Reading week 6

Reading – Week 6

Kuhnheim, J. (1998). ‘The Economy of performance: Gomez-Pena’s New World Order’ Modern Fiction Studies 44:1 pp. 24-35

Jill Kuhnheim

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·         This piece discusses Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s work on border cultural life, which includes performance art, videos, CDs, books, sites on the Internet, interviews and theory essays.

·         By boundary crossing he reaches larger audiences and is recognised in different fields.

·         His performing of the marginalised raises questions about the line between performance and text, self and community and subversive/commercial uses of art.

·         As a border artist Gomez-Pena avoids definition and categorization. Phelan writes ‘identity is perceptible only through relation to the other, it is a form of resisting and claiming the other

·         Gomez-Pena shows the need for exchange as it is a channel for communication. The hybrid ‘denounces the faults, prejudices and fears manufactured by the self-proclaimed centre.’ We are not products of only one culture but have identities that are multiple and transitional.

·         Border identity is based on hybrid & contradiction. Gomez-Pena has ‘reworked the concept of border identity in different form since the early 1980’s.’ He makes the marginal visible.

·         Gomez-Pena develops his performance process, from reading a poem in a public toilet, to making a video, to being a live exhibition and documenting public reaction into a ‘techno-drama’, to an internet page where people confess their sins, it mutates into other forms.

·         ‘One of the effects of putting the chronology in the centre is to frame the narrative of performances with pieces that ‘perform’ in other ways. The accounts of the performances are, in effect, ‘bordered’ by other documents.’ Gomez-Pena takes a unified speaking position that reinforces his authority as an artist.

·         Much of his work is English/Spanish, which favours a bilingual audience member, but the written script contains clearer meaning than the visual/aural performance. The performance is dependant on the language skills of the audience/reader, which itself creates borders.

·         Gomes-Pena deliberately plays upon this inclusion/exclusion binary in order to create the other and the self, as well as demonstrating dependence and antagonism between the roles.

·         The New World Border has scripted audience involvement and writing this into the script makes the piece static and more like a scripted performance than a genuine reaction.

·         ‘There is a deceptive hybridity in this text...the speakers identity depends upon an opposition between multiculturalism and a monoculture.’

·         One section of New World Order is an autobiographical piece in which Gomez-Pena ‘closes the distance between his historical self and his speaker when recounting an incident of racial paranoia and cultural misunderstanding.’ He is picking up his child, but he is accused of kidnapping because the boy is white and blond, whereas he is Mexican. ‘The text is a representation of these women’s misperception elaborated by the author’s anger and speculations about the possible outcome for a more Vulnerable target.’

·         Another section is entitled ‘The Psycho in the Lobby of the Theatre’ in which Gomez-Pena challenges assumptions about identity. The presumption is that the man who is questioned is the ‘psycho’ but it is Gomez-Pena’s character that turns out to be the ‘psycho’ because of his aggressive assertion of self-identity. This makes Gomez-Pena and the audience question their own assumptions of identity and race. ‘While Gomez-Pena reveals how his identity is ensnared by others’ prejudices and misconceptions, he is also trapped in his own set of cultural terms and preconceptions.’

·         However, calling attention to border identity does not change it. By moving the border to centre may enforce binaries of centre/margin, speaker/listener, male/female instead of undoing them. Therefore Gomez-Pena fixes himself and the audience in predetermined places that limit the chance for transformation.

·         Gomez-Pena reinforces gendered identities instead of challenging them by poking fun at feminist critics, so instead of challenging, he enforces traditional oppressive power hierarchy

·         He creates a binary in himself and his audience, we are either with or against him, we agree or disagree, in or out, and trapped within a binary with no middle ground or chance to cross identities. He does not explore the ‘multiplicity of both real and imagined identities.’