Marc Priewe

• This essay focuses on the work of Mexican/Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, whose main aesthetic principle lies in the criss-crossing of cultural, geographic and linguistic borders. Through his unique fusion of genres, discourses and media, Gómez-Peña creates a hybrid art form that also transgresses more conventional definitions of what constitutes culture. One of the central features of his "New World Border" (1992-1994) performance is the artistic transposition of site-specific border identities and texts to a global level; i.e., the border (and its transgression) becomes a metaphor to address a multiplicity of aesthetic, cultural and socio-political agendas. His performance "Temple of Confessions" (1994) aims, among others, at debunking the rather celebratory discourse of mainstream U.S. multiculturalism. In addition, his project of "reverse anthropology", which informs a number of his performance pieces, seeks to retain the resistance potential of minoritarian art by subverting hegemonic power hierarchies. As willThis essay focuses on the work of Mexican/Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, whose main aesthetic principle lies in the criss-crossing of cultural, geographic and linguistic borders. Through his unique fusion of genres, discourses and media, Gómez-Peña creates a hybrid art form that also transgresses more conventional definitions of what constitutes culture. One of the central features of his "New World Border" (1992-1994) performance is the artistic transposition of site-specific border identities and texts to a global level; i.e., the border (and its transgression) becomes a metaphor to address a multiplicity of aesthetic, cultural and socio-political agendas. His performance "Temple of Confessions" (1994) aims, among others, at debunking the rather celebratory discourse of mainstream U.S. multiculturalism. In addition, his project of "reverse anthropology", which informs a number of his performance pieces, seeks to retain the resistance potential of minoritarian art by subverting hegemonic power hierarchies. As will be shown, his representational strategy of "as if" is used by Gómez-Peña and his collaborators to envision a postnational and transcultural spaciousness of the Americas.…