Transcultural Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic
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University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 5-3-2018 Transcultural Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic Projects of Guillermo Gómez- Peña, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Roberto Sifuentes, and La Pocha Nostra William R. Stark University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Stark, William R., "Transcultural Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic Projects of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Roberto Sifuentes, and La Pocha Nostra" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1775. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1775 Transcultural Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic Projects of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Roberto Sifuentes, and La Pocha Nostra William R. Stark University of Connecticut, 2018 This dissertation analyzes socio-cultural and socio-political concerns that characterize performance art in the United States (U.S.) from the late 1980s to 2015. Of particular interest to my research are performance artists who cross cultural borders and challenge normative cultural paradigms, celebrate cultural hybridity, and challenge the epistemological value of national, cultural, ethnic, and racial borders. My research examines the ways that multimedia performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña (1955 – Mexico City, D.F.), Coco Fusco (1960 – New York, NY), Roberto Sifuentes (1967 – Los Angeles, CA), Violeta Luna (Mexico City, D.F., Mexico) and the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra (1993-) articulate aesthetic projects with political intention to establish sociocultural and sociopolitical critiques of hegemonic discourses. I examine the central role of the U.S.-Mexico border and border thinking in texts and performances from the 1980s to 2015. The U.S.-Mexico border continues to be a site of socio- economic and geopolitical conflict more than one hundred sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and more than twenty years after the signing of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) (1994). As is well known, NAFTA was meant to encourage free trade between Canada, The United States (U.S.), and Mexico. However, while trade agreements have fostered commerce across international borders, the U.S. and Mexican governments continue to work toward restrictions on immigration and transnational communications. Transcultural Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic Projects of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Roberto Sifuentes, and La Pocha Nostra William R. Stark B.A., Western Washington University, 2009 M.A., University of Rhode Island, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy At the University of Connecticut 2018 i Copyright by William R. Stark 2018 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Transcultural Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic Projects of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Roberto Sifuentes, and La Pocha Nostra Presented by William R. Stark Major Advisor _________________________________________________________________ Guillermo B. Irizarry Associate Advisor ______________________________________________________________ Jacqueline Loss Associate Advisor ______________________________________________________________ Laurietz Seda University of Connecticut 2018 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professor Guillermo B. Irizarry for his willingness to spend many long hours discussing performance art. I would also like to thank him for his comments and suggestions throughout this process. I look forward to further collaboration. My committee members were extremely supportive. Professor Jacqueline Loss inspired me to look for the mot juste. Professor Laurietz Seda’s expertise in the field of performance animated my descriptions of performance art works. I appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions along the way from Professors Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, Rosa Helena Chinchilla, Anne Gabelein, Miguel Gomes, Gustavo Nanclares, Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. A special thank you to Ana María Díaz-Marcos for the desk on which I composed the majority of my dissertation. I am grateful to Balitrónica Gómez, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Felipe Ehrenberg, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Daniel Coleman, and La Pocha Nostra members, Michéle Ceballos Michot, Saúl García López, for being so kind to answer all my questions in interviews over dinners, on road trips, and in workshops. I would like to thank Jen Dassouki, Linda Mellen, Patricia Parlette, and Mary Smith. They go the extra mile for their LCL students and we know it. I would like to thank my family, Suzanne, Ezra, and Zoe, for permitting me to spend countless hours on the computer. I know they are used to that, but it has been extra crazy these last few months. Thank you Mother and Father for inspiring me to take on such a project. I will always be grateful for that. Thank you to my dear brother Roderick N. Stark for your help and support over the years. Finally, I am deeply grateful for the love and support of my wife Suzanne who read this entire document several times without complaint. Her suggestions were invaluable to me. iv DEDICATION For my mother, Juanita Eloisa Stark Crespin, who is reading this from the other side of the mirror. