Xavier Lopez Performance #21A: Part 1 - Oracion Al Borde del Apocalipsis (Prayer at the Edge of Apocalypse.) 2019. Featuring Christina Montilla.

 

December 2019 performance at King Street Station in Seattle, WA. Starring Xavier Lopez and Christina Montilla in performance at King Street Station! — at Office of Arts & Culture Seattle.

Performance at King Street Station: 

Oracion al Borde del Apocalipsis 

Gus/Ghost Walk/Prayer 

December 5th, 2019

In this pre-performance—I walk out half-an-hour before the main performance to a pre-chosen spot of the KSS will already have a rocking chair and two pieces of luggage. I sit in the rocking chair reading the book until, the house lights go down…

Ghost Walk:… and a musical piece created by my brother comes on, creating a theatrical space. I put down the book, pick up the two pieces of luggage and walk the perimeter of the space-this is the second part of the performance, entitled “Ghost Walk.” This segment is dedicated to and refers to all those that have come to our country, seeking the promise of safety, security and freedom, carrying everything they own with them, braving all of their fears, filled with hope and promise.

The Prayer: At a predetermined spot, easily watched by everyone, the prayer begins. Symbolizing the prison that many have been placed into under the Trump administration, I, still dressed as a ghost, open up the two containers filled with candles, flowers and toys and create a border around me. The performance ends when I kneel in the middle of the circle and say a silent prayer based on the prayers that my mother taught me in Spanish and English when I was a small child.

The performance “Oracion al Borde del Apocalipsis” ( Prayer at the Edge of the Apocalypse) begins with a pre-performance piece entitled “Gus Was a Mexican Ghost,” which is a children’s book from the 1970’s about a ghost, who goes to Mexico. The book was one of my favorites as a child. This performance is an extended prayer for all of those that have migrated to this country or whose descendants travelled to these lands from somewhere else, which is to say everyone but this land’s indigenous peoples—everyone else is a guest here. 

Xavier Lopez is a contemporary, Latino/x, conceptual, mixed media artist. Lopez received his MFA from the University of California, Davis, where he created the theoretical/artistic thesis of the "Soft Cyborg" and the Latinx artistic form of “Putoh,” which takes Butoh as its inspiration. As a "Post-Pop Artist," he is part of a young group of artists who are seeking to move beyond contemporary mainstream ideas, becoming post genre, mixing sculpture, performance art, theory, painting and anything else they can get their hands on to create something exciting and new. In 2016, allied with La Sala--a leading Latino Arts organization in Seattle, Washington, Xavier Lopez and Lauren Davis put together the very first Latinx Performance Art Festival. In 2017, Xavier Lopez was cited in the Routledge critical theoretical textbook "Performance; A Critical Introduction--by Marvin Carlson, Third Edition, as a leading voice in the Latinx Performance Art movement, something for which he is extremely proud.

Lopez is part of a new breed of Latinx artists for whom art-making, while still personal and autobiographical in the broadest sense, eschews the obvious tropes of masculinity, hegemony and race with very little regard for the overbearing visual, cultural history that has proven to be overpowering for so many artists of this age. Instead, as an Hispanic artist, it has become clear to Lopez over the course of his thirty-plus year career that his work has focused on a more personal kind of conceptualism, centering on autobiography and his own set of obsessions, hopes and fears.

Lopez has shown artwork on both American coasts as well as in Germany, England and France, and he has come to be known for his own brand of lush, conceptual, post post-modern sculpture, especially his "sheet ghost" installations, flower Rorschachs, tin foil mountains and performance art.

As a child in the seventies, before Lopez even knew what art was, his father was in the Chicano Art Movement in Los Angeles and the younger Lopez would tag along to the "Mechicano" Art Centers of Southern California mentally devouring the exciting scenes of Chicano artists making political and historical work, expressing first-hand what it meant to be a "Chicano" in the seventies. Days would pass as he watched his father paint murals, all the while, day-dreaming of his own future. Lopez' parents often took their three children to the Los Angeles Museum of Art, where he saw Warhol's Brillo Boxes, his first conceptual sculptures and Joseph Beuys’ performances.

It was also at university that he began to notice a big difference between how his heroes made art and how he was expected to make art. When a Duchamp or a Beuys made their work it was about ideas, it was about their ideas and it reflected the way that they saw the world. With this realization, Lopez decided that he would take a stand and make art that came from his own personal experiences, that he would make work that was unique to his own, singular viewpoint and that above all else it would be art that was about ideas. From then on Lopez sought to make his own way as an individual artist, seeking to express his own view of the universe and to speak of his own personal issues, obsessions and desires. This has become a very important stance of liberation, which in and of itself is powerful and revolutionary.

Lopez career is a journey and a complex intellectual investigation--at the same time, however, it is not a refutation of difference, history or culture--as that is also a very important part of Lopez' (hi(s)tory--rather, Lopez work is about those areas where we come together, aware that we are not post-race and that his work is not either.

