by
Ernest Hogan
Last
time, in trying to define “sci-fi Latino noir,” things got
audiovisual/multimedia. Latino Lit reaching out into new frontiers.
José Torres-Tama has been busy with this kind of stuff. He’s been
doing films and video like a proper 21st century artist.
He
sent me a link to Hard
Living in the Big Easy,
a
“short film doc (15 mins) that debuted last year at the Orange
County Museum for the 10th Annual Latino OC Film Fiesta there.” It
serves as a good intro to Torres-Tama in performance makeup and
regalia, that includes a NO
GUACAMOLE for Immigrant Haters,
T-shirt
presenting an artistic/political manifesto, history lecture (he
studies history, and makes it an essential part of his work), and as
well as a editorial on the post-Katrina influx of Latin American
immigrants to New Orleans and their struggles since including their
disappearance from New
Orleans and the World, the
Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ tricenential anthology.
Also his artwork, that can be seen in his book New
Orleans Free People of Color and Their Legacy,
is used to make the point.
This
arrival of new people to new territories is an issue that is going
ignored. Not only do we have Mexicans and Central Americans in New
Orleans, but Guatemalans in Philadelphia, Spanish-speaking
communities popping up in Chicago, and other areas. It’s even got
traditional vatos and cholas nervous: “These new gente, they don’t
do stuff the way my nana taught me.”
There
we go, creating new identities, new cultures again. Maybe a new term,
Latinx, Latinoid, whatever the chingada, is needed.
He
also sent links to what he’s been doing during the Coronavirus
lockdown:
VIDEO
CORTADITOS & Picante Poems is
an audio visual series of spicy YouTube
shorts created
in collaboration with Bruce
France on
dynamic video designs, the hallucinatory soundscapes of long-time
music collaborator known as BAIII,
and
the politically charged performance poetry of José
Torres-Tama.The
stage performance photos are captured by Craig
Morse.
These
Cortaditos, available on his YouTube channel, “Español
is Verboten Here,” “And
What If After So Many Words,” “Can
I Get aWitness?,” and “Symbolic
Opponent Syndrome.” They are performances adapted to video. The
texts started as poems that can be found in his book Immigrant
Dreams & Alien Nightmares,
and his CD Speaking
Truth to Perverse Power Vol. 1,
and keeps being updated to keep them current. It’s astounding how
the struggle against racism doesn’t get dated--all you have to do
is change the cast to the current participants. Similar to rap, and
poetry readings, with musical visual accompaniment bring the message
to a new medium.
Which
brings us to This
Taco Truck Kills Fascists
.
. .
Relax,
it’s only a movie. And it’s not about concerned citizens in a
taco truck, doing drive-bys on gatherings of fascists. Which wouldn’t
be a bad idea for a movie . . .
No,
This
Taco Truck Kills Fascists
is
a documentary about the Taco
Truck Theater / Teatro Sin Fronteraswhere Torres-Tama brings his
performance art to the masses: filmed
and directed by Rodrigo
Dorfman,
our brilliant Chilean-American filmmaker who has created this
hybrid-genre documentary. We WON best Louisiana Feature at the 2018
New Orleans Film Festival.
It
follows Torres-Tama as he goes about his business with the Taco
Truck, and has a lot of behind-the-scenes shots of his life, often
showing him being a performance artist, activist and father all at
the same time. It also:
introduces
my sci-fi performance persona “El Obie-JUAN Kenobi” in some
outrageous comedic Intervention bits. He’s the Last Latino Jedi
fighting for immigrants rights on the Living La Vida Loca pirate
planet to escape a GrinGoLandia that has migrated deep into the “Dark
Side”.
IMDb categorizes it as “Documentary, Comedy, History.” It’s
quite a show. And: it's
FREE until August 9th!
So check it out on Vimeo now!
Whew!
All this and before I even got around to talking (texting don’t
count) to him. Guess we’ll have to continue this on the next
Chicanautica, in two weeks, here at La Bloga . . .
Ernest Hogan is working on projects that he will reporting on soon . . .
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