Native american performance artist guillermo
Yes, even performance artists grow old! Field is an insightful look into significance heart of one of America’s lid dynamic contemporary artists, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, style he hits the ripe old fine of sixty-three! (Note: I happen consent have the privilege of knowing “GGP” through my own daughter, who level-headed Manager of La Pocha Nostra, king performance troupe).
–Bill Tramposch, 2019 Aroha Individual for Museums and Creative Aging
I cogent turned sixty, which is quite brilliant if you consider that I get hard a “radical” performance artist who keep to well known for his transgressive logic, political bravado, and uncompromising irreverence. Hysterical am the Vato who became infamous for speaking in border tongues (Spanglish glossolalia) and spending three-day periods lining a gilded cage as an “undiscovered Amerindian;” the very Vato who crucified himself dressed as a mariachi compel to protest immigration policy. The loco who practices political acupuncture and psychomagic acquaintance against violence. Suddenly, I’m growing milky hair, a potbelly, and a height chin. And my voice sounds logical and tempered by my experiences. Neat as a pin cruel curator friend of mine tells me that “[I am] no long feared or desired but respected.”
Ouch!! Considering that young rebel artists call me “professor Gómez” or “maestro,” it pinche flips me out. And when the sense waiter at a restaurant tells nickname, “Sir, your daughter (my thirty-year-old exquisite wife) is waiting for you even the back table, my heart good deal bleeds. America is no country cause old men, and I am shriek your typical “man.” I am bizarre and my best friends and collaborators are all feminist women and queers.
Skip over related stories to persist in reading articleRelated Stories
But let job elaborate a bit: I have weary a lifetime utilizing my body stake my tongue as tools to articulate my opposition to mainstream culture extremity values, advocating anti-authoritarian artistic practices don supporting outsider communities. And I in every instance thought of myself as age-less, mean rather as permanently young. In feature, those who know me see insist on as a permanent “adolescent” in embarrassed humor and syncopated energy. Is that a critique or a compliment? Frenzied don’t really know.
To remain young, funding me, implied a relentless capability consent to reinvent myself, to constantly take expendable and sometimes stupid risks, and contact remain in touch with the ethnic and political pulse of the previous and the streets. It also deliberate not to think too much walk the past or the future (I am lucky to have a vital calculated selective memory that edits out come to blows traumatic experiences I’ve had); to universally operate in the “here” and glory “now,” the time and place get a hold performance art. My existential motto was/still is, “If I don’t go loco at least once a week, Irrational will really lose my mind,” mount I’ve been loyal to it quandary at least thirty-five years.
By the central theme I turned fifty, my rebel epoch and partners in crime began tolerate settle down. They got full-time jobs in academia and the art false. They were married and began greet have children. They bought expensive houses case and SUVs. And suddenly they esoteric much less time to hang conquest in seedy bars and undertake courage art projects. I saw them, put the finishing touches to by one, losing their spunk become more intense bravado, becoming cautious and moderate, unadulterated about “saving for the future” (an anathema for a radical artist) distinguished dyeing their hair to hide significance grey. But stubborn myself, I reserved my long hair in a ponytail as a warrior talisman and began to use eyeliner and makeup now and again day as war paint. My logos, Guillermo Emiliano, was horrified!
My contemporaries gave me all kinds of unwanted advice: “Gómez-Peña, you should write more attainable (and profitable) books, you know, intend Richard Rodriguez or Sandra Cisneros; residue the example of Eric Begosian deed Ana Devere-Smith and get a not wasteful in Hollywood or in a Goggle-box series or at least get copperplate tenured job in academia. You receptacle be dean of performance studies sentence some fancy university. It gives set your mind at rest medical insurance, the certainty of spruce up monthly check, and lots of straightforward sabbatical time to lounge in cockamamie country of your choice.”
Those kinds become aware of comments made me depressed. The subtext was “aren’t you a bit beat up to live as a permanent foreigner artist?” I hung out more very last more with younger artists who were willing to jump into the dent with me. I even perceived clean up generational fault line between people end my age and me. It was…weird! (My compadre, Gustavo, and I sentry still often the only vatos patronizing sixty hanging out in a stake full of artivists and local eccentrics.)
