chicana art, laura pérez, and the politics of spiritual & aesthetic altarities

[For audio of the lecture and Q&A, click here: AUDIO—LAURA PÉREZ AT CSUN]


As part of Dr. Mary Pardo's Chicana/o Studies 500 graduate-level course at CSUN, we were very fortunate to have a visit from scholar and poet Laura Pérez this week, a 21st century tlacuilo/tlamatini poet-sage who discussed and lectured on her newly published monograph, Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities.

Put simply, this book is one of the most important works ever written on Chicana art.

As Pérez explains, like the “sacrifical ofrenda[s]” of the Chicana artists whose work she presents and analyzes here as “transmutation of social personal suffering into penetrating visions of the present and brave sightings of hopeful, better futures” (6), this book was constructed and functions as a kind of altar, at once a glyph and a decoding, that links artistic practice, academic discourse, and radical political and social justice work.

Aesthetically, Chicana Art is a beautiful, quite stunningly constructed (and yet relatively inexpensive) archive of Chicana art from 1965 to the present, with a particular focus on the period between 1985 and 2000. In terms of analysis and theory, Pérez' previous scholarly work focused on the subversive practices of “the historical avant-gardes of Europe and Latin America, those of the first four decades of the twentieth century” (10), particularly in Nicaragua, and she identifies the theoretical “unseen marrow” of this current work on Chicana artists as the heirs of these avant-garde traditions: “Dada-, Cubist-, Surrealist- and other vanguardia -inspired postructuralist, postcolonial, and postmodern thinkers—and the spiritually guided, courageous social justice work of such nonviolent activists and gender-bending intellectuals as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., César Chávez, and Mother Teresa…” (11) among others.

However, while the avant-garde grounding in socially and politically focused subversive art serves as a theoretical underpinning, again, like the spiritually based work of the Chicana artists that Pérez examines, it is the spiritual dimensions and focus of her book that function to effect a radical epistemological transmission, “offering what to many are still ‘foreign' and suspect, and thus unintelligible, knowledges: the cultural ‘differences' of the non-Western, the female, the queer, and the poor” (6). Discussing how they function in the work of Chicana artists, Pérez notes that “[t]hese knowledges, which are as old as humanity, and which have outlived pseudoscientific and culturally parochial philosophies that rationalize imperialist capitalism and racism and consign the non-Western to the primitive prehistory of civilized ‘man,' remain as alternatives to the growing solitude, alienation, despair, and illness of too many in today's societies of rampant consumerism, spiritual emptiness, ethical confusion, and the visible crimes and duplicities of government, big business, and institutional religion” (6–7).

One of the key points that Pérez makes is her assertion that through the transmission and discourse of these alternative epistemologies, Chicana artists “redefine the social role of art and artist in more complex, more ambitious, and more politically and spiritually significant ways than are culturally dominant in the United States and other parts of the world” (46). This redefinition of the artist's role runs directly counter to the Eurocentric construction of the artist as individualistic—whether as an approved, corporate-bought, artworld “star,” or as an isolated, alienated, “starving artist.” I have seen firsthand how many of these, and other, Chicana/o artists, work to effect this redefinition through a complex, spiritual artistic practice of subversive community-building, mentoring, glyph-making, decoding, and transmission of alternative knowledges that convey tactics of not only survival and resistance, but of a technologically sophisticated re-membering that, rather than being nostalgic, functions to help us decolonize and defragment our selves, and to reconnect us with unified existence in the context of our current situation. In this, I agree with Pérez' assertion that while the process has so far been largely (but not surprisingly) unacknowledged/ignored, what constitutes “avant-garde” practice has been radically redefined by Chicana/o artists over the last twenty years or so through an intertwining of spiritual-, political-, and social justice-focused elements and art practices, in ways that leave the traditionally acknowledged (Euro) avant-garde in the dust of the previous century/ies.

Another key point Pérez focuses on is the relationship between spirituality and the concept of difrasismos—the juxtaposition of two elements in order to point to another, third, concept/reality/experience. This relates to the concept of using signs/symbols to point beyond the system of signs/symbols, and to the Mexica reliance on the language of flor y canto, poetry and song—art—to express that which cannot be articulated or figured in “normal” speech, writing, and other uses of language.

