Over at Walker Reader, we recently published our ninth Soundboard feature, this one timed with the Minneapolis performance of Miguel Gutierrez’s Walker-commissioned performance This Bridge Called My Ass. I invited Gutierrez to pose a question to four thinkers on a topic of his choosing. Based in part on his (artworld-viral) 2018 essay “Does Abstraction Belong to White People,” he decided to tackle an issue at the heart of his performance: Latinx identity. Responding to the prompt “Why identify identity?” was dance historian Brianna Figueroa, artist Xandra Ibarra (who also performed in This Bridge), Venezuelan Twin Cities–based performer Pedro Pablo Lander, and artist-organizer Sebastián Niculescu who covered the topic in powerful, personal, and poetic ways. One of my favorite Soundboard discussions yet.
Readers read each short essay by clicking on a headshot to refresh. Animated identity by Jasio Stefanski
Soundboard 9.0 promoted on the Walker Reader landing page