Mommy Fiercest’s Parlour

My dear friend, Micha Cardenas, is doing a reading from her book, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities, Fri and Sat at Highways with a great group of performers.   Raquel Gutierrez, another of my favorite queer writers and performance artists is curating this amazing evening of queer latin voices.

Highways Performance Space@ 18th St. Arts Center 1651 18th Street|Santa Monica, CA 904041/2 block north of Olympic Blvd.
friday + saturday APRIL 20+21, 2012 at 8:30pm
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highways performance space + lambda literary present

WANDERLUST
curated by raquel gutiérrez
writers of latino/a and queer extractions
make the specter of place known through
word, as they shepherd us in and guide us
through radical spatial narratives that weave
in tales of sexualized citizenry, gendered
candor and transnational desires.
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WITH

CHARLES RICE-GONZALEZ (April 21 only)
SUSANA COOK
MARCELA FUENTES
RAFA ESPARZA + LUIS FLORES
FRANK GALARTE
MICHA CARDENAS
RAQUEL GUTIERREZ

Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist and Executive Director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. He received a B.A. in Communications from Adelphi University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel, Chulito, was released in October 2011, and he co-edited, with Charlie Vázquez, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction released in August 2011. He is also an award-winning playwright and serves on the boards of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Art and Cultures.
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Born in Argentina, Susana Cook is a New York based playwright, director and performer who has been presenting innovative works internationally for over 20 years.

She has performed in Spain, France, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and at several colleges and universities around the country.

Some of her latest shows are : The Homophobes, a clown show, The Fury of The Gods, Homeland Insecurities, The idiot King, The Values Horror Show, 100 Years of Attitude, Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats and Tango Lesbiango.

She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Arts International, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, The Franklin Furnace Archives, The Puffin Foundation and INTAR.
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Rafael Esparza is a multidisciplinary artist living and working out of Los Angeles.
An investigation of (non)personal histories that have constructed existing ideas surrounding the body weave in and out his body of work. He is invested in creating
and experiencing moments in time inaccessible to him using ritual and installation; and credits this interest as the primary inspiration for his performances. Rafa earned his B.A. in art from UCLA, has exhibited, performed and also collaborated with other artists in various venues throughout Los Angeles.
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Luis Flores

My work seeks to shed light on topics that are often ignored with blindly accepted norms, topics
that trigger unconscious and automatic responses to preconceived expectations or beliefs about
particular situations. I seek to break stereotypes with which I am often labeled and to which I am
confined or restricted. It is my hope to challenge viewers’ reactions and elicit self-reflection on how the environment has contributed to their conditioned self and how they continue to perpetuate a situation consistent with their preconceptions.
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Marcela Fuentes (marshagall) is a performance scholartist from Argentina. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she teaches, writes, and performs on topics such as transnationalism, new forms of political engagement, and artistic responses to crises.
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J. Frank Galarte was born and raised in Brawley, California. He recently received his PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on this dissertation entitled, “El Sabor del Amor y del Dolor: Affect, Violence and the (Trans)Body in the Chican@ Historical Imaginary”. His research interests are in Chicana@ Studies, Queer Studies, Affect Studies and Transgender Studies. His obsessions are mozz, chavela vargas, oldies and finding the right pomade for his pompadour.
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Micha Cárdenas is an artist/theorist who works in performance, wearable electronics, hacktivism and critical gender studies. She is a PhD student in Media Arts and Practice (iMAP) at University of Southern California and a member of Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0. Her book The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities, published by Atropos Press in 2012, discusses artists’ strategies for using multiple realities, such as augmented, mixed and alternate reality, and the intersection of those strategies with the politics of gender, in a transnational context. She blogs at transreal.org and tweets at @michacardenas.
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Raquel Gutiérrez (b. 1976, Los Angeles, California) cut her teeth on Los Angeles performance art when she interned and house managed at Highways Performance Space in the year 2000. Raquel is a performance writer, playwright, and cultural organizer, studied in university settings and performed in a variety of locations, like the Salvadoran countryside, cabarets, galleries, San Antonio, more universities, Pico-Union, etc. In 2001, Gutiérrez was one of the co-founding members of the performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP), a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel also co-founded other queer women of color projects and Latino projects, Tongues, A Project of VIVA and Epicentro Poetry project. Raquel has published work in Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano), Los Angeles Weekly, Make/shift magazine, Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies, and Izote Vos: Salvadoran American Literary and Visual Art (published by SF’s Pacific News Service). Currently, Raquel is in the Community Scholars program through the UCLA School of Urban Planning and is also the Manager of Community Partnerships for Cornerstone Theater Company, a leader in community-based theater-making in the United States.

Tickets $20/$15 buy them here:

http://highwaysperformance.org/highways/performance/latinao-queer-literary-series-1-wanderlust/

Flyers here: http://www.facebook.com/events/392497744111378/