Pérez will be lecturing and signing her book at Trópico de Nopal this Friday, (tomorrow) October 19, at 8 p.m. According to the flyer, many of the Chicana artists in the book will be present at this event, and their work will be on display for the evening. I highly recommend getting out to Trópico for this.

Trópico de Nopal: 1665 Beverly Blvd., L.A. (Echo Park), 90026 • 213.481.8112
http://www.tropicodenopal.com

en memoriam: dr. vincent marinkovich

Dr. Vincent Marinkovich, the San Pedro-born son of a fisherman, was a rebel doctor who stood up to insurance companies and other big money interests that sought to discredit him because he was more interested in helping people heal than in making money and defending the interests of the powerful and the rich.

Where other doctors take on a condescending, paternalistic approach and refuse to listen to and respect a patient’s understanding of her/his own body, Dr. Marinkovich was always respectful and not afraid to take risks to actually help people, based on their experiences as they communicated them to him. He truly understood what his patients were experiencing because he truly listened to them, something very few doctors actually practice.

Along with the support and love of family and friends, I was fortunate enough to receive care from Dr. Marinkovich at a crucial time in my life. At a point when we were convinced that we had exhausted all possibilities, it was my mother who happened upon a story about Dr. Marinkovich on the internet. Later she would tell me how that morning, she had prayed to my recently deceased grandma Pauline to help guide her, because she didn't know what else she could do to help me.

I do not think that it is a coincidence that the one doctor who actually listened to me and treated me in an appropriate way that led to my recovery, was a renegade, unafraid, unapologetic, and anti-establishment practitioner.

En memoriam, Dr. Vincent Marinkovich, 1933—2007


........................................................................................
—MUSEUM PIECE (originally published 25 October, 2004)


—OBITUARY (from sfgate.com; reprinted from The San Francisco Chronicle):

"Dr. Vincent Marinkovich, immunologist known as 'Dr. Mold,' dies
Steve Rubenstein, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 27, 2007

Dr. Vincent Marinkovich, a dedicated Redwood City immunologist nationally known as "Dr. Mold" because of his extensive knowledge of illnesses caused by exposure to fungus, has died.

Dr. Marinkovich, 74, died Sept. 17 at home of gall bladder cancer.

"He was a brilliant, creative, determined and compassionate doctor," said his daughter Nina. "He never gave up on anyone. And he always answered his cell phone."

For decades, Dr. Marinkovich specialized in diagnosing and treating mysterious ailments caused by household molds that baffled other doctors. Patients from throughout the United States were referred to him.

In 1999, he founded Immune Tech, a Menlo Park company that offered a $60 mail order home testing kit for allergies. Customers were instructed to prick their fingers and submit blood samples, which were analyzed for allergen and mold sensitivities - with results sent directly to the customer.

He also developed the MAST allergy blood test that detected allergens with the use of cellulose fibers in an enzymatic test chamber.

A native of San Pedro (Los Angeles County) and the son of a fisherman, Dr. Marinkovich was a 1955 graduate of California Institute of Technology and a 1959 graduate of Harvard Medical School. He taught at Cal Tech and at Stanford Medical School before opening a private practice in Palo Alto and other locations in 1973, where he worked until shortly before his death.

He enjoyed hiking at Pescadero Beach in San Mateo County and in the Yosemite high country, and he was a student of military history, particular World War II and the Civil War. He was fond of mysteries, classical music and ballet. During the holidays, he enjoyed making deep-fried Croatian cookies based on ancestral recipes.

His lifelong battle against the effects of household mold was waged inside his own home as well, his wife, Karen, recalled.

"Mold was a dirty word in our house," she said. "We had lots of fans running. The house was watertight, and we were very careful. And there was no family get-together where mold didn't get worked into the conversation. It got to be something of a family joke."