As an artist, Lopez' career has been multivalent, mixing sculpture, performance art, theory and painting, creating a body of work that is experimental and fierce--with the power of a slap to the back of the head. Lopez has been part of several high-profile art events at the Seattle Art Museum, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts & Culture and most recently he has worked with the Seattle LatinX organization "La Sala" for their "La Cocina" project where he put together and performed in the first ever night of all LatinX performance art. He is a recipient of the prestigious 2016 Artist Up Grant Lab Award as well as several other grants, fellowships and commissions from various American cities.

Xavier Lopez Jr. 

Music by D. Alexis Lopez 

Featuring Christina Montilla

Performance: December 5th 2019 

3:00 Xavier arrives at the space to make sure everything is fine, to do soundcheck, etc.

5:00 Alexis and Christina arrive

6:00 pre-show set-up begins—we bring out props, etc.

6:45 Xavier and Christina walk to their stages, both dressed as ghosts. Christina is dressed as a pink ghost carrying the children’s book, “Gus was a Mexican Ghost.” She walks up very slowly to the chair/rocking chair and sits down and rocks slowly back and forth, whispering undiscernible words that sound like the remnants of memories gone by—every once in a while you can make out the words “Agelito de mi guarda, de mi dulce compania.”



At the same time, I walk up to the second stage space surrounded by luggage and begin to play with toys—the scene is very reminiscent of a mother and child enjoying time together.

7:00-7:05 Alexis’ music begins and I put away the toys and tie the luggage together and carry them over my shoulder and Christina picks up the rocking chair and slowly walks toward the green room.

7:05-7:12 The music changes and I kneel walk around the gallery space and head back to the space that was once occupied by Christina and the rocking chair—but they are gone. This whole time I have been whispering, “Angelito de mi guarda,”

7:12-end: The music becomes a little faster, more like a chant as I pull out candles and place them in a circle around me, followed by the toys that I was playing with earlier and finally the circle/border is completed by flowers as I place each flower I am saying “Angelita de mi guarda” and slowly, more of the prayer comes out and I begin chanting it and Christina, now a part of the audience begins to chant it again and hopefully others will join us, as we approach a kind of crescendo, I begin to toss the flowers in the air, symbolically destroying the border, then collapse on the ground—the end of the performance.

December 2019 performance at King Street Station in Seattle, WA. Starring Xavier Lopez and Christina Montilla in performance at King Street Station! — at Office of Arts & Culture Seattle.

Xavier Lopez Performance #21 General: Oracion Al Borde del Apocalipsis (Prayer at the Edge of Apocalypse.) 2019.

 

Flyer for Oracion Al Borde del Apocalipsis (Prayer at the Edge of Apocalypse), front and back cover.

Flyer for Oracion Al Borde del Apocalipsis (Prayer at the Edge of Apocalypse), inside.

The performance was part of the three-month exhibition: Brighter Future--To be heard. To be seen. To be free. I had some paintings in the exhibition, but was much more excited to have been asked to do a performance. At this point, we did not yet know about Covid, and I do remember thinking at the time that the title that I gave to the performance seemed kind of over-the-top and yet. There was a feeling that something was happening. There was a feeling that something was coming and that it wasn't good.

I knew that this piece needed to be a prayer, my favorite prayer, one in Spanish that I was taught when I was very young by my mother and remember to this day.  I have also been wanting to do a crawling ghost piece, originally planned to circle the Seattle Art Museum--I still hope to do a ghost performance there sometime this year. 

List of artists who were part of this exhibition. 

Our team for the upcoming "On The Edge: Second Latinx [erformance Art Festival, postponed, at this point, indefinitely, but actually 'til sometime in 2021.   

Photo taken before the event at the historic King Street Station. 

Announcement on the Arts & Culture, Seattle WA Gov page. 

Ghost at the King Street Station.

Prayer at the Edge of Apocalypse is a continuation of the sheet ghost performances and sculptures that began in the 80's. 

Xavier Lopez Performance # 17: Performance: A Critical Introduction (Inclusion + Putoh, Katherine Adamenko) 2017.

As a Latinx performance artist, I knew our 2016 event was unique and vital to the Seattle community, showcasing Latina/x/o artists' identity and genre-expanding work. But none of us could imagine that our event would become part of worldwide university curricula inspiring a new generation of Latina/x/o artists. Academic performance historian Marvin Carlson wrote in Routledge's textbook "Performance: A Critical Introduction,” “There is a growing body of...artists who specifically identify themselves as Latinx, headed by...Xavier Lopez...featured in the first festival of Latinx performance, held at the Good Arts center...in Seattle... Latinx represents an important orientation in modern performance... concern(ed) with developing more inclusive and flexible attitudes toward designations of gender, race, and ethnicity...addressing this major reorientation of the field."

