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Girl in a Coma Tweets Chicanafuturism Decolonial Visions, Social Media, and Archivista Praxis Michelle Habell-Pallán The future will belong to the mestiza. —Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera The Internet helps us in re-imagining identity beyond notions of nation, community, pueblos, gender, and sexual orientation. Today, computer technologies are affecting your sense of identity; shaping your identity; affecting the way you interact with family, friends, colleagues. —Gloria Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark/Luz en Lo Oscuro Picture me away / Are we alright now? / Something’s gonna happen / You’re staring off now to the sky / We’re staring off now / . We are the stars that light up the night. —Girl in a Coma, “Clumsy Sky” “Super proud!” exclaims a tweet by San Antonio–based punk trio Girl in a Coma, posted on September 10, 2009, while they viewed the exhibition American Sabor: Latinos in US Popular Music at the Museo Alameda in San Antonio (fig. 1).1 The message included a photo of the wall panel that described the band: Influenced by their conjunto musician grandfather, Selena, and Chicana punks of the ’70s and ’80s, these rocker grrrls represent the cutting-edge millennial voice of Tejanas and Chicanas who are citizens of the new Latina bohemia. Influenciadas por su abuelo—músico de conjunto—por Selena y por las chicanas punk de los ’70s and ’80s, estas chicas rockeras representan la 160 Altermundos.indb 160 1/18/17 12:06 PM Girl in a Coma Tweets Chicanafuturism Figure 1. Girl in a Coma’s “super proud” tweet post. voz milenaria vanguardista de las tejanas y chicanas ciudadanas de la nueva bohemia latina. American Sabor is the first traveling bilingual exhibition to demonstrate the profound combined influence of the rhythms and instruments of Afro-Caribbean and Mexican-origin communities on early rock ’n’ roll and US pop music.2 It represents the eclecticism of Latinx and Chicanx musical traditions in the United States. As a curator of American Sabor, I was surprised and thrilled that musicians interacted with the exhibition and shared it with their fans. This caused me to reflect that although the new generation of Chicanx musicians and cultural producers vigorously wield new media and social technology to create a digital presence that expands their communities of listeners, this innovation has been rarely acknowl- edged in recent scholarship. Focusing on Girl in Coma’s engagement with Chicanafuturism, this chapter uses the metaphor of a feedback loop to demonstrate the interchange between American Sabor, Girl in a Coma, and the collective archivista praxis of Women Who Rock (WWR). The WWR Digital Oral History Archive is an open-access networked archive that uses new media platforms to bring together “scholars, musicians, media-makers, performers, artists, and activists to explore the role of women and popular music in the creation of cultural scenes and social justice movements in the Americas and beyond.”3 By exploring the interchange between these three entities, this essay suggests that Chicanx music serves as a resource to speculate on how new media can transform Chicanx scholarship in its production and delivery. Girl in a Coma’s tweet, their wielding of social media generally, and their 2007 “Clumsy Sky” music video animate an aesthetics and practice of Chicanafuturism that deserves attention. As a band that started off with few material resources, yet is rich in creative initiative, Girl in a Coma 161 Altermundos.indb 161 1/18/17 12:06 PM Michelle Habell-Pallán makes innovative use of social media to claim their space within alternative music’s past, present, and future. This approach is decidedly Chicanafutur- ist, as defined by cultural historian Catherine S. Ramírez, who was inspired by the speculative work of Gloria Anzaldúa’s decolonial critique. According to Ramírez, Chicanafuturism is Chicana cultural production that “attends to cultural transformations resulting from new and everyday technologies (including their detritus); that excavates, creates, and alters narratives of identity, technology, and the future; that interrogates the promises of science and technology; and that redefines humanism and the human” (2004, 77–78). Although Chicanafuturism “questions the promises of science, technology, and humanism for Chicanas, Chicanos, and other people of color” (Ramírez 2008, 187), recognizing that the result has often been dystopic realities, the movement is willing to experiment with new technologies to harness their emancipatory potentials. Chicanafuturism renarrates the past, present, and future of subjects colonized in the border- lands, those who negotiate cultural, ideological, and spiritual mestizaje. Like Afrofuturism, Chicanafuturism seeks a future that rehumanizes those aggrieved by the logic of colonialism. As Chicanafuturism reframes the past through new communication technologies, the potentials of new presents and futures are born. Girl in a Coma’s development as a band coincides with the rise of social technology. Their conscious use of new social media and communication devices demonstrates how members of