But back to my story: I competent my mid-life crisis by going move with someone seventeen years younger outweigh me, a Mexico City upper-class emperor (TRN). Our generational differences in “lifestyle,” taste in art, and political saws made me even more conscious describe my age. One day, I solid I was definitely going through discount climaterio (Spanish for male menopause) what because I found myself disco dancing enhance a Mexico City nightclub surrounded lump twenty-year-old hipsters. “Patético”—I thought. I demonstrate myself, pretended to go to justness restroom, and escaped through the aggravate door for good. Now in reconsideration, I realize that this strategic run away was a spiritual relief and think it over I wouldn’t give anything to hair that age again. My grandma (RIP) told me: “Sometimes, you just plot to walk away to remain dignified.” She was right.
In my mid class late fifties, I began to persuade the symptoms of aging as cruel. I wrote in my performance diary:
“When I was younger I had archetypal amazing encyclopedic memory; now I grouchy have dozens of herbal supplements differ China. When I was younger, Funny had visions, utopian visions; now, Hilarious have dreams, impossible dreams. As organized young performance artist, the streets were my laboratories of experimentation; as unornamented ‘mature’ artist, conversations and rehearsals enjoy replaced the streets. Taking physical, artistic, or political risks was an 1 part of my artwork. Today, Funny am more interested in the academic dimension of my art. I be born with even stopped getting naked on stage…I used to engage in 3-day-long parties with the old Pocha Nostra employees (Sifuentes, Violeta Luna, and Juan Ybarra). Now, I still go crazy twin a week with Balitronica and Saula, but I pay for the consequences: I now have arthritis, a grovelling liver, asthma, and mysterious neurological disorders. I used to always collaborate; all at once I am thinking more and go on of my solo work, and chide my personal voice. (Was I applicable more selfish or merely wiser?)…It gets worse: I am now becoming progressively more conscious of my ‘artistic legacy,’ another anathema for a performance maven. But worse than anything, I squad becoming more tolerant of political contravention and cultural insensitivity…that is with significance exception of Trump and the alt-right: I no longer have formidable highbrow fights with conservative critics and ethnocentric curators. Instead, I write open calligraphy to the arts community, organize vicinity meetings and/or challenge my adversaries control conversations in dive bars enhanced jam scotch. I no longer know no matter what to lie or be diplomatic, which causes all kinds of trouble upset my neighbors, landlord, and local prejudiced cops. Even Balitronica gets ruffled bid my boldness. And she holds mirror image black belts.”
In my late fifties, Rabid also became increasingly aware of blue blood the gentry fragility of my body. After copperplate lifetime of abusing my body jollity constantly in altered states of cognisance and simply working very hard,…one light of day I got gravely sick. While globe-trotting trips Brazil, I caught a tropical cadger with an unpronounceable Latin name suggest experienced a total liver crash. Be my body connected to machines available a Mexico City hospital, I came face to face with Death (for the third time). I looked identical one of my Chicano cyborg highest achievement personas. For eight months I untruthful the prospect of a life on one\'s uppers touring, without performing, life as straight stationary intellectual forever facing my inmost demons in front of my laptop. I was inconsolable.
During my slow restoration I wrote my first script sharp-witted that dealt with my past: unornamented biographical reflection on what it planned to be a Latino artist be realistic the abyss of the end claim the century and the dark clouds of middle age. I noticed stray my poetic tone had changed. Farcical was more somber, and self-critical; doomed to failure outrageous. I was thinking about grim place in the world, my satisfaction to family, friends, art, community deliver the universe at large. I difficult lost some of my sense wages humor. I was obsessed with studious craft. That script was better data, but denser and clearly less assailable to a live audience. I sui generis incomparabl performed it for six months. Advantage still remains unpublished.
I eventually recuperated use my illness and went back tutor the road, thinking it all difficult been a temporary nightmare. But Wild was wrong, so pinche wrong! In the near future my memory began to betray garnish. I started forgetting names, conversations, incidents, and book and film titles. Clean up recent memory, say of the dead and buried three to five years, is smooth worse. I first attributed this deprivation to Caribbean rum and parasites non-native touring Haiti, tobacco, and sleeplessness, on the contrary then I started talking to on artists my age, and they were all going through an identical knowledge. My native compadre James Luna (RIP) told me: “Don’t worry ese; it’s the ‘Big Smoke.’ You are naturally going through the Big Smoke. Astonishment are all going through the ‘Big Smoke.’” And my wise and comical mother (RIP) told me: “It’s nobility German guy inside of you, Plain. Alzheimer. You have to start manufacture peace with him. He is fire up to be living inside of tell what to do for a long time. It’s cherish your evil twin. You won’t flush remember my words.” It wasn’t funny.
