Public
Intervention
Jackson Square, New Orleans, LA
Thursday, May 14, 1998 @ 3pm
The
Public Intervention
is an outdoor performance where the artist uses malls,
parks, and other public sites as a laboratory to extend
the borders of performance art from the protected
environment of art centers into the unpredictable
territory of the streets.
This site-specific
public intervention took place as part of Junebug's Productions 1998
Environmental Justice Festival in New Orleans,LA.
In keeping with his mission to stretch the boundaries
of performance art into the unpredictable territory
of the public domain, performance artist Jose Torres
Tama organized this collaborative effort to comment
on the reinstitution of "chain gang" practices
in Alabama and Louisiana prisons. It asserts that
such a practice is symbolic of a perverse desire lurking
within the patriarchy to see men of color in chains.
In addition, the piece addresses issues of incarceration
over education and the growth of a "prison culture"
in a country that professes to stand for freedom.
Combining spoken word,
rituals of fire, incantations, and drumming, three men,
including Jose Torres Tama, Hugo Montero, and Rudy Mills,
performed in chains and protested the institutionalized
criminalization of men of color.  The
procession was accompanied by African American drummer
Baba Alonzo and Cuban drummer Luis Nunez. The half-hour
long performance ritual took place on Jackson Square,
which has the dubious reputation of once serving as
the largest slave market in the US.
"The
Chain Gang Project" reflects Torres Tama's
Art in the Public Domain principle, wherein a free-roaming,
impromptu audience becomes engaged in a very public
art event. it also declares his impassioned refusal
to silently acquiesce to covert injustice. Here, the
impetus is the reinstatement of chain gangs in the south
and their insidious, racial repercussions." - Art
Papers
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