La Pocha Nostra (USA/MEX)

La Pocha Nostra is an ever-morphing trans-disciplinary arts organization. It was founded in 2001 and is based in San Francisco with factions in other cities and countries. The goal is to provide a centre and forum for a loose network of rebel artists from various disciplines, generations and ethnic backgrounds. Director of La Pocha Nostra is the performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978. His performance work and ten books have contributed to the debates on cultural diversity, border culture and US-Mexico relations. He is a MacArthur Fellow, Bessie and American Book Award winner, he is a regular contributor for newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and Europe and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT). Gómez-Peña is a Senior Fellow in the Hemispheric Institute Institute of performance and Politics and a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency. As of May 2012, la Pocha’s core members besides Gómez-Peña are Emma Tramposch, Roberto Sifuentes, Michele Ceballos Michot, Erica Mott, Dani d’Emilia and Saul Garcia-Lopez. There are also more than thirty associates spread throughout ten different countries. The common denominator is the desire to cross and erase dangerous borders between art and politics, practice and theory, artist and spectator, mentor and apprentice. La Pocha Nostra strives to eradicate myths of purity and dissolve borders surrounding culture, ethnicity, gender, language, and métier.

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