Phantom Histories: Transborder Poetics in Video Art

Curated by poet and Chicana/o/x Studies Professor at Cal. State Northridge, Ramón García, Phantom Histories: Transborder Poetics in Video Art presents a screening of various short films by Chicana/o/x and Mexican multidisciplinary artists: Harry Gamboa Jr., Rita Gonzalez, Raul Baltazar, Berta Jottar and Victoria Delgadillo. The short films, realized with low budgets and utilizing mostly home-video equipment, span from the late 20th century to the early decades of the 21st century. Calling into question the stability of cultural iconographies and the significance of geographical location, the films reimagine history as the key to a liberatory future. Following the screenings, the artists will be in conversation, moderated by Joshua Javier Guzmán, Vice Chair in the Department of Gender Studies at University of California, Los Angeles.

Baby Kake, 1984

Harry Gamboa Jr.

Run time: 6:02 min.

Fire Ants for Nothing, 1994

Harry Gamboa Jr.

Run time: 8:02 min.

Border Swings, 1994

Berta Jottar

Run time: 8 min.

The Assumption of Lupe Velez, 1998

Rita Gonzalez

Run time: 23 min.

Califas, 2018

Raul Baltazar and Victoria Delgadillo:

Run time: 10 min.

*promotional graphics use an image from the short film Califas by Raul Baltazar and Victoria Delgadillo.

Doors Open: 6:30 PM I Screenings: 7:00 PM

About the artists

Rita Gonzalez is the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she has curated Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement; Asco: Elite of the Obscure; Lost Line: Contemporary Art from the Collection; Agnés Varda in Californialand, In Production: Art and the Studio System, Christian Marclay: Sound Stories, among other exhibitions and programs.

Harry Gamboa Jr. is an artist, author, and educator. He is the founder and director of Troupe Non Grata (2022-Present), Ephemeral Actions/Performed Portraits, Virtual Vérité (2005-2017), international performance troupe and co-founder of Asco (1972-1985), the East Los Angeles-based performance group.He is Faculty of the Photo/Media Program at California Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited by museums, galleries, and art spaces internationally.

Victoria Delgadillo’s filmmaking is influence by the Direct Cinema genre, a method of documentary filmmaking in which filmmakers capture their subjects as directly as possible by using handheld cameras to make themselves unobtrusive. She is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego where she studied filmmaking. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of the LA County Museum, Laguna Beach Museum and The National Mexican-American Museum Chicago. In 2002, she received awards from the Los Angeles City Council and from the governments of Sinaloa and Guanajuato (Mexico) for creating public awareness through art related to the femicides occurring on the US international border. Her written work and lectures in art as activism are part of the curriculums of the Universities of California at Berkeley/Los Angeles/Riverside/San Bernardino, Cal-State Universities Northridge/Los Angeles/Long Beach and San Diego as well as the University of Guadalajara (Guadalajara, Mexico). In 2009, Victoria received UCSD's Gracia Molina de Pick Feminisms Grant for women active in social justice. In 2020, she received the J. Paul Getty Trust and the California Community Foundation Grant for individual artists that serve Los Angeles’ culturally diverse communities. Delgadillo's visual artwork is part of various public and private art collections.

Raul Baltazar, a Los Angeles-based artist, delves into the visceral intersections of mythology, history, and urban culture. With a provocative blend of installations, performances, and multimedia works, Baltazar's art confronts and disrupts established narratives. His practice, steeped in his Mexican heritage, explores themes of identity, spirituality, and resistance, creating a raw, immersive experience that challenges viewers to reconsider their perceptions and engage with the socio-political undercurrents of contemporary life. Baltazar's work is a defiant exploration of the sacred and the profane, an unflinching examination of power dynamics, and an invitation to revolutionary thought.

Berta Jottar, an interdisciplinary scholar and media creator, holds a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at TISCH School of the Arts (NYU). For the past two decades, Jottar has dedicated her expertise to researching and recording the music and dance traditions of the AfroLatinx Diaspora across the East Coast, San Juan, Puerto Rico and La Habana. Her media work blends elements of cinema verité with experimental ethnography, aiming to explore alternative forms of knowledge through embodied practices such as gesture and sound. Before relocating to the East Coast, Jottar interest on border and diaspora cultures drove her to engage actively with art collectives on the West Coast, including The Border Art Workshop/Taller de arte fronterizo, Las Comadres and other artist collectives in the Tijuana/San Diego border region. Most recently, Jottar has spearheaded multiple projects in Havana, Cuba encompassing music, performance and film. Her latest productions are La Cura, News From Nowhere and The Batista Syndrome, all directed by Steve Fagin. Currently, she is immersed in developing a multimedia archive and manuscript about rumba music and dance in New York City and Havana.

Joshua Javier Guzmán is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA, where he serves as Vice Chair of the Department and the Director of the LGBTQ Studies program. He is the author of Dissatisfactions: Queer Latinidad and the Politics of Style. He is currently working on a second monograph entitled Brown Exposures: Queer Photography and the Literary Aperture, which is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant.

Tickets will be available at Beyond Baroque's bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. No one turned away for lack of funds.

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow attendees, or performers.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, United States