August 24 2019, 8-10PM

“Archival Poems”: a collective performance
by Sandra de la Loza, Olivia Chumacero, El Rio, Jess Gudiel, Jen Hofer and Arturo Romo

In contemplating pathways, undercurrents, and the scale and scope of transit-oriented development’s impact on this land now known as Los Angeles, Sandra de la Loza loops the violence of the past into the present for To Oblivion: A Speculator’s Eden, LACE’s Summer 2019 residency. 

Building upon a new form created during her residency at LACE—the archival poem—de la Loza will collaborate with a group of Los Angeles writers, performers and artists to activate, disrupt and contend with the archive collected via an extensive research-based process on the transportation history and development around and beyond the Cahuenga Pass. Overhead projectors, phantasmagoria analog animation, soundscapes, shadow puppets, movement, body and liquid light among other media will activate the space and archive as a means of experimentation with the poetics of shadows, gaps and absences in history.

About the collaborators:

Olivia Chumacero is a First Nation being of the Americas. She speaks of our responsibility to the flora and the fauna on our planet Earth. Drawing from her blood memory she practices the indigenous ways of reciprocity. Found more about Chumacero’s work on everythingismedicine.com.

Jessica Gudiel, an LA native has worked to develop 2 major art forms since 2008. The art of designing and installing veggie and native gardens and designing and performing political puppet shows. She graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2004 and began as a Master Gardener and puppeteer in 2008.

Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, urban cyclist, CantoMundo fellow, and co-founder of the language justice and language experimentation collaborative Antena Aire and the local language justice advocacy collective Antena Los Ángeles.

El Rio, founded by Melissa Uribe and Bryan Diaz, is a Los Angeles sextet expressing resistance, love and revolution through a fusion of Latin American folk rhythms. Backed by an array of woodwinds, percussion, acoustic and electric instruments, the vocal melodies and spoken poetry provoke a spirited, visceral dance that brings to life images of the natural landscapes of the Los Angeles river, the highlands split by the arroyo seco and the red tailed hawks that fly above the city. Releasing their first record “Fortaleza” in the winter of 2018, El Rio aims to inspire thought and social evolution through music. El Rio forever stands in solidarity with communities fighting and resisting oppression worldwide.

Arturo Ernesto Romo was born in Los Angeles, California in 1980. His work is intentionally collaborative–part of a collective attempt to reclaim methods of creation which both affirm/strengthen social love and also oppose/destroy privatized conceptions of a creative life. He works in collaboration with writers and artists, with youth, within social movements and in his capacity as a unionized public school teacher.

This event is free and open to the public.

Image courtesy of Sandra de la Loza