Mexican cowboys and Indian lowriders.

An experiment in 'reverse anthropology', this performance/installation creates an inverted world where Chicanos and Native Americans occupy a fictional cultural center and the 'Anglos' are nomadic minorities and tribal peoples with exotic costums and costumes. The resulting diorama is an experimental Indian trading post and curio shop of sorts, incorporating fictitious museum labels, racist pop archeology (Indianabilia, Mexicabilia, 'Western' souvenirs), 'authentic' Cowboy an Indian art, and the display of the troupe of collaborating performers as 'stuffed humans' or 'cultural specimens'. 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