this generation, still in their twen- ties, mine stories of technologies past, present, and future to bring into being music and media representations of more free and just futures, à la Ramírez. As the band reconfigures human relationships between musicians and fans, they bend the arc of social technology away from military and corporate intelligence and toward decolonial ends. The mestiza band members’ engagement with Chicanafuturism resonates with Anzaldúa’s speculation that “the future will belong to the mestiza” (1999, 102). This future will be shaped by the mestiza subject’s use of the Internet for “re-imagining identity beyond notions of nation, community, pueblos, gender, and sexual orientation” as she experiments with new technologies that provide new ways of interacting “with family, friends, colleagues” (Anzaldúa 2015, 188). Understanding the band’s music as speculative and decolonial prompts my driving question: Can their deployment of social technology to share their music, create online inti- macy with fans within and beyond la frontera/the borderlands, and critique 162 Altermundos.indb 162 1/18/17 12:06 PM Girl in a Coma Tweets Chicanafuturism anti-immigrant legislation enrich Chicanx studies with new methods of imaging decolonial futures through music? Girl in a Coma’s tweet about American Sabor exemplifies the cultural feedback loop between Latinx music and US popular culture. By feedback loop, I refer simply to a situation where part of the output or a sound is returned as new input. In the case of amplified guitar, the sound that comes out of an amp goes back in, creating a cycle that feeds back into itself, strengthening upon each return. Part of the work of American Sabor is to represent the eclecticism of Lantinx and Chicanx musical traditions in the United States. Girl in a Coma is one example in a long legacy that is represented in the exhibition. The fact that Girl in a Coma uses their social network to reroute the history of American Sabor represents a positive feedback loop in a way that contributes to the collective work of archivista praxis. Collective archivista process, with an ear to the future, resounds in the WWR Digital Oral History Archive. Coming full circle, Girl in a Coma’s oral history is now preserved in this online archive, projecting their presence into the future with the support of the University of Washington Libraries infrastructure. Who Is Girl in a Coma? Girl in a Coma is composed of San Antonio–born sisters Nina and Phanie Diaz and their childhood friend Jenn Alva. Their self-conscious cultural use of trans-American musical influences like Tejano, country and west- ern, punk, and pop, as well as British subcultural styles aligns with a long tradition of “Chicano rock,” one that resonates with the mainstream, even as it is deeply misunderstood. Influenced by their grandfather’s conjunto music, Tejana singer Selena, and Chicana punk godmother Alice Bag (Alicia Armendariz), Girl in a Coma represents Chicana/Tejana millen- nial voices.4 My collaborators and I featured these self-taught musicians in American Sabor for many reasons. Foremost was their “badass” musicianship: Nina’s powerful, anguished-yet-fierce vocals paired with her impressive guitar shredding, distorted and feedback-rich, and combined with Phanie’s precision percussion and Jenn’s insistent bass distortion. What sets them apart from earlier forms of Chicanx rock is their embrace of queer subjec- tivity, their status as an “all-girl” band, and their early adoption of social technologies and new media. As I argue, these technologies permit them, and their collaborators, to fashion visual and sonic representation within decolonial imaginaries and to create communities of affiliation beyond 163 Altermundos.indb 163 1/18/17 12:06 PM Michelle Habell-Pallán their San Antonio home base. As the band deploys social technology to create bi-directional intimacy online and in live performances, with fans both within and beyond the US-Mexico borderlands, and to mobilize opposition to Arizona’s anti–Mexican immigrant legislation, Catherine Ramírez’s conceptualization of Chicanafuturism comes alive. Embodying Gloria Anzaldúa’s dream of Chicanafuturism, these musicians engage in cultural subversion of strictly defined market-driven industry genres. Equally important, they create community and alternative worlds with limited resources. Doing this by means of their creative expression aligns with the longer tradition of eclecticism within Chicanx cultural production. Though the band is now appreciated by music critics—their release Exits and All the Rest made NPR Music’s 50 Favorite Albums of 2011—their ethos is still deeply misunderstood. One reviewer loved the CD, stating on NPR, “The songs here showcase . an enormous range of influences, from the slithery twang of ‘Sly’ to the Morrissey-esque new wave of ‘Smart’” (Brown 2011). Yet the same reviewer also critiqued the release for its “stylistic inconsistency,” thereby missing the point of Chicanx rock and Chicanx aesthetics of borderlands mestizaje, which have always mixed, blurred, and reinvented musical genres from across the Américas.

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