in his books assuming the role of a reversed cultural anthropologist." -Javier Martinez de Pison, El Pais, Spain ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- APOCALYPSE MAÑANA A multilingual oratorium with Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Mexican composer Guillermo Galindo.Extending themes developed in Brownout!, Gómez-Peña and Galindo delve into the Latino condition in the new milennium. Cultural borders are moved to the center, the alleged mainstream is pushed to the margins, and audience members are positioned as "foreigners" or "minorities." Apocalypse Mañana intertwines several pieces of spoken word poetry with a complex soundscape composed and performed live by Galindo. Shifting between languages, Gómez-Peña morphs through a series of characters (including the first Chicano President of the U.S., a post-structuralist academic and a prototype of a Mexi-cyborg), as they bombard audiences with their infamous, border savvy techno-ideology and aesthetics. Primarily a complex sound and text piece, Apocalypse Mañana requires certain technical specifications. The intricacy of the staging can vary depending on the facility and the budget. Slides, video projection and a range of scenic design possibilities can add to the visual complexity of the piece, as well as the participation of local musicians, poets, rappers or opera singers. For more info. on this project write pochnostra.aol.com or contact CIRCUIT NETWORK (415) 863-2441 "They slip into this scenario with the rudeness of a pirate radio-hack, bringing in news from across the border of mainstream propaganda and understanding." -Amitava Kumar, Iguana "Gómez-Peña and collaborators make an appeal for borderless cross-cultural evolution, the manifestation of which is nowhere more immediate than in the quickfire assertion of ŒSpanglish‚ and Ingleñol‚ as a viable and truly colorful linguistic currency." -Homer Robinson, THE Magazine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------- THE BROWN SHEEP PROJECT An experimental performance workshop on interracial relations conducted by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and other Pocha members. Leading to a performance at the hosting organization, up to ten emerging performance artists, poets and rappers from local communities come together with the artists. Participants are asked to develop a "hybrid persona" and/or a performance skit based on their complex identities. An ongoing analysis of the creative process parallels the production of the piece. Each participant is responsible for his/her material. However, the overall result is a true collaborative effort. This project seeks to groom emerging cultural leaders and help them sharpen their activist performance skills; develop new models of relationship between artist and community which are not colonial or condescending; create a new mentoring relationship between established artist and emerging artist or student; create utopian spaces of freedom and crossracial unity through experimental art; and ultimately seek a new aesthetic that truly reflects the times. Since 1993, Gómez-Peña and collaborators have conducted workshops with young performance artists and cultural leaders. For more info. on this project write pochnostra.aol.com or contact Innovative Arts Management at (415) 863-2441 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------- THE MEXTERMINATOR PROJECT An interactive performance/installation by Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes and Juan Ibarra. Created by Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes, the legendary Mexterminator Project utilizes the responses of thousands of anonymous net users to the award winning web site (www.mexterminator.com) to create a series of living "multicultural Frankensteins" or "ethno cyborgs," characters meant to embody America‚s intercultural fears and desires. With the artists, internet users and gallery visitors have imagined the nature and content of the "living dioramas," including how the artists should dress, what music they must listen to, what kind of ritualized actions they should engage in and what type of interaction they are to have with the live audience. The performers re-interpret and stylize this information, incarnating expressed fears and desires of contemporary Americans toward Latinos, immigrants and people of color. By doing so, the characters function as mirrors for the (real and virtual) visitors who see the reflection of their own psychological and cultural monsters. Techno-dioramas always involve some form of physical interactivity with the audience. Visitors to the gallery space are encouraged to interact with the "live specimens" in various modes: they can feed them, touch them, alter their identity by changing their make-up and costumes, and even replace them for a short period of time. Can include from 3 to 10 performers and local collaborators, depending on the site and budget. Ideally, the artists