Angeles Romero was born on the Mexican-American
border and has been raised in two cultures. She now resides
in Columbus, OH and is an actor, writer and activist whose
work meditates on the new lexicon of contemporary Latino culture
and its junction with other cultures. She began her career
performing in the streets. This unprotected environment led
her interest into exploring alternative environments in site-specific
works and multimedia performance-installations. Ultimately,
regardless of the environment, her commitment remains the same--
the creation of coyuntura[i] spaces where dialogue within ourselves
and with others is possible and can lead us into a stronger
sense of truth about our humanity. Recently, she obtained her
M.F.A. in Acting (Independent Track) at OSU. She is also a
member of AlienNation Company. (Coyuntara is a moment, a critical
moment, a favorable moment, a political situation, an opportunity,
a juncture, an occasion; a turning point.)
LS: How does the Culture of War or domination of the “Empire” inform
your work?
AR: I would have to say that I feel a strong responsibility
as an American, in Spanish it would be Estadounidense,
a United Stater.
As a United Stater, I feel an obligation to bring an awareness
that my audience usually does not have. I speak usually
to mainstream Anglo Saxon kids, students, older
people and I am
constantly aware
of our position of privilege, our unfortunate position
of privilege. Being in a privileged country,
I feel it’s my duty and responsibility
to bring my position into my work, and it is important, I always
feel that it is important for the work to embody my environment.
We are not here in a vacuum, there are many things that arise,
cause and effect. So all the work that I do is always informed
by my position as a social person in the social world and that
social world in relation to other social worlds. So it is always
important, it needs to be, if it’s only about me then who
cares. I’m only interested in myself because I want to find
out why I’m here. But in my work, when I take a public space
and I present it to many other people, then it has to be something
that is concerning them as well, so it cannot be self indulgent.
If I can give something to them I always try to, in the
context that we all belong to, which is a position of privilege,
and
there’s
no doubt of that. But then there is another side to that privilege,
which is there is a downfall. Meaning that because we are in a
position of privilege, it is very difficult for our society to
notice things, to become sensitive to things. I just came back
from an installation that made me notice things, that isolated
the world outside and pointed a little light to a little leaf,
that little leaf that was on the floor and little drops were falling
on that leaf, and that’s all I would see. I appreciate that,
I think art is about that- art is about isolation for ourselves
and making us notice little things in this world that we live in
that is just constantly aggressive with advertisements.
LS: In the
face of media regulation/censorship and propaganda,
how do you consider visual art/performance as a medium
for expression, change,
activism?
AR: I think that, again, propaganda and the images
that we are given, they dangerous only because
they reduce our
vocabulary
for
existence. If you give me a cheap icon that I can grab
onto that expresses my reality then I will use it.
So it’s very often
that we see people using a commercial model even to express themselves.
Cut and paste, we’ve become a cut and paste society where
what we see is… it has always been the case, but now even
more so because of media. We are constantly bombarded with information,
so it’s much easier to cut and paste things in order to express
ourselves. So with art and performance as a medium, you have the
chance to change that pattern. You have the chance to offer something
completely new that the audience- hopefully through beauty, because
I’m really about aesthetics, hopefully through beauty extreme
beauty, it can be horrible, its still very concrete choices we
are making- the audience comes out having an emotion, but not being
able to cut and paste something to synthesize that emotion. It
doesn’t know what hit it. And that little space, that little
opening that is created in the audience member hopefully is an
opportunity for them to make any kind of choice- break up with
their boyfriend, to eat ice-cream today, whatever it is- at that
moment, that little space cannot be filled by anything but a decision,
it doesn’t even have to be related to the performance at
all.
LS: What tools (of performance, of resistance,
of assimilation, etc.) do you feel are the most useful
in fighting or responding
to the Empire and/or the culture of War?
AR: I think that the most useful tool
that I have found is allowing… as
a performer you become aware of things because you have an eye
for that. It’s like if somebody comes into a room and let
say that she is fat and I notice that she’s fat. She may
not even be aware that she’s fat because she is separated
from her body. She doesn’t embody her body- she doesn’t
own it- so she has been comfortable all her life being fat, not
comfortable but unaware- but of course everyone has shamed her
because fat people are not good, right? If she is in front of me
I’m not going to notice that she’s fat. It’s
my obligation to notice something different that makes her feel
good in that body. It’s not through shame, and it’s
not through pointing fingers. It’s for me to go in and identify
with that individual, not through separation, through identification.
So the most successful tool that I think performance has is the
ability to dissolve the differences instead of marking them constantly-
that’s my tool. |
