Guillermo Gòmez Peña and Robert Sifuentes: Interdisciplinary artist whose work examines the perceptions of Chicano and Mexican cultures.
Real Audio version of interview
Artist's homepage
Interview with Guillermo Gòmez Peña and Robert Sifuentes
Conducted by Tilman Baumgärtel
GGP: Basically we want to bring a Chicano Mexican visibility to cyberspace. We see ourselves there are some words that might not be translatable, but we see ourselves as web backs- we are a kind of immigrants in cyberspace, and we see ourselves as of ideas, because we do believe that there is a kind of control in cyberspace and that cyberspace is somehwhat culturally, socially, racially specific.
Q: You were talking about conceiving yourselves as cyborgs?
GGP: in fact, Roberto will tell you how we came about obtaining this information. We have done a webpage where we recorded an incredible survey of American mentalities, we have tapped into American psyches and fears in regards to otherness, immigration and people coming from the south and we gather the information, process it and then create these composite identities, these Mexican Frankensteins that later on we involve or reinterpreting through performance.
RS: It's a survey broken up into several sections. We've created a kind of techno-confessional on the WWW where people can come and confess their intercultural cyber sins to us. It's basically a form survey that asks questions about people's tolerance for other cultures, languages, about the hegemony of the internet, so the questionnaire is broken up into several sections about arts, immigration questions, tolerance for political correctness, intercultural experiences- There's also a graffitti page which functions as an instant bulletin board where they have discussions and spray paint the site, so to speak. We also invite people to send us images, sounds and texts about their imagined Mexican or Chicano of the 90s.
Q: What kind of reactions do you get?
GGP: I think there is much resistance on the net. Whenever someone confesses to us live, during a performance, there is a moral indication, a moral contral. They look into our eyes, we look into their eyes. Their voice is being recorded and they know that. They tend to be a bit more careful, a bit more sensitive. But once you create a telephone confessional, it is more removed. There is still a moral contract, but they can be a bit more outrageous, a bit more insensitive. Once you get into the internet where there is total anonymity and people can impersonate other identities, then there are fewer moral indications, and people can really engage in an exercise of imagination, of extreme fear and desire. That is when it gets really interesting.
RS: We ask questions of the internet users, like if you had a gang member covered in tattoos, or an Native American in full regalia, or a Mexican macho dressed as a postmodern Zorro in a gallery what fantasy would you have them perform for you. People answer things like. I would want the Zorro to sling me over his shoulder, stick a chicekn up his ass and run around yelling Bob Dole is a homosexual. I would have the cholo tattoo the Native American with cave drawings. I would like the Mexican to rip my clothes off with a machete so I can bathe in chili sauce in order for him to wrap me in a warm tortilla so at the end he can drink me with a shot of tequila.
Q: When you ask such questions, isn't this producing, or influencing the stereotypes?
GGP: Not really. We want people to hang themselves. Currently there is a national denial about the state of race relations in the United States, and in fact there is a backlash, and people are unwilling to discuss these issues in public fora, and that is one of the reasons we decide to bring the darkest zones of the subconscious to this internet questionnaire, where people are as free as possible and linguistically unpoliced, so that they can be as sincere or insensitive or direct as they want to be and there will be no moral repercussions. So in fact we are creating an extreme reversal of psychology, where we are observing them and they are hanging themselves.
RS: This is important because when we started this project the internet was sort of seen as the last frontier, the final refuge where issues about race relations don't have to be discussed, as a strategy of avoidance - that race doesn't matter. So it was important for us to venture to the internet to arrive there. We got responses back like there goes the virtual neighborhoos, the mexicans have arrived.
GGP: Also a lot of references to Mexicans as a virus, plight, disease contaminating the purity of cyberspace- but in fact the thing isn't completed in cyberspace. The website is just an instrument to attain information that it would be impossible to attain through fieldwork, and in fact the completion of the piece takes place in th elive performance. That is when we are able to reproduce or reinterpret these ethno-cyborgs created from the contributions of the participants when people get to see their own demons come to life, that is where some kind of healing takes place. The process of reproduction might lead to a healing of consciousness.
Q: Do you feel personally hurt by such messages?
RS: Yes, it is very disturbing, but I have had many such comments directed personally towards me and I feel that it is very revealing of the psyche of America, it is a barometer for the intolerance of other cultures. So I feel anger for the fact that these types of experiences continue.
Q: But you are largely accessible only to internet users.
GGP: In fact we do appeal to as many comunities as we can. In our live performances we reach audiences that are not on the web. Also through our telephone confessional. Once on the net with the help of some professionals, someone who was the editor of MacWorld, we gained access to some business communities, for example, and activist communities and student groups, and hyperspecialized communities, such as elementary school teachers. So in fact we are not just talking to academia. The constituencies we are engaging with in dialogue are multiple. Sadly, most of the stereotypes seem to remain similar.
RS: But you are right, it is very disturbing given the demographic breakdown of the internet which is you know white male liberal academic intellectuals, that this supposedly tolerant and liberal minded people - that these are the responses coming from them.
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