October 1, 2021
Virtual, Public Media Institute
The San Francisco Living Archives of La Pocha Nostra
Join La Pocha Nostra core troupe members for the virtual Chicago premiere of The San Francisco Living Archives of La Pocha Nostra. Always inciting participation, La Pocha Nostra will present a performative introduction by core members Paloma Martinez-Cruz and Saula Garcia Lopez who will also create a collective poetic action after the film to help kick off the Chicago residency. Prepare to jam with La Pocha Nostra’s pulses and prompts!
The San Francisco Living Archives of La Pocha Nostra is a video anthology, created over multiple decades, working 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.
The anthology was created in 2020 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of international performance collective La Pocha Nostra. Founded in 1993 in Los Angeles, La Pocha Nostra is Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s ultimate and most long-standing project. La Pocha Nostra is a transdisciplinary arts organization and 501-c3 non-profit that provides a support network and forum for artists of various disciplines, generations, gender complexities and ethnic backgrounds. La Pocha is devoted to erasing the borders between art and politics, art practice and theory, artist and spectator. For 25+ years, LPN has intensely focused on the notion of collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of radical citizen diplomacy and as a means to create “ephemeral communities” of rebel artists.
Presented with Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Public Media Institute, Lumpen Radio, and the Smart Museum of Art
October 2, 2021
Zoom, University of Illinois Chicago
La Pocha Nostra, Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s performance art troupe and organization, has developed a pedagogical model that functions both as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means to create “ephemeral communities” of diverse participants. The basic premise of these collaborations is founded on an ideal: “If we learn to cross borders on stage, we may learn how to do so in larger social spheres.” La Pocha strives to eradicate myths of purity and dissolve borders surrounding culture, ethnicity, gender, language, and métier.
This afternoon intensive workshop provides participants with an introduction to La Pocha Nostra’s signature pedagogical tools that have been at the forefront of hemispheric performance and politics for over 30 years. Offered not only as a laboratory for participants with formal arts practices, it is offered to students, activists, and scholars as a means to disentangle the layers of self from patriarchal and colonial trauma that limit the body’s potential as a powerful, ancestral, technology for transformation. Specifically designed for UIC and UChicago students, La Pocha Nostra core members will facilitate performance rituals, exercises, games and other pedagogical surprises!
Presented with Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and the University of Illinois Chicago