would like to be in town at least a week prior to the opening.Performances may take place in black box theaters or galleries. They can also take place in interesting sites (historically charged or abandoned buildings, natural history museums, old hotels, nightclubs, etc.). For more info. on this project write pochnostra.aol.com or contact Innovative Arts Management at (415) 863-2441 "Are you into tattoos, jalapeños and ethno-porn? Are you into sexy Tex-Mex art that does not question your privilege? Do you wish to experience a political peepshow? Do you desire to smell or touch a live Mexican?" -classified ad "Considered one of the finest performance artists working in the U.S. today, Mexico-born Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his collaborator Roberto Sifuentes, have created a surreal, chapel-like environment. In this space, viewers become participants, revealing their innermost fears and feelings about Mexicans, Chicanos and Mexican culture...People are disturbed, confused, ashamed, hopeful."-Kathleen Vanesian, New Times ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- THE MUSEUM OF FETISH-IZED IDENTITY A one- to five- week residency by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Juan Ibarra,with local collaborators, leading to a performance This new performance deals with the appropriation of hybridity by corporate multiculturalism and global media. The artists produce a multi-disciplinary multi-diorama performance with the help of an "ephemeral troupe" of artists, musicians, dancers, and technicians. The process involved in staging the performance and adapting it to a new site requires some research and rehearsal time. With enough time in advance, members of La Pocha Nostra will conduct auditions and recruit local contributors. Weeks before the actual performance, an intensive workshop will then take place, during which participants will be exposed to the artists‚ performance methods and asked to develop a "hybrid persona" based on their own complex identities and personal sense of race and gender. In dialogue with the artists, technicians will develop the light and sound environment. An ongoing critical analysis of the creative process occurs throughout the production process. At the end of the workshop, the troupe will perform an "experimental curiosity cabinet," a sort of living museum where participants exhibit their constructed personas as "cultural specimens." Performances may take place in black box theaters, galleries or museums. They can also take place in interesting sites (historically charged or abandoned buildings, natural history museums, old hotels, etc.). For more info. on this project write pochnostra.aol.com or contact Innovative Arts Management at (415) 863-2441 "We pose on dioramas as "artificial savages," or "ethno-techno" freaks, making ourselves completely available for the audience to "explore" us, smell us, fondle us, change our costumes and props and even replace us for a short period of time...Regardless of the country or the city where we perform, the results of these dangerous performance experiments reveal a new relationship between performer and audience; between the brown body and the white voyeur." -Gómez-Peña, TDR ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- CALIFAS 2000: Jurassic Aztlan A Performance Opera Gómez-Peña teams with composer Guillermo Galindo, writer/dramaturg Elaine Katzenberger, filmmaker Gustavo Vazquez and other collaborators to present an extremely ambitious work-inprogress.CALIFAS 2000:Jurassic Aztlan is a wildly imaginative "sci-fi Spanglish opera," a highly transgressive and original work that reaches into and beyond traditional operatic conventions to create a fusion of performance art, new music, and techno-Chicano aesthetics. The binational collaborative team of artists from Mexico and the United States includes performance artists, actors, opera singers, rappers, instrumentalists, and dancers whose individual talents and histories are combined to create a uniquely hybrid performance universe into which the audience is invited as participant/spectator. Borrowing from Balinese dance theater staging, CALIFAS 2000 is designed for the audience to sit on the floor while the performance takes place around them. Pre-recorded text and music interacts with opera singers, live musicians, and spoken dialogue, creating a multi-layered sonic landscape peopled by an ever-evolving mix of startling vignettes and dramatic personae. Scenes unfold at various rhythms, overlapping and intersecting, surrounding and including the audience in a constantly shifting visual field in which the focus is never in just one area. A metafictive key to the controlled chaos of the performance is projected on slides and in digital readout bars, and is also delivered live and in voiceovers, situating the audience as protagonists and witnesses, citizens of a future which has been determined by the implications of their present-day actions