The Streets: Where Do They Reach

Street performance may be the oldest form of cultural expression. It has existed in every culture in recorded time. Here Mexican performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, in a excerpt from an article about performance art in Mexico City, looks at the theater of the street in the biggest city in the world, in a time of severe economic crisis. Art and life collide for survival, the creation of new languages, catharsis, social change and public expression. —Eds.

Mexico City has been the cultural mecca for Spanish-speaking countries since the 1950s, operating as the meeting place for the Latino and Spanish intelligentsia. It seems contradictory that such a culturally dynamic place should present such a nightmare of daily existence. The nature and scale of its urban problems border on science fiction. Mexico City leads the world in, among others, demographic growth (one million people per year), smog (it has far surpassed the level of tolerance), unemployment (over 40%) and traffic jams (in the rainy season, they last more than six hours).

Despite these apocalyptic circumstances, art is livelier than ever. It is omnipresent in the mass media (artists and writers appear daily on TV and radio), in the streets and in the hundreds of active cultural institutions throughout the city. Here, art and crisis live hand-in-hand, and artists use the contradictions of urban life as material for their work.

At the same time, the economic breakdown that the country is currently experiencing, with a 90-billion-dollar national debt plus exorbitant inflation, is definitely affecting the arts. Federal funding has been cut, and the little available is distributed only among the most recognized. Sophisticated equipment, except for that of certain museums and universities, is not available for independent projects. This forces the artist to exercise resourcefulness, to recycle, to borrow, to invent, to substitute, to trade and to depend more and more on one another. In this process of bustling, new languages are found and artists' networks are developed. Performance artist Marcela Ortiz de Zarate comments: "Now in Mexico, there is a very strong solidarity among young artists. We are helping each other as the only means to survive." Basic survival, in the context of "la crisis," paradoxically favors the creation of a more audacious non-objective art, outside of the virtually paralyzed art market.

Merolicos, Carpas and Naïve Performance Artists

Mexico is an extremely theatrical country, and Mexico City is its most effervescent example. The contradictions of its cultural, social and political life have always found a "free stage" in the streets for extravagant events that resemble performance art. Though not motivated by conscious artistic forces, these street events are extremely elaborate, truly interdisciplinary and show a deep understanding of dramatic devices.

Walking along the Alameda Park on a Sunday morning or cruising the Pink Zone (the arty quarter) in Chapultepec Forest or at a crowded metro station, one encounters an incredible variety of merolicos. These naïve but extremely effective guerrilla actors measure the pulse of the city. Their style is farcical and exaggerated. Their pieces are filled with "magical realism" and outrageous cultural contradictions. Their speeches are automatic texts that mix political, religious, social and sexual information, and that play off the people's taboos, fantasies and frustrations. Their costumes are shocking: shabby tuxedos, tribal make-up and cardboard masks. Their gimmicks are foolproof. One embarrasses a "gentleman" from the crowd with genital jokes, while his son (a miniature clone of himself) walks around stealing wallets or selling aphrodisiacs. Another one promises to show "the pre-Columbian beast" (a creature convulsing inside a bag) if the audience gives him enough money and applause. His detailed description of "the beast" takes almost an hour. When the impatient crowd is just about to lynch the merolico, he literally disappears. Other street performers use animals (monkeys, armadillos, snakes, tropical birds) to attract attention, as they deliver endless speeches about the apocalypse of Mexico City, blaming it on priests, congressmen, television heroes or millionaires.

Freak shows are common in the barrio during fiesta days. Frederico Fellini and George Cukor would love these mini-extravaganzas. Outside a 30-year-old school bus covered with motifs from popular mythology (anthropomorphic animals juxtaposed with media slogans), a merolico invites the audience to witness "the amazing iguana woman, daughter of a Seri Indian and a reptile." Inside the bus, 20 people crowd under a bright red light. The animateur opens a curtain, revealing the head of a beautiful mulatta with a pulsing iguana body, inside an aquarium. The image is completely realistic. The "iguana woman" tells her story, spicing it with elements of the Indian, Spanish and North American pop cultures. Cumbia music plays at the wrong speed on an old-fashioned turntable while she dances. People are inevitably touched by this shamanistic vision that shatters their sense of the commonplace and reminds them of other realities. This and other freak shows—a frog-kid, a gigantic rat, a chaneque (elf), a winged old man and a bearded woman who claims to be the primogenita (first daughter) of a Catholic priest—function as ten-minute protohistorical dreams, a sort of instant catharsis within the incommensurable urban pathos of Mexico City.

A more elaborate form of street performance is the 300-year-old tradition of living theater called carpa. In a vacant lot, a plaza, or the middle of the street, performers erect a huge circus tent, while someone screams through a megaphone the magical word: "carpa!" Word of mouth brings the entire neighborhood. The emcee, an awkwardly gallant character—half Cantinflas and half Valentino—wearing an absurdly large pachuco jacket, announces the coming repertoire. Most of these supposedly world-renowned performers have surreal names like "Telma from Tahiti and her Portorrican gorilla" or "The Patagonian Brujo." One by one, the audience is confronted with these masters of verbal improvisation, imperfect but expressive mimes, albureros (dirty talkers) and, above all, first class provocateurs. Their monologues are confrontational, vulgar and filled with anarchist subtext. Their main targets are Catholic puritanism and corrupt politicians. They laugh at themselves, at death, poverty and military abuse. The carperos love to offend their audience, who always answer back and sometimes even jump on stage. Everyone laughs, releasing their existential demons. A two-bit tropical trio or an "invisible orchestra" accompanies this strange celebration of life on the edge. It is raw theater at its best, art in its primeval force, a ritual of love, impotence, resentment and renewal. People walk out ready to face the world again.