This entry was later updated to:

This is the final wording for the book until then, straight from the pen of Marvin Carlson "...and there is a growing body of theatre artists who specifically identify themselves as Latinx, headed by Xavier Lopez Jr. and Vicente Montanez. Lopez created the first festival of Latinx performance, held at the Good Arts center for experimental theatre in Seattle in 2016, in which Montanez performed. Lopez is also co-creator, with performance artist Katherine Adamenko of New York City, of Putoh performance, a melding of Chicano performance art and contemporary art inspired by Butoh."

 

As a child, before I even knew what art was, I would watch my father paint murals as part of the Los Angeles Chicano Art Movement, where I would tag along to the Mechicano Art Center on Whittier Blvd mentally devouring the exciting scenes of Latino artists expressing what it meant to be Chicano back then! Days passed as I watched my father paint his expressionist, politically charged murals, day-dreaming of my own future. Every month my parents would take us to the LA Museums and galleries, where we would see Warhol's “Brillo Boxes,” conceptual sculptures and the films of Joseph Beuys and Gilbert and George. 

Later, in college, at the University of Nevada Reno and UCDavis, my mind was blown away by the work of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadas, who influenced my now, mixed media performances. 

It was also during this time that I began to perceived an unspoken difference between how my heroes made art and how I--as a young Latino artist--was expected to. 

Let me tell you a story. As a young artist, I searched everywhere for successful Chicano artists for a sense that my work had a place. When Duchamp or Beuys made their work it was about lives, their ideas, it reflected their view of the world. No one asked Marcel Duchamp to make work solely about his heritage—and he did not have to make artwork for the annual Halloween exhibition. I desperately wanted to make art that had meaning beyond other's expectations—art that reflected my own life and how I saw things? But I had no models, no history to fall back on. Because of this I did the only thing that I could, I decided that I would have to be my own model. 

Ultimately, At UCDavis, critical theory, personal history and personal artifacts began to infuse themselves into my work opening it up to incorporate queer, feminist and other identity discourses. I created two theoretical treatises, "The Soft Cyborg," a variation on Haraway's "Cyborg" and "Putoh"--melding Japanese Butoh and Latino identity performance. In 2016, I co-curated "On the Edge: Latinx Performance Art Festival" the first all-Latinx performance art festival--apparantly--ever.  I did this with Lauren Davis, La Sala Collective member and Assistant Director at Art Exchange Gallery. This led to me becoming part of university curricula across the globe when Marvin Carlson mentioned our event in Routledge's textbook "Performance: A Critical Introduction." 

Today, Issues of gender, race and identity permeate my work and it is through performance that I seek to push the boundaries of how we perceive the essence of ethnic/cultural/Latinx performance, to give voice to underrepresented groups and, moreover, to expand the language of marginalized performance and even to broaden access through guerrilla and drop-in performances. As a conceptual artist, I am confronted with the sense that "Conceptual Art" is often considered to be an elitist, hegemonic realm.  It has become visibly and conceptually associated with purity, intellectualism, masculinity and hegemony. As a Latino Artist who works with many materials that have been pared down to their core elements, minimalized and purified so to speak--creating fiercely personal narratives--I have been forced to deal with oversimplified views of who can make what and what art can be made. 

I am part of a new breed of Latinx artists intent on expanding the themes and expectations available to minority artists--making art that is individual--defying traditional expectations of collective identity. I choose personal, everyday materials, a collage of sheets, candy, fake flowers, tin foil and personal items in order to tell my stories. This is an important conceptual, performative and material shift that cannot be overstated. It is a stance of liberation, which pushes the boundaries of expectations and dares to say that individual lives of color matter; which, in itself, is powerful and revolutionary, problematizing racial, masculine, cultural and identity essentialism in an intellectual investigation which is in no way post-race. 

