Performer heats up Cafecito Hour

We live in a strange democracy. We live in a democracy where we have no voice, where we have no say, where we only feel safe because our country saves us from the very risk from which it puts us. But, for two hours last Thursday evening, performing artist and MacArthur Fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña transported the audience to a true democracy, a democracy where the artist and politician held the same value, tested the same truths, and were heard with the same ears.

A democracy where those in charge had to “sit, listen and, if they are smart, take notes” on a weekly meeting concerning art in a democratic society.

Gómez-Peña, self-proclaimed Chicano activist, writer and performing artist, has been crossing borders and letting people know it for over 30 years. Born and raised in Mexico City, Gómez-Peña moved to San Francisco at 23 to study post-studio art.

Around this time, he began to make himself known as a performing artist, especially concerning the politics of identity, the lines of cultural and political borders and the power imbalance in the world.

His early shows, which gave him the nickname “border brujo,” were mainly performed along the California-Mexico border. These performances, such as the “Cruci-fiction” project, where Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes crucified themselves across from the Golden Gate Bridge as two contemporary public enemies — to replicate those crucified along with Christ in the Passion — launched Gómez-Peña into the performing artist spotlight.

From there, his shows continued to ask questions of people usually left alone.

Another show was titled “The Temple of Confessions,” where Gómez-Peña and Sifuentes dressed as El Mexterminator and El Cybervato, living saints from a future, endangered religion. On display in Plexiglas boxes in a mock temple complex, they called upon people to share their greatest confessions or desires concerning other races.

Gómez-Peña, through his shows, pioneered the concept of reverse anthropology, an idea through which he is able to explain the dominant culture to itself using different cultures as a catalyst.

Most of his performance work since then has been in this vein, trying to make the audience come to a self-realization about its own situation in the world.

There was no exception Thursday night, as Gómez-Peña talked unabashedly and questioned the political structure that exists in the United States. Though more of a spoken-word performance, Gómez-Peña’s show made many eccentricities were made crystal clear to the audience. As he said during Cafecito Hour, he has always been a member of fringe culture, as that is the area where it is possible to be noticed.

However, as fringe culture began to become pop culture through the ’80s and ’90s, he was forced to push himself further and further out, to the land of the perverse. So, as he took the stage, paying tribute to the four cardinal directions with an air freshener, dressed with one high heel and a skeletal glove, not many questions were asked.

He began with the invocation: “Dear post-apocalyptic hipsters,” and proceeded to weave the audience into a democracy where every voice was heard. He questioned the audience members about their identities and their interactions with immigrants, which ultimately led to the conclusion: “What’s up with Vermont?”

This was a topic of conversation during the Cafecito Hour as well: How is his art so universally applicable, since most of it only deals with the Mexico-U.S. border? Gómez-Peña pointed out that the same basic culture conflicts exist everywhere across the globe. This point of culture clash — when an indigenous culture encounters something foreign — is the moment Gómez-Peña tries to evoke in his work.

The emotions Gómez-Peña pulled from the crowd were as vibrant and varied as a painter’s palate. He seemed to be conducting the whole audience, talking with and through his hands.

His impassioned diatribe about the current political state and the quality of our democracy raised questions in everyone, as the audience was abuzz with interesting topics after the show.

Undoubtedly, Gómez-Peña is one of modern society’s most renowned and intriguing performance artists. His show captured and expressed his persona perfectly, and left everyone wondering what kind of a strange democracy they are truly living in.