Transnational Arts Initiative (TAI)
Through the Transnational Arts Initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation, the Hemispheric Institute has expanded its work with Latino/a artists and arts organizations in United States, bringing them together with their counterparts throughout the Americas to explore the potential of working transnationally in the arts.
The project supported four inter-related activities: 1) projects of five partner artists and arts organizations working on issues of social and economic justice from a transnational perspective; 2) a three-day meeting at Instituto Hemisférico/ FOMMA in Chiapas, Mexico to promote dialogue and enable transnational collaboration; 3) the commissioning of related research; and 4) the enhancement of Latino/a participation in the Institute’s 7th Encuentro “Staging Citizenship: Cultural Rights in the Americas” in Bogotá, Colombia in August 2009.
Project Partners
TAI supported five artists and arts organizations working on issues of transnational politics and culture:
Fulana is a Latina video and performance collective that uses parody and satire as strategies to make visible what we are so often made to read between the lines. www.fulana.org
BorderLore is a transnational folklore-based, performance-centered, and documentation-oriented program, headed by Dr. Maribel Alvarez, part of the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona. BorderLore documents and disseminates the local knowledge and unique visual, oral, and material cultural expressions of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands. wctr.web.arizona.edu/folklore/borderlore
The “Practices of Encroachment: From the Global Border to the Border Neighborhood” is a project led by architect Teddy Cruz at the University of California, San Diego. A new publication explores the connection between the notion of a “global border” to the micro scale of border neighborhoods on both sides of the Tijuana-San Diego border. www.hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-71/cruz
Cornerstone Theater Company, a multi-ethnic, ensemble-based theater company in Los Angeles California collaborated with Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras (TJSF), a theater company made up entirely of day laborers to create TJSF’s first full-length play in June 2009 which toured to day labor sites, community centers, and schools across LA County. www.cornerstonetheater.org
Living Traditions, Building Bridges is a project of Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center that creates a body of new artistic work by continuing to explore and expand upon traditional and vernacular Mexican music, arts and crafts, as well as other American-based musical arts. www.loscenzontles.com
"Across Borders: Working Transnationally in the Arts"
From June 30-July 2, 2009, the Hemispheric Institute convened "Across Borders: Working Transnationally in the Arts," a 3-day meeting, which took place at Centro Hemisférico/ FOMMA in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
The meeting brought together U.S.-based Latino artists and scholars with our partners in Chiapas and other participants from Mexico and Central America to share their work and exchange perspectives on their experiences working transnationally in the arts.
Centro Hemisférico/FOMMA is a collaborative research center and performance space between the Hemispheric Institute and La Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (FOMMA), a Mayan women's theatre collective and NGO with a distinguished trajectory of work on indigenous issues at the local, national and transnational level.
7th Encuentro "Staging Citizenship: Cultural Rights in the Americas"
TAI provided additional support to present the work of Latino/a artists and arts organizations working on issues of social and economic justice from a transnational perspective at the Hemispheric Institute’s 7th Encuentro “Staging Citizenship: Cultural Rights in the Americas.” The Encuentro brought together Latino/a artists, collectives, scholars and activists, including Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Tomas Ybarra-Fausto, Renato Rosado, Alejandro Madrid, Fulana, Secos y Mojados, and facilitated discussions and working groups under the broad rubrics of citizenship and cultural rights across the Americas.