La Pocha Nostra marks a transformation from its sister book, Exercises for Rebel Artists, into a pedagogical matrix suited for use as a performance handbook and conceptual tool for artists, activists, theorists, pedagogues and trans-disciplinary border crossers of all stripes.
"La Pocha Nostra's reputation in the performance art world precedes them. They've led rebel artist pedagogical workshops internationally under the leadership of Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Their core members have made history with their performances on the entrenched stereotypes surrounding Latino cultures. There is always an overtone of humor and drama in their spectacle. Also, there is always an opportunity forthe viewer to get involved, to make a fool of themselves, to reveal their own vulnerability or to refute the performance altogether. Above all, members of La Pocha are image-makers - politicizing the well-known tropes of Latinidad for our Instagram and social media times. The gaze is paramount." - Rashayla Marie Brown, Chicago Performance.
" Observations of the self as a result of the workshop:
a. My body felt stronger, with improved alignment and increased flexibility.
b. Artistically extroverted within two weeks!
c. Further developed my ability to think in images first.
d. Improved my ability to improvise and respond to others. Discovered aspects of the self and the personae that lie beneath . . .
e. More politically conscious.
f. Further developed my ability to analyze and reflect on what we do.
g. The gap between art and theory is closing . . . at last!"
- Workshop participant, Tucson, AZ. 2017
"La Pocha Nostra's work mobilizes the striking accusation that the work of an artist is the work of the anticolonial anti-authoritarian feminist revolutionary. Everyone- especially every artist- is implicated in the work of empire, racism, sexism, and homophobia. And it is the artist's work to critically examine and practice an active resistance. For LPN, it is the staging of images- images of desire, pain, spectacle, stereotype, wickedness, and rage. These images are open to be made with the audience. LPN invites us to look, act, engage, struggle. There is no way out. We are trapped in the image, and trapped to make a decision. This is the work of performance art. By extension, this is the work of LPN." - Sampada Aranke, Art History Professor and Performance Studies Theorist
"Engaging in such a revolutionary practice, the work of La Pocha Nostra and the pedagogy is to provide containment, to hold a safe, strong, conscious space of Radical Tenderness and fearless exploration and expression, in which we discover and reclaim the borderlands of our primal imagination." - Leni Hester, Participant of Santa Fe Intensive, 2017
