Early in his artistic trajectory Gómez-Peña makes it very clear that he has never associated his border performance art with any site-specific space. The Chilango artist emphasizes how his borderless identity does not speak of a specific Diaspora, but rather is an all encompassing experience. He states: “For me, the border is no longer located at any fixed geopolitical site. I carry the border with me, and I find new borders wherever I go” (New World Border 5). His Diaspora then consists of not belonging and belonging to all, all at once. In fact, Gómez-Peña has always claimed his displacement as a “home,” embracing the power of the borderless artist who’s art speaks to all and embraces all nationalities, nations, and above all, all those lost in Diaspora all while “raising tough questions regarding access, identity politics and language” (Gómez-Peña “The Virtual Barrio”).
As a “reverse anthropologist” he claims he uses the data he gathers to echo the zeitgeist (or social consciousness) of society and represent it to that same public, all with the intent of having his audience contemplate and recognize their own thoughts. He enters the virtual world with high aspirations. In his first draft of a manifesto entitled, “Remapping Cyberspace” Gómez-Peña notes that his
desire is to remap the hegemonic cartography of cyberspace; to ‘politicize’ the debate; to develop a multicentric theoretical understanding of the (cultural, political and aesthetic) possibilities of new technologies; to exchange a different sort of information (mythopoetical, activist, performative, imagistic); and to hopefully do all this with humor, inventiveness and intelligence. (Gómez-Peña “The Virtual Barrio”)
In an earlier interview
Gómez-Peña emphasized that the iconography of his characters does draw
from Chicano imagery but is meant to express the translatable
experience of the uprooted foreigner living in Diaspora (Huízar 207).
So, keeping this in mind we can see how the “cybersaints” aim to
represent “this process of hybridization of borderization, not just in
This virtual and global world is assumed to be a hybrid as it is increasingly dominated by globalization, yet it leads us to question—much like the artist does in his own work—the increasingly segregated technological community that is for the most part perceived as the imperialist gaze of the United States. In this space we can interrogate the poetic representation of the images, sounds and language posted in poetic dioramas on the Internet to be explored and performed at various times and in invariable types of audiences, and spaces. We also see that in Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s cyber world the multiplicity and possibility of border identities, and kitsch representations of Latino culture are interrogated only in a way that allows the viewer to deconstruct the performed and commodified visual and written text. In fact, we can see how the web provides this artist with variable ways to recycle texts and fragments of action, whose meaning may or may not play out—in the reader’s, the viewer’s or participant’s interpretation—in the same fashion.
Much like a performance, the reading of these “Tekno poéticas” is left open, raw and mixed; the web environment provides an illusory unwavering site-specific location of his performance that changes its dialogic repertoire as it enters the varied private spaces of its public and performer. The performance can no longer attempt to be adapted to speak and reach specific concerns and or communities, his audience is now in a “global” context where the reader is just about anyone. Although, one could also assume that the viewer that navigates to this particular website is well acquainted with the artist’s work and is simply looking for more.
The website houses simulated three-dimensional temples where the user/viewer can enter the chamber and confront these “cybersaints.” He uses humor and irony in his performance of a varied cartography of identity stereotypes and geopolitical issues to provoke the audience’s perceptions of cultural hybridity. He uses elements of poems, performance monologues, spoken word pieces in a combination to weave distinctive textual montages. These may aim to address a given audience, but in reality are left open to interpretation by the global community. The artist has often said that his characters are icons, more about pop-culture processes and the reflections of the zeitgeist of the times than about mere ethnic reflections.
In the Pocha Nostra website besides several marketing information regarding his presentations, workshops and lectures and publications, the Museo section houses the “Tekno poética” and the Video Gallery which include several hypertext and video-poems. The “Tekno Poética” is subdivided in three poems: “Militias,” “Sexo” and “Theory.” These represent the three most politically charged expressions of a culture: the armed forces that protects and in some cases governs a country; sex as necessary for survival of the human race, but also serves as a vital indicator of the social state of our civilization, the zeitgeist; and finally, theory gives explanations and answers to the human condition while at the same time it is inevitably linked to the artistic production. The “Tekno poética” is a hypertext verse of animated words accompanied by computerized music that adds to the eerie performance of the piece. All three reflect on society’s experience and suggest the uneasiness of the time we are living in. In “Sexo,” for instance, the topic is a universal one, yet by using the Spanglish voice Gómez Peña makes it about the bicultural and biracial experience. That is, it is the ethnic voice that speaks of sex, it is this ethnic body that is presumed to be involved. The words flash before the reader, slide from left and right and disappear instantaneously:
All we have sex
S E X
Cybersex
Sexo anónimo: without emotional or biological repercussions
Sexo
aeróbico: sin facciones, sin identidad
Sin
Recuerdo
sin
en español es pecado
Sin
Sex
What we have is a double reference to the anonymity of the body in cyberspace: the body that is not recognized, that does not exist (as in cybersex) and the body whose sexual actions compose the being, as in:
Sex
o
bien
sex
intranscendete,
Sex
doloroso,
sex
extremo,
sexo
impersonal,
y
sin propósito alguno
en
la calle,
bajo
niebla
en
la misma morgue
as a high spiritual goal
so death is temporarily unattainable
One of the features of
this poetic voice is how the body’s actions—in regards to sex—make the
being what s/he is, and in a sense what society is as a whole.
