During pandemia, in the absence of political certainties and human contact, I began a process of radical reinvention. Everything I loved: international touring, crossing borders; working in community; bohemian life; I suddenly couldn’t do anymore. I went from being a nomadic provocateur to becoming a laptop intellectual…from la vida loca to la vida jodida, overnight. My main philosophical questions were, How do I reinvent myself to withstand this perceived impossibility? How can I imagine a better world, and a better artworld? Can performance art and writing be my ongoing source of hope?
My artistic praxis changed: I developed a weekly podcast/radio show. Besides zooming, I began to make low budget performance movies and video diaries creating quirky collaborations with neighbors and friends. I turned my home into a casa museo (living museum).

Today, with the help of my beloved wife and co-collaborator, Balitronica, I am venturing into the professional world of Patreon. My goal is to share with my subscribers excerpts from my PERSONAL daily diaries, my everyday predicaments as an aging rebel in search of a new place and voice in the post/real “post” covid, using my memory as a casino roulette, and my performance literature as a compass. My philosophical ruminations will take the form of blog poems, impromptu photography, improv, and occasional movies (as well as monthly zoom performances for my patrons). I wish to share my most intimate survival secrets, fears, and hopes. So, welcome to my mind on fire…

***Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue and artistic director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978, and since 1995, his three homes have been San Francisco, Mexico City and the "road".
His performance work and 21 books have contributed to the debates on cultural, generational, and gender diversity, border culture and North-South relations. His artwork has been presented at over one thousand venues across the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Russia, South Africa and Australia. A MacArthur Fellow, USA Artists Fellow, and a Bessie, Guggenheim, and American Book Award recipient, he is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and Europe and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT), the Performance Art Week Journal of the Venice Biennale, and emisférica, the publication of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (NYU). Gómez-Peña is currently a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency, and a Senior Fellow in the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.***