Maria Pappas — Professor Peri Klemm — ART112 — April 6th, 2016

Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s spoken word event at CSUN was incredibly enlightening with

regards to the role of the artist in contemporary America and in the global world. He began the

talk by juxtaposing tradition with modernity by spraying a deodorant can while chanting and

emulating an advertisement. He encouraged us all to light up a “conceptual cigarette” while we

learn how to “steal precedent views in an original way”, and asked to consider his performance as

a “living archive”. He pointed out that the questions he poses are not meant to be answered, but

simply to be asked. He defines the job of the critical artist as raising uncomfortable questions and

selling ideas, not objects. Some of the hard questions he tackles are, “is love still an option?”, “is

art our salvation?”, and “is community still a source of hope?” Racism, social media, privacy and

politics are some of the main topics Gómez discusses.

My favorite part of the performance piece was when he asked us to repeat loudly after

him in Spanish: “Mexico es California…Pakistan es Londra…Nicaragua es Miami…Argentina

es Paris…Beijing es San Francisco…” and so on. I enjoyed this because it reminds me how small

our world truly is and how similar we all are. By focusing on our similarities rather than our

differences, we can diminish racism in our society. Gómez affirms that communities of sameness

cause claustrophobia, and therefore cultural diversity is something to be celebrated. He points

out how the Spanish language is often criminalized, while emphasizing the abundance of Latino

contributions to the world. He speaks often in Spanish and asked the audience several times for a

live translation. A particularly moving piece was when he recounted a speech he gave in Mexico

City regarding drug dealers and government corruption. He struggled to speak out of his

megaphone as he succumbed to heartbroken weeps.

 Gómez brings awareness to the issues of privacy and politics in America through

his spoken art. He performed a brilliant resistance against media censorship, which facilitates

manipulation of the audience. He did this by reciting a speech and muting his voice on certain

words, accordingly altering the meaning of the words. He claims that Mexico is now learning to

live with the dangers of freedom, whereas the U.S. is learning to live without them. This was

perhaps a jab at the recent privacy issues concerning Apple and the F.B.I., or maybe the

introduction of police cameras. According to Gómez, the system is the problem, and politics is

the art of manipulating the system to perpetrate the problem.

In Gómez’s mind, there exists an artists’ nation of visionaries where imagination is the

only law. In this parallel, utopian universe, everything institutionalized (i.e. hospitals, jails,

airports, etc…) is reconceptualized by artists, collaborating across disciplines. Here, unlike this

world, everyone has a place; artists are recognized as necessary and are actually taken care of.

Art is portrayed as our savior and an ethical mirror of society. Gómez describes art as our

spiritual source and location of hope, found “across the border”. For Gómez, critical thought is an

uncompromising practice that avoids simplistic definitions.

Several aspects of Gómez’s performance were related to “The Couple in the Cage”. For

instance, he talks about the perceived white superiority compared to other cultures in the world.

He was dressed ethnically but used Western props, which is similar to the juxtaposition between

the exotic and the Western in his performance about the foreign couple. He also interacted with

and addressed the audience directly, asserting participation in the performance, like in “The

Couple in the Cage”. In that way, I felt like a part of the performance, which I imagine is how the

people who viewed “The Couple in the Cage” would have felt. In addition, the idea of the media
(as demonstrated with the TV in “The Couple in the Cage”) was a common theme in both

performances.

In conclusion, I feel very grateful to have learned about Guillermo Gómez-Peña in this

course and furthermore to have been able to witness his genius in person and on my own

university’s campus. He introduced me to a new form of art that I did not previously give as

much attention to, and that is the art of the spoken word, combined with performance. I

definitely feel like the experience was rewarding and eye-opening, especially since it relates to

so many events that are happening in our modern world.