ABSTRACT
This performative text introduces Imaginary Activism dealing with imaginary, socially conscious epic art, literary projects and outrageous mental-scapes. Performance poem “The New Barbarians” is written as a response to the Invasion of Iraq and the “War on Terror.” “The Self-Deportation Project” is a performance text for public radio which inspired the film A Day without Mexicans, which is politically pertinent today in response to Trump’s Mexiphobia. “Rehearsing in Front of the Mirror” is an activist speech; trying out different voices and rhetorical devices; poetic and imagined politics. “Imaginary PSA for Pocha Nostra Air,” written by Gómez-Peña and Emma Tramposch, for a more romanticized airline that brings diversity and fun back to contemporary travel. “A Declaration of Human Rights” was from an artist’s perspective developed by activist doctor/rocker Rupa Marya in collaboration with Gómez-Peña in “post-gentrification” San Francisco, when artists and immigrant communities were being evicted every day. “Rewriting Marcos in the Trump Era” reworks a text by Subcomandante Marcos to re-map his consciousness in the new century, amidst the scary neo-nationalisms thriving in the world and the new borders within his own psyche.
