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Guillermo Gomez Peña: Border Brujo
101
Border Brujo: Identity and interpretation
Language
Images
Some background...
Critique of cultural assignments
Guillermo Gomez Peña uses images and language in his performance to demonstrate that linguistic and cultural identities are symbols that can be appropriated by users for different contexts, but can also be exploited in use and interpretation.
- Guillermo Gomez Peña
- Born: 1955 in Mexico City
- Came to the U.S. in 1978
- Performance artist- video, audio, installation, poetry, journalism
- Examines: immigration, multiculturalism, technology, consumerism, globalism
- "Chicano cyber-punk" "ethno-techno art"
- La Pocha Nostra
- Border Brujo, The New World Border, Temple of Confessions
Guillermo Gomez Peña prompts us to ask questions about the formations of identities
-who defines them?
-how many things form your identity?
-does identity change in different contexts?
Things to think about while you watch...
How is he speaking? a particular language?
What identities are created?
What images do you see? Cultural appropriations or cultural symbols? Familiar images?
Some observations
-english/spanish/???
-batman
-Black and white faces
-bananas- UFC
-candles/alter
-music
-Native american head
-What else?
Use of Language and symbols
Language poetry- "Key aspects of language poetry include the idea that language dictates meaning rather than the other way around"
Interpretation of the Audience
-interpretation says more about the interpreter than the messenger
Giving objects or images meanings
"I speak therefore you misinterpret me
I am Tijuana, you are San Diego
I exist therefore you misunderstand me...."
multiculturalism
Power and Exploitation
The Border/ La Frontera
-multiple languages, multiple cultures
-Peña as the artist is the blank slate where language is performed and interpreted by others
-Peña's intersecctionality and biculturalism
- The interpretation of identity assigns power
- language as exploitation
- to be used as a signifier of identity
- can be manipulated to represent many things
- his identity changes based on where he is and who is listening
-The border is a place where two cultural identities combine and repel
-The border creates a unique border culture
-His identity is shaped by others through language and image observation