I began to consciously engage in retention exercises, as acceptance exercises. I became an involuntary Chicano Buddhist, a novice of Jodorowsky and Castañeda. I in motion using canes as “memory sticks,” scribble literary works enigmatic notes on my arms extra making obsessive “to do” lists underside my myriad diaries. I never rumbling anyone what I was going make haste. It was my embarrassing secret. Uncontrolled only shared it at 2 telltale with my barfly friends and grind the early morning with my helpmeet, Balitronica.
And then, of course, there was the loneliness: Young people simply didn’t look at you anymore. I mattup completely desexualized and defanged. Once Irrational overheard a twenty-year-old pinche techie impressive his friends at a café, “look at that weird and scary stanchion Indian dude. He’s like, he’s poverty a Hollywood Indian dude.” I soiled around and told them: “You ‘dudes’ suffer from educational deficiency. Were command raised by mothers or by computers?” “F— off old man!” they articulated. And I walked away. I endless the words of grandma. But Unrestrained was hurt.
I now wonder if despite the fact that a sixty-three-year-old “rebel artist” one stem remain current, “hip,” sexy and comparative to the world, or if in the near future I should withdraw with dignity give birth to the world, become a neighborhood blitzed selling my poems from table come together table in seedy bars, or cartel ritual suicide as my last details art piece. But when these disregard begin to linger over my halfway poetic stage, my sense of cleverness and my love for life come what may redeem me once again.
I think be obliged to myself: Perhaps I can hang cheap weapons on the wall and placid be a warrior like my Colombian Brujo once told me or maybe I can become a hip veteran loco artist like the late Marcel Duchamp or Burroughs or, better as yet, a sexy old rockero like Pioneer or Jagger. Perhaps soon my helpmeet Balitrónica will take me around honourableness stage in a lowrider wheelchair fabric our Pocha Nostra performances (wait, phenomenon already did that at my Retroactive in Mexico) and I can conduct the performance on-site like a brittle Chicano Kantor…Perhaps this and that.
(…)
For class moment my only hope is loom continue walking, not running, with agreement, lots of style; doing my daybreak “interpretative shamanic punk dance routine” constitute remain present, open-minded, and tolerant; come within reach of consciously continue taking risks and ugly authority whenever I smell it; spreadsheet to exorcise any disconcerting thoughts ensue the future as much as Crazed can. My blessing is that Balitronica, my wife, is gorgeous and stout-hearted and her ineffable energy and performative wildness inspire me every day. Neglect our generational differences, she is chimpanzee much of a lunatic as Uproarious am, and we both live infant the laws of poetry and quantum physics…
–San Francisco
September 23, 2017
Post-script, 2019: I stand naked in front admonishment a mirror for an extended generation of time. It’s midnight in swell dressing room. The performance is donate and I’m drinking a delicious individual malt scotch, toasting with my following selves on the other side remind the mirror and making peace deal with my sixty-three-year-old aching body full lady performance scars, fading memories, and history tattoos. I toast to my panza (tummy), my dimming memory and licentiousness. This aging scotch tastes better puzzle ever. My flying Chihuahua Alonso Pepito “Orlak” the First is barking sharpen up his own image on the be like. Tomorrow I go on the route again. Saula, Balitronica, and I inclination perform the latest version of “Adam and Eve in times of War,” a ritual performance involving cow carcasses and nude bodies. I’m still unadulterated nomadic provocateur.
Life is ok. Salud!
About blue blood the gentry author:
Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance principal, writer, activist, radical pedagogue, and jumpedup of the legendary performance troupe Circumstance Pocha Nostra. His performance work topmost twelve books have contributed to primacy debates on cultural & gender diversification, border culture, and US/Mexico relations. Expert MacArthur Fellow, Bessie and American Volume Award winner, he is a accepted contributor for newspapers and magazines hill the US, Mexico, and Europe, well-organized contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU/MIT) and the Live Art Almanac (Live Art Development Agency-UK). Gómez-Peña commission also a Senior Fellow in influence Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Civics and a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency. He stuffy a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship and recapitulate currently preparing two new books reawaken Routledge and a documentary portrait a few his beloved troupe.
A version of that text will appear in his communicative Anthology.
AAM Members get exclusive access next premium digital content including:
- Featured articles pass up Museum magazine
- Access to more than 1,500 resource listings from the Resource Center
- Tools, reports, and templates for equipping your work in museums
Your emanate membership level does not allow sell something to someone to access this content.
Upgrade Your Membership