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . .iv DEDICATION . .v TABLE OF CONTENTS . vi LIST OF FIGURES . .viii INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 1: Guillermo Gómez-Peña: From Border Brujo to El Naftazteca. 10 1.1 Critical Orientation . .14 1.2 Border Brujo: linguistic hybridization and transcultural monologue . .21 1.3 The New World (B)order: Cultural Borders and Transcultural . 30 Subjectivities in Chicano Virtual Reality 1.5 Conclusion . 43 CHAPTER 2: Coco Fusco: Aesthetic Projects and Lines of Inquiry. 44 2.1 Critical Orientation . .49 2.2 Couple in the Cage: Collaboration with Gómez-Peña . .63 2.3 A Field Guide for Female Interrogators . .75 2.4 Bare Life Study #1 . .76 2.5 Operation Atropos . 79 2.6 A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America . .85 2.9 Conclusion . 87 vi CHAPTER 3. Violeta Luna: Performing Mexicana Indigenous Identities: . 88 Woman of Maize––La Llorona Cibernética 3.1 Critical Orientation . 94 3.2 Requiem for a Lost Land/Réquiem para una tierra perdida . 107 3.3 NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn . .117 3.4 Conclusion . .128 CHAPTER 4 Roberto Sifuentes: From Super Pocho to Pre-Columbian . 129 Cyber Vato: An Artificial Savage in a Transcultural Landscap 4.2 Critical Orientations . 130 4.3 The Cruci-Fiction Project: Mirror or Transcultural Kaleidoscope? . .144 4.4 Temple of Confessions––“Cultural Specimens” and “Holy Creatures”. .151 4.5 Conclusion . 157 CHAPTER 5 La Pocha Nostra: Transcultural Workshops, Radical . .160 Performance Pedagogy and Ternura Radical CONCLUSION . .184 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 190 vii LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Wall of awards and memories in La Pocha HQ . 15 1.2 Wall of tchotchkes at La Pocha HQ. .15 1.3 Still from Isaac Artenstein’s and Gómez-Peña’s film Border Brujo . 16 1.4 Gómez-Peña as Border Brujo . .16 1.5 Gómez-Peña as Border Brujo with megaphone . 17 1.6 Coco Fusco as Miss Discovery auctioning off the Third World . 17 1.7 Gómez-Peña as El Naftazteca . .18 1.8 Coco Fusco segregating audience in The New World Border . 18 1.9 Gómez-Peña as the Warrior for Gringostroika in The New World Border . .19 2.1 Still from The Couple in the Cage . 50 2.2 Prop from Couple in the Cage . 50 2.3 Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco in Couple in the Cage . .51 2.4 Feeding the Couple in the Cage . 51 2.5 Illustration from A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. 52 2.6 Illustration from A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. 52 2.7 Illustration from A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. 52 2.8 Illustration from A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. 52 2.9 Still frame from Wagner Morales’s I Like Girls Dressed in Uniform. .53 2.10 Still frame from Fusco’s Bare Life Study #1 . 53 2.11 Still frame from Bare Life Study #1 . 54 2.12 Fusco and fellow participants in Operation Atropos . 54 2.13 Masked interrogator with hooded participant in Operation Atropos . 55 viii 2.14 Interrogator berates hooded participant in Operation Atropos . .55 2.15 Lynndie England abusing detainee at Abu Ghraib . .56 2.16 Illustration from A Field Guide for Female Interrogators . .56 2.17 Lynndie England and Charles Graner pose in photo depicting abuse of . 56 detainees at Abu Ghraib 2.18 Cover of the Economist, May, 2004 . .57 2.19 Detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib . 57 2.20 Illustration from A Field Guide for Female Interrogators . .57 2.21 Coco Fusco as U.S. military intelligence officer in A Room of One’s Own . .58 2.22 Coco Fusco interrogates detainee in A Room of One’s Own . 58 2.23 Coco Fusco saluting in A Room of One’s Own . .58 3.1 Violeta Luna performs Requiem for a Lost Land in Chiapas, Mexico . .96 3.2 Violeta Luna performs Requiem for a Lost Land in São Paulo, Brazil . 96 3.3 Violeta Luna performs Requiem for a Lost Land in Ljubljana, Slovenia . .97 3.4 Mis en scène from Requiem for a Lost Land . 97 3.5 Mis en scène from Requiem for a Lost Land . 98 3.6 Violeta Luna in Requiem for a Lost Land . .98 3.7 Violeta Luna in NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn . .99 3.8 Violeta Luna in NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn . .99 3.9 Violeta Luna in NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn . .100 3.10 Lab Technician sterilizing surgical equipment in NK603: Action for . 100 Performer & e-Corn 3.11 Surgical instruments in NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn . .101 3.12 Violeta Luna as ethno-cyborg in NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn . 101 ix 3.13 Violeta Luna as ethno-cyborg in NK603: Action for Performer & e-Corn .