and inactions. Approximately one hour, and 30 minutes in length, CALIFAS 2000 leaves pre-conceived notions about opera and performance art at the door and creates a hybrid universe guaranteed to stimulate, perplex and, ultimately, inspire. "An in-your-face performance artist with a stong agenda to interpret history from a politicized Chicano perspective, Gómez-Peña has no choice but to understand Dryden's drama as Eurocentrist racism.... Cultures clash. The main political oautline of celebrating Chicano culture and skewering the racist West is not followed closely. Everything gets mixed up in parody and glorious parades. In fact, the real politics here is in pure storming of the opera stage, of putting as much on it as possible and doing it, ultimately, with a great sense of joy." -The LA Times, on "The Indian queen, Gómez-Peña's first opera ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------- TOWN MEETING A civic, political and artistic mixing bowl hosted by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and /or other Pocha Nostra members. Bringing together community leaders, civic activists and artists from the host city as well as from around the country, the Town Meeting project attempts to provide a unique, engaging format for the frank discussion of issues of race, nationality, language and their effects on the local and global community. An elaborately staged atmosphere, including carefully selected music, decor and multi-projections, provides the "set" for the performance. Throughout the "performance" guests will discuss the state of affairs in the local and national Latino community amidst intermittent interruption by performances from local artists and poets. Following presentations by each panelist, a large-scale, open mike discussion ensues, moderated by "El Mexterminator" (Gómez-Peña), "CyberVato"(Sifuentes) and roving mediator Dr. Leticia Nieto, a conflict resolution specialist. Experimental town meetings hosted by the artists have already taken place in Washington DC, San Antonio, San Francisco, LA and Toledo, Ohio. "It worked. I will never be able to sit still during a serious panel discussion again. All public meetings need to be interrupted by Mexterminators. The discussion gave context to your performance • your performance made the talk tolerable. Bravo." -Art Silverman, National Public Radio ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------- BIOGRAPHY Guillermo Gómez-Peña Born in 1955 and raised in Mexico City, Guillermo Gómez-Peña came to the United States in 1978. His work, which includes performance art, video, audio, installations, poetry, journalism, critical writings and cultural theory, explores cross-cultural issues and North/South relations in the era of globalization. He uses his art and writings to reveal the labyrinths of identity and the precipices of nationality. Gómez-Peña‚s performance and installation work has been presented at over five hundred venues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina(see below). The outcomes of Gómez-Peña‚s career have centered around his life mission: to make experimental yet accessible art; to work in politically and emotionally charged sites, and for diverse audiences; and to collaborate across racial, gender and age boundaries as a gesture of citizen-diplomacy. Chronicles and scripts of his large-scale projects can be found in five of his books: Dangerous Border Crossers (Routledge, 2000), Codex Spangliensis (City Lights, 2000), Mexican Beasts and Living Santos (PowerHouse, 1997), The New World Border (City Lights, 1996) and Warrior for Gringostroika (Graywolf, 1994). Gómez-Peña was a founding member of the binational arts collective Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronerizo (1985-1990), which was featured in the 1990 Venice Bienale, a contributor to the national radio program Crossroads (1987-1990), and editor of the experimental arts magazine The Broken Line/La Línea Quebrada (1985-1990). In addition to his artistic activities, he is a regular contributor to the national radio news magazine All Things Considered, a writer for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (MIT). Among numerous fellowships and prizes, Gómez-Peña was a recipient of the Prix de la Parole at the 1989 International Theatre of the Americas (Montreal), the 1989 New York Bessie Award, and the Los Angeles Music Center‚s 1993 Viva Los Artistas Award. In 1991, Gómez-Peña became the first Chicano/Mexicano artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (1991-1996). In 1995, he was included in The Utne Reader‚s "List of 100 Visionaries." In 1997 he received the American Book Award for The New World Border. In 2000, he received the Cineaste lifetime achievement award.from the Taos Talking Pictures film festival. The film version of his solo performance Border Brujo (in collaboration with Isaac Artenstein), was awarded first prize in the 1991 National Latino Film and Video Festival and first prize in