He is survived by his wife, Karen, and by children Douglas of Palo Alto, Andrew and Tess of Redwood City, and Nina, Zoe and Anya of San Francisco.

A memorial service will be held on Oct. 13 at 2 p.m. at the Congregational Church of San Mateo at 225 Tilton Ave.

Memorial donations may be sent to the Yosemite Fund, 155 Montgomery St., Suite 1104, San Francisco, CA 94104, or to public television station KQED, 2601 Mariposa St., San Francisco, CA 94110."

instinct:extinct

There was a breach. And then a closure. Gradual shifts, hard to perceive. Power creeping in to fill the void created by your fear. You move in one direction, you circle back on yourself. The trick is to be like the fox. Like the rabbit. Like the octopus. It is as if identity shifts massively at some point to accommodate a new sense of multiplicity, and then gradually, imperceptibly, closes up again to one single dull possibility and then to the void of impossibility and then to nothing.

Questions with which to approach the context of two or more elements disengaged in an invisible non-confrontation:

Is there any fun to be found in stability, habit, routine?

Who/What is stopping you?

How much of this performance is scripted? How much is a reflection of laziness? Apathy? Fear? The threat of violence? Brute force?

The octopus travels sideways and in all directions at once. Its eyes are on one side of its head, its mouth on the other. When two of the animals mate, they join their bodies and move in such a way that there is no discernible front or back.

These words are an interface that mediates in such a way as to create an illusion of transparency out of opaque materials and electrically generated rays of light. There is no beginning or end. They bleed into one another.

Virtual reality is everything in a spectacle society. Our bodies join, we whisper tender messages, we rub interfaces. It’s all a surface play. The line between analog and digital is pixilated flesh.

Audience and stage.

The rabbit turns back on its own tracks to confuse the hound.

Instinct is extinct. We myspace each other until nothing is left but mirrored surface. We reflect back everything we refuse to see in ourselves.

A text message conveys “love,” or “lust.”

A blog conveys “meaning.”

We hemorrhage our selves in public and watch each other bleed. An army of amateur stalkers marching in bored little circles, click click click click.

These useless, itchy trigger fingers. These prosthetic plastic eyes. These images, transmitted for public consumption, for private scrutiny. We are the instruments of our own surveillance. We are the disseminators/consumers of our own lies. This is what we call community, friendship, love, sex. Abbreviated texts. Bored out of our minds.

*

I have been down here much longer than you imagine and I do not plan to come up again any time soon. There are something like nine levels to the underworld and I intend to approach each with the same degree of morbid, neo-Gothic self-seriousness and meticulously stylized rendering of Reality. I am sick of the living. No pulse, no engagement, no sweat, no reply.

I admire the bat for its blindness, and the mole for its blindness too.

I admire the octopus for its net of tentacles, its swift, ambiguous movement, its cloudy web of invisible ink.

I admire the spider for its web in the night.

I admire the beetle for its death march into the desert, it pushes the sun, it guides us along a confusing maze until we are hopelessly lost, thirsty, starving, and then devours us as we lie face-down on swollen bellies staring at the underworld with painted grins.

There is a diligence in these efforts. There is a fearlessness, an embracing of the dark. There is nothing familiar here.

*

These forms are ephemeral. They are designed to avoid confrontation and then disappear without a trace. When you see me now, it is not me. It is an after-image, a doubling back. It is camouflage. It is your memory of me erased. That moment when I first said.

Everything that I say is a lie.

Everything that I am is a lie.

hey you remember we met? it was a while ago, but what were you thinking at that moment? who were you fucking? who did you miss? nothing has changed, fundamentally, go back and erase that moment and everything since then and you will see that you are still you and i am still me and nobody knows anybody really, and none of us is

*

“Out of fear, they attempt to return to some safe point of origin, a familiar identity, a comfortable set of relational habits and routines. However, this backtracking is not like the cunning actions of the fox or the rabbit; rather, it is like the turtle’s swift retreat of its neck and limbs. In this scenario, the repeated protrusion and retraction of its head creates for the turtle the illusion of movement, while all the while allowing it to remain in place, motionless inside its shell.”