Live Public Radio Programs throughout 2021
In a first-ever partnership, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (JAHHM), Public Media Institute (PMI) and the Smart Museum of Art are presenting a year-long series of experimental audio performances from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist, writer, activist, and MacArthur Fellow (1991). Begun on Wednesday, January 27, 6:30 (CST), Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border (1985–2021) offers multi-lingual live radio and a selection of archival audio programs by the artist 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, radical storytelling and 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. Audiences can tune in to Gómez-Peña’s live broadcasts on 105.5 FM WLPN-LP or stream on twitch.tv/lumpenradio.
The first episode of Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files was part 1 of a selection of audio art called Poetic Jams and Songs from 2000-2017 with Mexican composer Guillermo Galindo (Galindog) and iconic Rock en Español and rap producer Greg Landau.
Part 2 of Poetic Jams and Songs from 2000-2017 features Mexican composer Guillermo Galindo (galindog), iconic Rock en Español and rap producer Greg Landau and DJ Ricardiaco.
The Pandemic Chronicles, Part 1 incorporates new and archival audio that deals with the dangers of lock-down, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, domestic and street violence and their connection with the resurgence of a virulent form of white supremacy.
Two years prior to the Columbus quincentennial Gómez-Peña was commissioned to create Border X Frontera (1985), the first of an anti-columbus trilogy. You will hear luminaries from the theater, radio and performance worlds joined together. Written and performed by Guillermo Gomez-Peña and David Schein.
Norte/Sur (1990) is the second of an anti-Columbus trilogy created by Gómez-Peña two years prior to the Columbus quincentennial. You will hear luminaries from the theater, art, radio and performance worlds joined together. Written and Performed by Guillermo Gomez-Peña and Coco Fusco.
Border Notebooks (1990), an audio art opera, is part three of an anti-columbus trilogy by Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Written and performed by Gomez-Peña, this award winning radio art piece was designed at Toucan Productions in Miami by the legendary duo of Elizabeth Perez-Luna and Len Persky. With additional voices by Elizabeth herself, Mary Luft, Joe Cooper, Margarita Peyeyá, and Alejandro Sarpino. The artwork was commissioned by the 1990 Los Angeles Festival with an original duration of 27 minutes.
Learn more about the first-ever partnership between Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and Public Media Institute, listen to Gómez-Peña’s experimental audio program, answer Gómez-Peña’s invitation to submit letters to the “museums of the future” and Learn more about the interactive exhibition Hull-House will launch September 2021 with Gómez-Peña in dialogue with performance troop La Pocha Nostra (US/Mexico 2021).
Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art & Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border is presented by Jane Addams Hull House Museum in partnership with Public Media Institute. It is an initiative of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, organized by the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. Toward Common Cause is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
(Banner Image by Zen Cohen, courtesy of Guillermo Gómez-Peña)