Gómez-Peña houses this unidentifiable ethnic body in a space that both
robs him of his specificity and replaces it with the perspective of the
Other. In this particular case, cyberspace houses the marginalized
body’s experience or outlook and decentralizes the hegemonic anglo
body’s experience. It is an example of how the web functions as a home
of the diaspora voice that speaks for all, that uses the marginalized
voice to speak of universal truths. “Militias” speaks of the invasion
of self-governed armed forces that rob the identity of its constituents
“free falling toward c h a o u s.” In this poem we also see how the
center is de-centered: the poetic “I” (“our cities”) is invaded by the
“anglo militias.” This identity is shown to be at the brink of
destruction as these
militias
keep moving north
our identity
freefalling
toward
c h a o u s
Again, the once
displaced ethnic voice is privileged. Assumptions can be made of the
political position taken by the artist and his critique of the invading
militias. “Theory,” on the other hand, takes a more universal angle and
appeals to the reader’s search for “truth” or answers. Gómez –Peña
simply proposes that it is with this concept and practice that we find
meaning to the world, because everything else including “friendship,
health and love” are temporary. That which is eternal then is
hypothetical discourse and are mere assumptions that give answers to
our questions and support our critiques. And, only “the ephemeral
utopias of art, travel and laughter” allow thinking beings to exist. In
this abstract discussion he adds:
These small privileges that make life bearable
Temporarily as we know tomorrow
The earth might open up again
We might get deported
We might get aids
Yes, my dear contemporaries
Uncertainty rules
Our fragile kingdom
And our art
Is an impression
An expression of this uncertainty
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
has often said that his performance art is a reflection and analysis of
society and his function as a “reverse anthropologist” is to reveal how
the marginalized experience and the view of reality place the hegemonic
culture in that same perspective. While these poems are not necessarily
interactive, they are examples of the artist’s attempt at “brownifying”
the web with the Spanglish language, the gaze of the Other, and the
critique of the dominant culture’s fears. The topics chosen do not
represent a specific sector of society nor do they speak of ethnic
issues; these can in fact be translatable to any culture. In a sense,
we can say that he has brought the margins to the center in these
examples by speaking of issues that are transferable and yet speak of a
particular experience, that of the ethnic in the
In his “Video Gallery”
we find a more hi-tech poetry that incorporates images, video, music,
and verse, all mixed in a mélange of animation, recitation and sound
elements. In these particular pieces the reader / spectator / audience
participant is an integral component of his dialogical work. These are
examples of how web-based video-poetry and hypertext verse, placed in a
global medium, both absorbs the reader and requests audience
participation making ultimately the effect of displacement and
dislocation an exercise that questions not only the physical act of
moving and immigration but also the political, theoretical and even
philosophical notions of identity and displacement. These texts serve
as examples of concrete social, demographic, and linguistic processes
that speak in a mythical language about a “proletariat kind of
internationalism,” as Gómez-Peña would put it (Huízar 210); processes
that are typical all over the world and in a sense international. He
refuses to regard these processes as part of globalization because of
the colonial connotations and ethnocentric notion that this concept
entails. In this section there are two video-poems that reflect the
experience of the Other, “Apocalypse,” and “Califas.” “Apocalypse” uses
the city of
and
my house not even a house
L.A.
nunca vino
y nunca llegará
this pinchi city doesn’t even exist
Los Angeles home to so
many immigrants, to so many and varied experiences of Diaspora, in this
web experience is the site of displacement for both the immigrant and
the citizen, for the concept of urban settlement is debunked by
Gómez-Peña when he makes it clear that everyone is afraid of “losing
themselves in another culture, another airport, another lover, another
trip. . .que sé yo.” The displaced persona in this piece is the
inhabitant that claims to have a home, to live in an
As Thomas Foster succinctly points out, Gómez Peña’s technological representations of racialized subjects help analysts think and question how race is represented in a more technological medium. It leads me to question if race can be erased with the possible anonymity and gender-less identification that technology, such as cyber-space, can provide. His “cybersaints” do exactly the opposite, they do not let the viewer forget that s/he is entering a very ethnic space where the protagonists speak Spanglish, raise issues of representation of the “other,” question the white hegemonic order, and resist any process of acculturation that would devoid them (the “cybersaints”) of differentiation. The fact that these personas are unusual grant them a privileged space where the reader/spectator can either identify with them or be appalled by the “hybridity” or unusualness of the character. The fact of the matter is that most viewers that dive into Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s website know what to expect, and in fact, seek and embrace the “borderless” representations of race, as its author cites. It might even be safe to say that these spectators are not the average web-surfer, but rather form part of the very specialized, privileged and well-read critics (literary, cultural, theatrical and performance) that find in these representations an embodied account of the same theories they profess. So, then, does the web, specifically his site, provide a home for the Diaspora experience? I would venture to say that it does. The notions of the racialized body, the ethnic individual’s experience, and ultimately the gaze of the Other is privileged; the images conjure an ethnic gaze scrutinizing the anglo-culture’s fears. Although Gómez-Peña’s site performs a very clear marketing function for his performances, books and CDs, it does provide a strong contribution to the critical representation of how the ethnic body may use the discursive space of the world wide web.
Works Cited
Foster, Thomas. “Cyber-Aztecs and Cholo-Punks: Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Five-Worlds Theory.” PMLA 117.1 (Jan. 2002): 43-67.
Gómez-Peña,
Guillermo. “The Virtual Barrio @ the Other Frontier (or the Chicano
Intertnauta)” keynote address at the Fifth International Conference
on Cyberspace,
---. Dangerous Border Crossers.
Huízar, Angélica. “Performance, Identities and Transgressions: An Interview with Guillermo Gómez-Peña.” Gestos 13.25 (1998): 205-14.