PHOTO: INTERIOR OF GOMEZ-PENA’S CASA MUSEO, S.F. BY ROBERT GOMEZ HERNANDEZ. COURTESY OF GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA
La Pocha Nostra, 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 students, LPN core members will facilitate performance rituals, exercises, games and other pedagogical surprises!
Founded in 1993 in Los Angeles, La Pocha Nostra is Gómez-Peña’s ultimate and most long-standing project. La Pocha Nostra is a transdisciplinary arts organization and 501(c)(3) nonprofit 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. Gómez-Peña’s Casa Museo: A Living Museum and Archive was co-developed with La Pocha Nostra members Emma Tramposch, Robert Gomez Hernandez, and Paloma Martinez-Cruz.
