Borderscape 2000 : kitsch, violence, cyborgs, and shamanism at the end of the century (backstage interviews and performance).

Documentation of a backstage interview with performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes by filmmaker Ed Morales, along with footage of pre-performance preparations and excerpts of the actual performance at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, CA. Described as a 'high-tech Aztec Spanglish lounge operetta', this performance works through and with Chicano stereotypes -featuring the Cyber Vato, the Mexterminator, the Transvestite Mariachi and other Pocha Nostra 'cultural specimens'- in order to address and examine border-crossing issues of race, gender, language, religion, politics, commodification and multiculturalism. La Pocha Nostra (www.pochanostra.com) is an ever-morphing trans-disciplinary arts organization, founded in 1993 by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes, and Nola Mariano in California. The objective was to formally conceptualize Gómez-Peña's collaborations with other performance artists. It provides a base (and forum) for a loose network of rebel artists from various disciplines, generations and ethnic backgrounds, whose common denominator is the desire to cross and erase dangerous borders between art and politics, practice and theory, artist and spectator. As of June 2006, members include performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Violeta Luna, Michelle Ceballos, and Roberto Sifuentes; curators Gabriela Salgado and Orlando Britto; and over thirty associates worldwide in countries such as Mexico, Spain, the UK, and Australia. Projects range from performance solos and duets to large-scale performance installations including video, photography, audio, and cyber-art. La Pocha collaborates across national borders, race, gender and generations. Their collaborative model functions both as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means to create ephemeral communities of like-minded rebels. The basic premise of these collaborations is founded on an ideal: If we learn to cross borders on stage, we may learn how to do so in larger social spheres. La Pocha strives to eradicate myths of purity and dissolve borders surrounding culture, ethnicity, gender, language, and métier. These are radical acts. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics