CURRENT RESEARCH
Set in Motion: Transit Oriented Performance in Aztlán
In this text I claim a consubstantiality between motion and Chicana/o/e subject formation, and interrogate the historic and philosophical role that motion plays in Chicana/o/e and autochthonous cultural production. Through the examination of performances and artifacts such as lowriders, food trucks, concerts and various other performances. In organizing the book, I follow an intervallic framework brought together by its relationship to ancient Maya and Mexica mythology. Rather than opting for an arrangement based on chronology, or geography, this work’s structure opts for an episodic structure where events and artifacts are examined for the way they resonate across time and space with the concept of mobility.
A Frank Conversation: The Birth of the Los Angeles Chicano Art Movement
An academic article based on months of recorded interviews with Chicana/o Arts icon, Frank Romero, covering the founding of Los Four, early days of the movement, his life, and his work. To augment this research I have conducted ethnographic research on the Chicana/o art scene with collectors, activists and regular people who were there, but have never before been officially interviewed about how it all went down. The ultimate goal of this project is to archive the 1960s and 70s Chicana/o art scene with an eye to preserving stories never before archived or published.
In the Shadow of the Towers
This monograph-length project explores Nuestro Pueblo the famous monument putatively known as The Watts Towers. It seeks to move beyond the existing research and scholarship on this monument and reframe it as a secreted milieu de mémoire for the Chicana/o community and adumbrate a performance of erasure upon a Chicana/o signification of this monument. This project will further problematize the process fueled by a type of ethnocentric cultural elitism through which individuals and institutions have successfully relegated Chicana/os to a silent and passive part in Nuestro Pueblo’s historiography that facilitates an occlusion of the monuments Chicana/o identity.
