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Bodega Surrealism: The Emergence of Latin@ Artivists in New York City, 1976-Present.

dc.contributor.authorValentin, Wilsonen_US
dc.date.accessioned2011-09-15T17:13:50Z
dc.date.availableNO_RESTRICTIONen_US
dc.date.available2011-09-15T17:13:50Z
dc.date.issued2011en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/86395
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation examines the cultural activism, or artivism, of two community-based art communities and projects that originated in the 1970s within the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City: the New Rican Village Cultural Arts Center (NRV) and the Puerto Rican Embassy. Based on the premise that culture has the potential to create anti-hegemonic, emancipatory social change for a generation of working-class Puerto Rican and Latina/o artists, their art responded to the social and political alienation they and their accompanying communities experienced. By examining cultural performances, art installations, and arts programming, I demonstrate how the artists embarked upon aesthetic, social, spatial, and political interventions. In analyzing the NRV’s Latin jazz musical performances and workshops, I suggest that the NRV musicians were harbingers of a new Latina/o identity and style that posited a dialectical relationship between aesthetics, racial identity, and society. This eventually gave rise to an avant-garde Latin jazz music scene and community that I identify as a “Latin jazz Left.” In addition, through the musicians’ collaborations with poets, dancers, and artists, an interartistic space and aesthetic emerged. In addition to music, the artists at the NRV also engaged in aesthetic innovations, highlighted by the spurious Puerto Rican Embassy project and accompanying Spirit Republic of Puerto Rico. A spaceless institution that exists virtually on the Web and emphasizes liberation as a conceptual and decolonial space, the Embassy serves as a creative response to the material constraints afforded to a colonized community struggling for autonomy. These expressions give rise to what I call a “Bodega Surrealism,” a working-class aesthetic “sancocho” or collage that merges disparate cultural ensembles that engage the everyday logics and spaces of marginality. Drawing from extensive oral history interviews, and primary and archival documents, this study employs the interdisciplinary methods of American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Visual and Cultural Studies to chronicle an alternative, counter-narrative of avant-gardism rooted in working-class and racial struggles and experiences. This study documents the creative and significant artivism employed by the NRV and the Puerto Rican Embassy and reveal a community acutely able to engage in decolonial social action through cultural practices.en_US
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.subjectCultural Activismen_US
dc.subjectNew Rican Villageen_US
dc.subjectLatin Jazzen_US
dc.subjectSurrealismen_US
dc.subjectPuerto Rican Embassyen_US
dc.subjectPlacemakingen_US
dc.titleBodega Surrealism: The Emergence of Latin@ Artivists in New York City, 1976-Present.en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.description.thesisdegreenamePhDen_US
dc.description.thesisdegreedisciplineAmerican Cultureen_US
dc.description.thesisdegreegrantorUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studiesen_US
dc.contributor.committeememberAparicio, Frances R.en_US
dc.contributor.committeememberHoffnung-Garskof, Jesse E.en_US
dc.contributor.committeememberLa Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence M.en_US
dc.contributor.committeememberStern, Alexandraen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelMusic and Danceen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelTheatre and Dramaen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelAmerican and Canadian Studiesen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelHistory (General)en_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelHumanities (General)en_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelLatin American and Caribbean Studiesen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelSocial Sciences (General)en_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelSociologyen_US
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelArtsen_US
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelHumanitiesen_US
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelSocial Sciencesen_US
dc.description.bitstreamurlhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86395/1/wilsonva_1.pdf
dc.owningcollnameDissertations and Theses (Ph.D. and Master's)


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