Perhaps the greatest engine that keeps me going is my over-developed desire to correct social injustices and my love for constant creation. Building community has always been one of my primary concerns; I have taught courses at UC Davis, UNR, Europe and art classes here in Seattle. I understand firsthand, the power of art to change a person and give their lives new meaning. Beginning at UNR, I have been in many art exhibitions, community events, auctions and live painting activities. In the last five years, I have been part of 8 teaching and artistic workshops with the Seattle Art Museum. In 2016, I was asked to put my dreams into action by programming an evening of performance art for La Sala Latinx Artists Network’s ‘La Cocina’ in Pioneer Square. This collaborative project entitled "On The Edge: Latinx Performance Art Festival," was the first all Latinx night of performance art. Up to that point, apparently, there had never been an all Latinx night of performance art in the Pacific Northwest. I had been wanting to get back into that part of my oeuvre. Not performances--that happens all the time--performance art--in all of its difficult to classify, irreverent, problematic, transient, impossible to document glory. In less than a month, we put everything together from scratch. I worked very closely with Lauren Davis of ArtXchange Gallery and Miguel Guillén as well as the rest of the folks at La Sala and La Cocina and the other performers. The night itself was not just historic; it was an amazing success! This magical event exceeded all our hopes. The first On the Edge Festival was a one-night event, small but expansive, dedicated to serving Seattle and the Seattle Latinx community, giving voice to local Latinx Artists presenting work that is rarely seen in our communities. What we created with On the Edge is a sense of freedom and inclusion that I have always searched for in my journey as a performer exploring themes of Latino/x identity, gender and class privilege. We had a very nice crowd and at least once, I heard a very audible gasp as I was on stage. There is something very real and very magical about doing something as visceral and honest as performance art in front of a live audience--it is an amazing feeling for the audience as well as the performer. Our night of performance had something for everyone and at the same time, the whole event was fundamentally individual and Latina/o/x, and is part of a larger conversation working not only to continue and preserve a set of cultural traditions, but seeking to redefine the nature of these traditions moving forward as we live at a time in which definitions of race, masculinity, gender and art are in flux

Xavier Lopez Performance#14C: The Magician/Sorcerer: When the Body Speaks. Performance Art. InArtsNW. Seattle, WA. 2017.

 

The Magician. Short video shot from stage left. Part 2. When the Body Speaks. Full. A Night of Performance Art by Xavier Lopez. Cast: Xavier Lopez, Grace Larenard, Basil Mayan, Girlgoth and Kaz. Supported by Artists Up - Grant Lab Award from Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, 4 Culture and Artist Trust. Music changed to adhere to copyright laws. Performance Art. InArtsNW. Seattle, WA. 2017. Filmed by Lily Munn.

After singing as Gus the Ghost and tearing about the sheet ghost as the Diabetic Luchador, I meet 

Up to this age, up to this period in time--children's book, horror stories, cartoons etc. have long told the same tale--the Pinnocchio story of the artificial becoming real. Becoming "a real boy"-- has become a trope--a modern icon--according to Wikipedia, which also says that Pinocchio is one of the most adapted characters of all time. 

But recently something has changed, I first noticed it and wrote about it in a presentation I did at a conference at UCDavis, a couple of years ago. Ours is the first generation in which Pinocchio has lost interest in being a real boy and instead has decided that rather than going back to being anything as silly as wood, or staying flesh, it is time to turn to plastic, foam and rubber instead. And I suggest that this is not mere musing, something is going on here and it may be zeitgeist--the flesh made plastic.

I would love to work on a performance with Joseph Beuys--of all the artists throughout history--his is the one that I seem to come back to the most--visually, we share some striking similarities--which is odd--because for both of us the performance work is extremely personal, autobiographical and anecdotal. I'm sure that Beuys himself would say it has something to do with a kind of post-Jungian--artistic collective mind--but all of that is just a little too new agey for me--though I love Beuys for being so out there and for being so willing to go out on a limb for what he believed--no matter what!

When the Body Speaks (Performance in three parts):

Scene microphone and stand on stage outcropping. Stage right Grace La Renard is standing dressed as a ghost. On a table, also stage right is a blue cloth and a top hat filled with a glowing light. Further back stage right is a male ghost. In the background stage right is an easel and white canvas and near that is a bucket filled with flour and a chair.

From off stage I walk on stage dressed as a ghost carrying a plastic pumpkin filled with flowers. After a beat I begin to sing the Depeche Mode song "When the Body Speaks." As the song ends, I take off the headphones and phone and place them in the bucket, toss some flowers at the audience and place the pumpkin bucket stage left so that Lily can retrieve it.

As the song ends the two other stage ghosts begin chanting "You're nothun' but a nothun'. You're nothun' but a nothun'."

As this happens I begin dancing the dance of lonely ghost--as the dance reaches its crescendo I take off the cloak and reveal the "Diabetic Luchador," Who begins to dance the dance of the Diabetic Luchador, while the two dancers continue to chant. During this dance, I am looking like I suffer from vertigo and high and low blood sugar.

At the end of it I grab the ghost sheet and begin to tear it apart. Then wrap it around my hands and barefoot legs. I move to the bucket and begin to put flower on my hands and draw a mushroom cloud on the ground before me. Taking my sweet time. At the end of this. I kneel down center stage. As soon as I kneel the Sorcerer's apprentice music should start.

The two ghosts begin to chant "Your blood will show you the way." and "Magic is in your blood."

At this point Lily comes from off stage and paints my face and blows glitter on me.

"The Dance of the Magician" Begins as the Sorcerer's apprentice plays. As I pull flowers then a rabbit out of a hat and then a ghost and then blood then paint a painting.

Stage goes black as I turn to the audience then say "When the Body Speaks--all else is hollow."

The end.