Performing Political Acupuncture

When performance art and politics intersect, the result is power to transform.
Last night, visionary performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Violeta Luna performed "Mapa Corpa: Interactive rituals for the new millenium" in Seattle, with his company La Pocha Nostra.

http://www.pochanostra.com

We experienced what the flyer promised - poetic interactive ritual exploring neo-colonizatoin through acupuncture and the poetic re-enactment of the post-9/11 "body politic."

I have as souvenirs two tiny accupuncture needles with flags or I might think it had been a dream.

A black-veiled woman with a Kalishnakov is having her right foot washed. Her left foot was encased in a leg brace. A sign is posted which says, "Please wash the foot of the Arab immigrant tenderly." Several film screens simultaneously show her eyes, her movements, her feet. She is the Cultural Poltergeist. We surround her.

Gomez-Pena appears as an amalgam of an Aztec, a Sioux, a polka dancer. He speaks into a megaphone in English and Spanish.

The Cultural Poltergeist lifts her veil, sticks out her tongue, then converts her veil into an Abu Graib hood and lifts her arms. She stuffs the cloth into her mouth to silence herself. She washes her own feet and underarms. A man from the audience puts a red fishnet stocking on her bare leg, then a platform shoe.

The Cultural Poltergeist places a crown of thorns on her head. She pulls the crown of thorns apart and it becomes barbed wire, with which she wraps herself. She ties her hands into a position of prayer. A woman from the crowd pulls the barbed wire off and the Poltergeist then uses it as a cowboy lasso. The Cultural Poltergeist removes her veil to reveal a silver back brace, as worn by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The front of the back brace is studded with long spikes and she is wearing a flamenco skirt. She tangoes with the audience to the music of the Nortec Collective, of Tijuana. The Cultural Poltergeist has small breasts but also some chest hair so even her gender is indeterminate.

Gomez-Pena does a native American ceremony of the four directions, spraying deodorant in each direction, along with his incantation. He wears a studded glove and one high heel. He speaks in Spanglais, then something that sounds like Lakota Sioux but with the vocal timbre of a Tuvan throat singer. He reviews his life and our general situation.

The body of the Cultural Poltergeist returns on a stretcher, covered with the United Nations flag. An accupuncturist in a white lab coat removes the flag and begins to insert tiny needles with the flags of the US, UK and Israel into her nude body. All is simultaneously projected on screens and the audience circles periodically for a change of vantage point. We hear monks chant.

Gomez-Pena continues the ritual whereby the landscape is ritually being mapped so that we will not fall into the holes of history. Every word is poetry ("Don't worry, be Hopi" "New Orleans is not my Barrio"). Then come the list of associations ("Pakistan is Londres" "Honduras is New Orleans" "Beijing is San Francisco" "Haiti is Nueva York" "Ramada is East LA" and so on). Then "God bless," followed by a pause, repeated for placenames ("Mexico" "Iran" "Pakistan" "Venezuela" "Bolivia" "Columbia" "Cuba" "Iraq" "North Korea" "China" "Sri Lanka" "Cambodia" "Thailand" "Pakistan" "Sudan" "France" "Iceland" "Fiji" "The Bahamas" "Aruba"). People begin to call out names. Eventually we come to America, but it is the hemisphere of America that is blessed.

"God Bless This Pinche Planet" incants Gomez-Pena. He follows with descriptors for the audience, including "We were are not polled by Fox News." The final statement begins with, "And you, my cowboy .."

This sombre yet celebratory event was finalized with a great spread of food.

Here are some writings of Guillermo Gomez-Pena, on "Mapa Corpo."

"Traditionally, the human body, our body, not the stage, is our true site for creation and "materia prima." It's our empty canvas, musical instrument, and open book; our navigaton chart and biographical map, so to speak. Our body is also the very center of our symbolic universe -- a tiny model for humankind (humankind and humanity are the same word n Spanish: "humanidad") -- and at the same time, a metaphor for the larger socioppolitical body. If we are capable of establishing all these connectons in front of an audience, hopefully others will recognize them in their own bodies.

Our scars are involuntary words in the open book of our body, whereas our tattoos, piercings, body paint, adornments, performance prosthetics, and/or robotic accessories, are deliberate phrases.

Our body/corpo/arte-facto/identity must be marked, decorated, interveneed culturally, mapped out, chronicled, re-politicized, and re-captured by the camera. When our body is ill or wounded, our work inevitably changes.

Our bodies are also occupied territories. Perhaps the ultimate goal of performance, especially if you are a woman, gay or a person "of color," is to decolonize our bodies and make these decolonising mechanisms apparent to our audience in the hope that they will get inspired to do the same with the own." ("in defense of performance", Gomez-Pena, 2005).

Some of the music:

Nortec Collective (from Tijuana)
http://www.nor-tek.org
Nortec Collective did a double billing with Gotan Project (Paris) at the Royal Albert Hall in London last year.

Antony and the Johnsons
http://www.antonyandthejohnsons.com

Comments

[myrtle beach]

okaaayyyyy...........