Upcoming Camerawork Events: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra’s Performance Karaoke

Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra's
Performance Karaoke

A series of participatory performance art events led by artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra as part of the exhibition "I feel I am free but I know I am not" at SF Camerawork

The public is invited to join artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra in what critics have described as "radical performance karaoke" events at SF Camerawork this October. In the hybrid realm of La Pocha Nostra's interactive performance installations, radical political imagery, religious iconography, pop culture, outrageous racially-oriented costume, theatricalized sexuality and even embalmed animals mix to parody colonial practices of representation including the ethnographic diorama, the freak show, the strip joint, the Indian trading post and their contemporary manifestations.

At SF Camerawork, the group will stage performance events in which the artists will arrange tableaux vivants with the audience, manipulating the participants' body positions and adding costumes and props to their impromptu personae. As audience members join in and adopt a 'temporary identity', the truly political nature of the work reveals itself most strongly as participants begin to make aesthetic, political and ethical decisions on the spot. Photographers will be on hand to capture the results and images will be mounted to create a wall of photographs that grows as the exhibit continues. For the event on October 11th -- Bay Area power brokers stage their imagined performance personas – La Pocha Nostra will involve invited Bay Area officials and politicians in the work.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña was born in Mexico City and moved to the US in 1978, where he established himself as a performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. In 1991, he became the first Chicano/Mexicano artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (1991-1996). Gómez-Peña's performance art often involves audience participation, elaborate costuming and other collaborators, including Roberto Sifuentes, James Luna, Violeta Luna and Coco Fusco.

WHAT:
Artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra's "Performance Karaoke" – a participatory performance art event led by artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra as part of SF Camerawork's fall exhibition I feel I am free but I know I am not.

DATES AND TIMES:
Saturday, October 11 from 3-5 pm "Bay Area power brokers stage their imagined performance personas"

Tuesday, October 21 from 5-8 pm "The audience stages their favorite artwork"


WHERE:
SF Camerawork, 657 Mission St., Second Floor, San Francisco

ADMISSION:
$5.00; $2.00 for students and seniors; free to Camerawork members

INFORMATION:
http://www.sfcamerawork.org or 415.512.2020