El Mexterminator was an interactive performance series that traced a new ethnographic and cultural map of Mexican New York. In part, artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes’s extensive series included a live Internet chatroom, as well as a radio call-in show, during which individuals were encouraged to participate as their “favorite cultural avatars.” They discussed both their fears and desires of the cultural “other,” as well as reflected on the horror of a country perceived to be under seige by immigrants and people of color.

After gathering first-hand feedback regarding these topics, El Mexterminator offered Techno-Museo de Etnografia Interactiva at El Museo del Barrio, an event which featured performances shaped by the audience’s prior interactions with the artists’ ethno-cyborg selves, thereby creating an embodiment of the participants’ own psychological and cultural monsters.

Photograph by Eileen Travell

Guillermo Gómez-Peña with Roberto Sifuentes and Sara Shelton Mann

El Mexterminator

Manhattan

1998