Carpa has been the main school for Mexican comedians. Such film legends as Cantinflas, Resortes and Clavillazo were once carpa animateurs. Here even the most sophisticated artforms—experimental theater, independent cinema, mural painting and more recently performance art—have been influenced by this microcosm of human idiosyncrasies. It is sad to have to state that carpa is slowly sinking into oblivion.

Another Way of Singing the Lottery

Ricardo Anguía has consciously adopted Mexico's folk theater traditions and taken them one step further. Once a painter, now an installation/performance artist, Anguía constructs espacios lúdicos that resemble the wagons of the freak shows. His installations are decorated with popular sayings, trucker's slogans and pulquería graphics. Here, the raw traditions of the merolico and the carpa are deconstructed and recycled into new models. The icons of urban mythology are twisted to give place to a new set of mythical beings that comment on politics and culture. The "frog-kid found in mental lagoons," the snake-woman, El Goloso de Rorras (a barrio Casanova) interact with contemporary political figures such as the president, López Portillo.

Anguía's performances often incorporate a version of the traditional lotería, recontextualizing and transforming its images into threatening icons: the suicide, the hungry, the politician-thief, el aviador (the bureaucrat), among others, become caustic illustrations of city pathos. When the game is over, he gives the winner samples of his own art work.

"Los Grupos"

Like Paris and Berkeley, Mexico City in 1968 was the scene of student riots that were brutally repressed by the para-police. This conflict profoundly transformed the attitudes of Mexican artists. The students of the art schools and the UNAM (National University) began to make art within and about el movimento esudiantil. Their objective was to distribute information in rapid and effective ways. To express their political beliefs they used banners, mantos (painted fabric), mail art, mimeographic prints, impromptu murals and spectacular demonstrations incorporating avant-garde theater. The city boiled with public art activities.

The movement generated a freer use of media, artistic materials and languages. Such criteria as availability, immediacy and effectiveness determined the medium. The art audience was enlarged to include the general public, and the streets became the creative context.

This new attitude toward art and society persisted throughout the '70s. Perhaps the most significant artistic phenomenon of that decade was the creation of "los grupos"—independent associations of artists working with different media but similar goals. Photographers, performers, book artists, poets, sculptors, muralists, installation artists and filmmakers gathered under the premise of collective/interdisciplinary work to explore sociocultural issues. The most influential groups were Proceso Pentagono, Suma, Peyote y La Compañía, Mira, No-Grupo and Tepito Arte-Aca.

The tradition of the groups is still alive in Mexico City. Some have eclipsed, and others, with new concerns, have emerged. Grupo Sin Nombre (nameless group) is a collective of twelve sculptors/performers whose main concern is "to utilize sculpture, not as a decorative element, but as part of a space." For them, the art work is only a tool to provide the spectator with the means to react and interact.

At their Casa Del Lagá Ambient Ambivalente installation, I attended one of GSN's participational performances entitled Lara, Manzanero, Beethoven. The audience of workers, artists, families and students was led into a completely dark labyrinth of wire and told to remain still. Soon, we realized we had to exercise our will, to disobey and explore. I began to walk through the overcrowded structure. In one corner, I was staring at a neon outline of popular composer Austin Lara, when suddenly a '50s cabatera grabbed me to dance a bolero. In another part of the labyrinth, a chanteuse was wrapping people with colored ribbons to the prerecorded music of Armado Manzanero. In the opposite corner from Lara, a bust of Beethoven was illuminated intermittently, while the Fifth Symphony faded in and out.

Placed in this dark, confined and unfamiliar environment, we were forced to establish tactile and verbal relationships with each other. At the end, searchlights accompanied by an ominous soundtrack of war planes abruptly changed the tone of the event, reminding us of political realities. When the lights came up, we all felt a strange sense of sympathy for one another.

María Guerra's La Dirección is composed of two painters, one photographer, one art critic, one musician and María herself, a performer and video artist trained in a Chicago art school. The group lives downtown, where it is part of an emerging punk scene. "We like to perform in the zocalo for the unemployed. We often have confrontations with the authorities," María explains. La Dirección gained notoriety three years ago when they planted 1,000 crosses along a strip during the Day of the Dead celebration.

The Museums

In the last few years, Mexico City's art museums have become "living spaces" involved in interdisciplinary programming. Helen Escobedo exemplifies this new mentality. As an artist, she is responsible for a solid body of work that encompasses small and monumental sculpture, "total environments" and architectural projects. She and others are also responsible for the conception of Espacio Escultórico, the amazing multipurpose neo-pre-Columbian architectural site that has been the setting of many significant performance pieces (Stelarc performed there). When she served as director of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM), Escobedo never missed an opportunity to demystify her own space.

Perhaps the most outrageous event that the museum has ever produced was La Calle ¿A donde Ilega? (The Streets. Where do they reach?). Escobedo invited French art sociologist Hervé Fischer to transform the museum into an extension of the streets. Here, people could speak loudly, scream, sit around and laugh, and even create. Materials were available for anyone to paint and write on the walls. Under Fischer's premise, "We all are creative, we all are artists," MAM became the site for two months of a wild celebration of art and life. Dozens of theater, dance and music groups performed with the public. Some grupos created participatory environments where people voiced their opinions on the show, the government, ecology, public transport and world issues. The goal was clearly to make the participant understand that the museums, like the streets, can be public arenas for expression, and MAM was able to see itself reflected in a multiple mirror.

This article originally appeared in High Performance magazine, Winter 1992.

Original CAN/API publication: September 2002