Mundos Alternos Performances at UCR ARTSblock

RIVERSIDE, Calif., Oct. 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, UCR ARTSblock's exhibition of over 30 contemporary artists working within the science fiction genre to imagine new realities and alternate worlds, is proud to present live performances as a part of the larger exhibition. Kathryn Poindexter, Exhibitions Manager and Assistant Curator for UCR ARTSblock, is Curator of Performance for Mundos Alternos. She shared her enthusiasm for this component: "We are an organization that includes performance arts as an important part of our programing, so it was imperative that we also engage artists who work in performance to be part of the exhibition."

Guillermo Gómez-Peña will perform solo and as part of his troupe, La Pocha Nostra, on October 20 and 21, 2017 at 7pm. As he "is primarily a performance artist, to best represent his oeuvre, it is important to have him here to perform these new works that respond to the themes present in Mundos Alternos," Poindexter explained. Gómez-Peña's unique solo style combines spoken word, activist theory, radical storytelling and language experimentation, offering critical and humorous commentary about the art world, academia, technology, the culture of war and violence in the US, organized crime in Mexico, and gender and race politics.

La Pocha Nostra, a transdisciplinary group devoted to erasing the borders between art and politics, practice and theory, and artist and spectator, includes Gómez-Peña, Balitronica Gómez, and Saul García Lopez, and is known for its radical interactive performances dealing with issues that equate the human body with the political body and address complex gender and ethnic identities, migration, and the politics of new technologies and language. For Saturday's performance, Ex-Machina 3.0: A Psychomagic ritual against violence, the central "image" consists of a nude cyborg body acupunctured with needles bearing flags of 40 insidious corporations affecting the economy, politics, and culture of the US and Mexico. The audience will be invited to remove the flags as a form of collective activism. Simultaneously, the performance depicts Xochipili, the Aztec God of Corn, an indigenous body covered with transgenic corn. The audience will be asked to collectively consume the flesh of the "corn man" as an act of conceptual cannibalism and ritual exorcism against colonialism and the violence of our times.

On January 27, 2018, Carmelita Tropicana (Alina Troyano) will perform Hybrid Alternos, an interactive performance in collaboration with her sister, filmmaker Ela Troyano. In a world where species are disappearing and new ones created, Hye, a human hyena hybrid, is a fugitive desperately seeking home in Nebula, the only nation that accepts subhuman hybrids and illegal androids. Hybrid Alternos explores the disappearance of animal species, current issues of immigration, and xenophobic discourse through a futuristic lens.

This performance work is a new iteration on Carmelita Tropicana's past performances, Post-Plastica and Schwanze Beast, from which two displayed costumes in Mundos Alternos derive. Poindexter shared that the artist is "interested in research on animal behaviors, and has in recent years studied the behaviors of female hyenas." Further, the performance will engage issues of animal and environmental conservation through Carmelita Tropicana's characteristic lens of humor and fantasy. The artist will lead a panel discussion following her performance that evening.

"Mundos Alternos is an expansive project. Beyond the exhibition, there is a companion film series, a publication that has generated new scholarship in the field, and this robust performance component," Poindexter explained. "Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Carmelita Tropicana are such revered figures in performance art, it is an exciting opportunity to host performances like these."

Guillermo Gómez-Peña: The Most (un) Documented Mexican Artist
Friday, October 20, 7pm
Culver Center of the Arts at UCR ARTSblock
Advance registration: http://www.artsblock.ucr.edu/Performance/Gomez-Pena-Undocumented

La Pocha Nostra's
Ex-Machina 3.0: A psychomagic ritual against violence, 2017
Performance past of the Mapa/Corpo series
Saturday, October 21, 7pm
Culver Center of the Arts at UCR ARTSblock
Advance registration: http://www.artsblock.ucr.edu/Performance/Ex-Machina-LPN

Carmelita Tropicana's Hybrid Alternos
Saturday, January 27, 2018, 7pm
Culver Center of the Arts at UCR ARTSblock
Advance registration: http://www.artsblock.ucr.edu/Performance/Carmelita-Tropicana

Admission is free to all three performances; advance registration is encouraged.

For more information, visit artsblock.ucr.edu and pacificstandardtime.org.

UCR ARTSblock is open 11am-5pm Tuesday-Thursday, 11am-7pm Friday-Saturday, 11am-4pm Sunday, and closed Monday. Open late till 7pm every first Thursday of the month. Admission is $6.

Press Contact: Patrick Edgett, [email protected], 9094757661

CREDIT

Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas is curated by Robb Hernández, Assistant Professor of English at UCR; Tyler Stallings, Artistic Director of the Culver Center of the Arts; and Joanna Szupinska-Myers, Senior Curator of Exhibitions at the California Museum of Photography. Kathryn Poindexter, CMP Assistant Curator, is Project Manager.

The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs.

Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Southern California. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

Major support for this exhibition is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

Additional support is provided by UCR's College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS), and the City of Riverside.

About UCR ARTSblock

UCR ARTSblock brought together the California Museum of Photography (founded in 1973), the Jack and Marilyn Sweeney Art Gallery (1963), and the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts (2010).

The extensive art, photography, and research collections of the CMP and Sweeney Art Gallery make ARTSblock an important destination for audiences as well as researchers working in a wide range of fields.

ARTSblock's activities embody UCR's commitment to broadly-based public education and cutting-edge research. As a university museum and art gallery, ARTSblock is committed to offering students opportunities for professional museum work. Students from UCR and elsewhere are involved under the aegis of independent course status, internships, work-study, and as volunteers.

SOURCE UCR ARTSblock

Related Links

http://artsblock.ucr.edu