the category of "Performance Film" at Cine Festival (San Antonio 1991). His videos, El Naftazteca: Cyber Aztec TV for 2000 AD and Temple of Confessions were awarded first prizes at Cine Festival in San Antonio, Texas in 1996 and 1998, respectively. In 2001, his film Borderstasis was awarded the prize for "best performance video" from the Vancouver Video Poetry Festival. His work was recently featured in the HBO special "Americanos." Gómez-Peña‚s experimental radio works have received the following honors: Border Notebooks won the Silver Award in Performance/Spoken Word Category from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1991. We Don‚t Speak English Only, Vato! was awarded first prize by the National Association of Community Radios in 1993. Menage-à-Trade received the Golden Reel Award in 1995. A collection of audio work entitled Borderless Radio was released on compact disk by Toronto‚s Word of Mouth in 1995. He is currently working with Mexican composer Guillermo Galindo in a new spoken word cd. International festivals and biennials which have featured his work include: The International Theatre Festival of the Americas. Montreal 1988 The Demons of Los Angeles. France, Spain, Sweden 1989 The 1989 Bienal de la Habana, The Decade Show, New York 1990 Time Festival. Gante, Belgium 1990 EDGE ‚90. Newcastle, England, 1990 The Los Angeles Festival. Los Angeles 1990 and 1993 The Next Wave Festival. Brooklyn Academy of Music New York 1991 The Festival of the Worlds. Finland 1991 EDGE ‚92. Madrid, London 1992 The Sydney Biennale. Australia 1992 Whitney Biennale, New York 1993 Fundación Banco Patricios. Buenos Aires, 1993 Rompeforma . Puerto Rico 1993 The Hamburg Theatre Festival. Germany, 1993 LIFT. London 1993 and 1995 3er Festival de Performance. Mexico City 1994 Ante-América. Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico and the US 1994 Helsinki Act, Finland 1995 5Cyberconf. Madrid 1996 Polverigi Theatre Festival. Italy 1996 Szene Festival. Salzburg, Austria 1996 ARS Electronica. Lintz, Austria 1997 Root/less Festival. Hull, England 1997 Inroads, Arts International. Miami 1998 Caribe 2000. San Juan Puerto Rico, 1999 Sonart. Barcelona, Spain 1999 Diaspora. Oviedo, Spain, 1999 Eventa 5, Sweden 2000 Encontro Hemisferico. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2000 EXPERIÈNCIES: Barcelona Art Report, Spain 2001 Title of Cuba Festival?, ----------------- 2001 Title of Australian event?----------------- Sydney, Australia, 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- a selection of quotes "Part freak show and part parody of anthropological museums, Mexterminator shocks and objectifies the viewer." -The San Francisco Chronicle "It‚s a sight to give Pat Buchanan a coronary." -Robert Dominguez, Daily News (NY) "Gómez-Peña's commitment to force North America to adjust to the South, to acknowledge the hemisphere's cultural imbalance, places him among the most significant of late-20th-century performance artists." -Voice Literary Supplement "His award-winning solos, combine languages-Spanish, English, Spanglish, Ingleñol, Nahuatl, wild theatrics and guerrilla satire to convey a new internationalism, a borderless ethos." -Jan Breslauer, L.A. Times "He's one of the handful of great performance artists in America today." - Peter Sellars "In everything he does, he remains an indomitably playful phrasemaker; a fertile rethinker of cultural contradictions, clichés, and conundrums; and an inspiring recruiter for a playground army of cultural pluralists." -The Village Voice, 1991: The Year of Living Ominously "Gómez-Peña is magnificent, melodramatic, robustly hilarious and precisely, exquisitely witty...I emerge from his performances somewhat dazed..." -Lucy Lippard "His focus on U.S.-Mexico relations has helped to inject the word Œborder' into the national arts discourse." -Ruben Martinez, The New York Times "He's a citizen of everywhere and nowhere, a post-Mexican, neo-Chicano, trans-American. These transitional identities feed the work, become the work...He has become an invaluable voice in the multiculti discussions." -Cindi Carr, The Village Voice "...a peacemaker in the world's culture clash." - Vanity Fair "Gomez-Peña's work is among the most powerful examples of intercultural performance." -Richard Sheckner, American Theatre Magazine "Cruise with him through a political landscape in which geographic borders have collapsed and language barriers have been disintegrated by Gringostroika; this is an America where Œthe other‚ no longer exists." -Laura Jamison, Mother Jones "Performance artists of the 90's such as Gómez-Peña reject the worn out distinction between performance, street theatre and gallery art as well as the dichotomy of art and activism." -Los Angeles Times, Faces for the 90's "Gómez-Peña's hip, spirited style of anthropological performance art was well received in San Francisco." -The San Francisco Bay Guardian "Gómez-Peña uses theatrics to erase borders. His inventive