Who knew Quarantine Life would be so intense?
A year ago Payan and I won the prestigious Creative Capital art award & fellowship. As a result, these past 12 months have been a whirlwind of travel and expansion of our creative practice. We’ve been out to NY a couple of times for our grant orientation, a trek to Bolivia for costumes, stints in Texas workshopping the concept, and New Orleans to present our project at the National Performance Network‘s annual convention. For the next 5 years we’ll explore the concept of Democracy through interactive performances and touring conversations throughout America. Inspired by the seminal Democracy In America, our Dreamocracy In America project aims to pick up where Alexis De Tocqueville left off.
It was at the NPN Conference that we met the amazing Performance Artist, Community Activist, and Elected Official Kristina Wong. She was on our NPN panel and now is the first guest for our online Dreamocracy conversations which start tomorrow!
Since I ran for public office myself in 2018, Kristina & I connected immediately. The line between politics and performance art is very thin. Plus, running for office is in and of itself a very trippy experience. Here’s my campaign website for my City Council run Sarmiento for Santa Ana and Wong’s performance video about her campaign below.
I hope to craft my own performance and/or written treatment about my campaign because it was so damn surreal. The nature of politics in the Americas and exploring the arcane aspects of our current Democracy is fascinating to us.
So in adapting our multidisciplinary project for this strange year of quarantine, Payan and I are launching a weekly videocast via the Zoom streaming platform. These virtual conversations will take place every Friday in the time of Corona.
Here is our first graphic featuring the charming Ms Wong:
Can’t wait until tomorrow!