El Museo del Barrio New York

The annual evening of performance art and actions returns to El Museo, highlighting artists featured in El Museo's Bienal: The (S) Files 2011. Ongoing performances throughout the night by Juan Betancurth, Alicia Grullón, René Juan de la Cruz-Napoli a.k.a. VJ Demencia, Irvin Morazán, and Rafael Sánchez and Kathleen White. Presented as a part of Performa 11 (November 1-21, 2011).

Juan Betancurth
Domesticus
(b. 1972, Manizales, Colombia) Exploring his uncomfortable relationship with everyday domestic activity, Betancurth traces a morbid parallel between domestic life and domestication, twisting domestic objects into devices of control and submission. Betancurth inhabits his installation and becomes another object in the room, which is temporarily off-limits to visitors. Visitors view his actions through a live feed, accompanied by running narration in the style of a sports commentator.

Alicia Grullón
Pick-It
(b. 1977, Bronx, New York) Grullón’s work brings to the forefront encounters between people, often in public spaces. In Pick-It, Grullón invites the audience to form a picket line in the courtyard of El Museo del Barrio. In contrast to a typical picket line, where participants come together for a common cause, Pick-It asks participants to make signs announcing their personal message of protest.

VJ Demencia / René Juan de la Cruz
Play NYC
(b. 1967, San Juan, Puerto Rico) Through video projections and intensely mixed audio that brings together ambient electronica and salsa (salsa-tech), VJ Demencia constructs an audio-visual environment that consumes the existing architecture of the space. As a VJ (video jockey), VJ Demencia draws inspiration from his daily navigation of the streets of the city to create video projections that communicate a symbolic narrative of his experience.

Special thanks to: Mónica Gutiérrez, Redbean Society, Sr. Mínimo, Steve Kalalian and Bernice Gonzalez-Bofill of Industrial Color, Yury Vargas, Antonio Parada of Engage Studios and Katz Hernández.

Irvin Morazán
Dating Game
(b. 1976, San Salvador, El Salvador) Morazán intertwines pre-Columbian mythologies with contemporary culture, merging old and new players of Latin America into humorous performances, photographs and videos that blur the boundaries of culture and stereotypes, often incorporating elaborate headdresses that mimic and distort pre-Columbian attire. In Dating Game, Morazán reinterprets the dating game show as a shamanic experience, inviting singles to play for a date, addressing the paradoxically isolating experience of urban life through humor and all the trappings of love.

Rafael Sánchez and Kathleen White
The Table
(b. 1960, Havana, Cuba / b. 1960, Fall River, Massachusetts) Working together since 2002, the artists have made their living through the sale of books from a carefully curated table they set up in Greenwich Village. This presentation features their table, including a number of books into which they have made artistic interventions. Also part of the presentation is a series of readings by professional actors who have made selections from the offerings on the table. In the words of the artists: "Ours is the work of memory and ceremony... the work of the camera, the phonograph, and the page. Ours is the work of nature - all: revealed to the senses with all forms for to serve beauty with our bodies towards a perfect theater."