efforts to create a hybrid culture have won him international acclaim." -Miriam Horn, US News & World Report "Extremely articulate, Gómez-Peña rivets attention through deliberate gesture and a commanding, versatile voice...his role reversing strategy allows the non-bilingual audience to experience first hand the outsider's perspective." -Victoria Martin, Artweek "Few performance artists deliver their opinions with as much punch and with such delightful verbal acrobatics." -Jasmina Wellinghoff, San Antonio Light "This peripatetic "post-Mexican romantic" travels around the U.S. and the world practicing a performance art and preaching an intercultural gospel that brings the American melting pot to a boil." -Scott Cummings, American Theater "Gómez-Peña is a linguist...As he shifted from one character, one accent, one language to another, I re-experienced the vertigo of the border." -Cindi Carr, The Village Voice about Gómez-Peña‚s collaboration with Sifuentes "If Rembrandt, Rubens and assorted other Old Masters aren‚t rolling around in their graves this weekend, it won‚t be the fault of Mexican performance artist Gómez-Peña." -Joy Hakanson Colby, Detroit News "Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes throw all kinds of visual, musical, thematic, and performance into their pot, stir a bit, and serve with gusto. Then, they abandon that pot for another equally brimming with eclectic ingredients." -Roberto Hurwitt, San Francisco Examiner "Considered one of the finest performance artists working in the U.S. today, Mexico-born Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his collaborator Roberto Sifuentes, have created a surreal, chapel-like environment. In this space, viewers become participants, revealing their innermost fears and feelings about Mexicans, Chicanos and Mexican culture...Listening to the tapes (confessions) is like listening to poetry. People are disturbed, confused, ashamed, hopeful." -Kathleen Vanesian, New Times "Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes make an appealing appeal for borderless cross-cultural evolution, the manifestation of which is nowhere more immediate than in the quickfire assertion of 'Spanglish' and 'Ingleñol' as a viable and truly colorful linguistic currency." -Homer Robinson, THE Magazine "They slip into this scenario with the rudeness of a pirate radio-hack, bringing in news from across the border of mainstream propaganda and understanding." -Amitava Kumar, Iguana "Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes make an appeal for borderless cross-cultural evolution, the manifestation of which is nowhere more immediate than in the quickfire assertion of 'Spanglish' and 'Ingleñol' as a viable and truly colorful linguistic currency." -Homer Robinson, THE Magazine "Computers are to Gómez-Peña‚s work what food is to Karen Finley‚s: one of many incendiary elements for electrifying the performance...The Net is the logical extention of Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes‚s established conduits." -Austin Bunn, Village Voice about his literary works "The hinge to Gómez-Peña's work, where high seriousness meets deep playfulness, is language...The luminous word fusions he gleefully concocts show the genius of a hybridized language, where entire cross-cultural concepts may be conveyed in a single gesture..." -The Nation "Gómez-Peña is a wizard of language" -The Chicago Tribune "...Gómez-Peña‚s commitment to force North America to adjust to the South, to acknowledge the hemisphere‚s cultural imbalance, places him among the most significant of late-20th-century performance artists." -Our Favorite Books of 1994, Village Voice Literary Supplement "Warrior for Gringostroika demonstrates Gomez-Peña‚s extremely developed eye for the baroque extremes of Mexican self-identification, his ear for hybrid rhymes, what he calls the Border‚s Œpolysemantic‚ quality...he is a political artist of the first order." -Ed Morales, Voice Literary Supplement "This eclectic and often funny collection of autobiography, performance scripts, poetry and photographs will- no matter your politics-escort you across borders." -Raul Niño, Booklist "There are few social thinkers today who can illuminate critical art and cultural issues with the acute sense of the absurd that characterizes the writings in this book." -High Performance Magazine "In (Warrior for Gringostroika), he fiercely confronts racism on both sides of the border." -Mary Margaret Benson, Library Journal "These fractured (border) realities are analyzed by Gómez-Peña in his Warrior for Gringostroika assuming the role of a reversed cultural anthropologist." -Javier Martinez de Pison, El Pais, Spain "The result (of New World Border) is a darkly humorous, intense work whose multiplicity of textual, sonic, and visual devices portrays the conflict and confusion we must confront in the face of imminent world integration." -Danica Radovanov, L.A. 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