The Economy of Performance: Gomez-Pena's New World Border

None of Guiilermo Gomez-Pena's achievements fits comfortably within the category of literature. He is primarily known in the art com munity for his work on border cultural life; this work presently includes performance art, videos, CDs, books, and sites on the Internet, as well as theoretical articles and interviews. Gomez-Pena deterritorializes his production in several categories simultaneously, expanding the concept of the border to interrogate academic disciplines as we ll as linguistic, social, and epistemological domains. His boundary crossing, rather than marginalizing his creation, has enabled him in some ways to "crossover," reaching larger audiences and achieving a relatively high degree of recognition in several fields. His work has been recognized by literary critics such as Homi Bhabha; he has been invited as lecturer or artist-in-residence at many college campuses; he has performed at such elite cultural institutions as the Smithsonian and Whitney Muse ums and received many grants, including the Mac Arthur Genius Award. As a performer of border identities, Gomez-Pena can occupy multiple sites and no particular site at the same time; this can be a very useful, tactical approach to the artist's aesthetic and political projects. At the same time, this dislocation raises important questions about the line