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Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Brooklyn-dwelling poet, actor and activist.  A former teacher and social worker, Gomez starred in the film Inside Man (2006, Universal Pictures) with Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owen.  If you didn’t catch his film work, perhaps you’ve seen him leave audiences breathless on Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, the popular HBO series featuring up-and-coming spoken word poets.  More than 100 colleges in the U.S. have invited Carlos to perform and in North America, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa, international audiences have all witnessed one of the most powerful voices of our generation.

Did we mention that his first, full-length solo album, Carlos Andres Gomez: Live from New York, won the 2006 L.A. Music Award for Spoken Word Album of the Year?  He has also been sampled by DJs and musicians from Germany, South Africa, Israel, Zambia, the Cayman Islands, Cuba and Zimbabwe.  Carlos will be embarking on his “Majority of One” U.S. college tour this coming October for the ’08-’09 school year and you definitely don’t want to miss it!

Simone Jacobson, USArts External Affairs Officer, interviewed Carlos about traveling, inspiration and what it means to “man up”.

SJ:  Why do you write?  Every poet has a "why I spit" poem…

That poem is way too over done.  And I think we poets need to stop “spitting” that “hot fire” and just be more vulnerable and risky in our work. 

Why I write.  Why I live.  It’s summed up in this mantra:

The single most revolutionary thing you can do is recognize that you are enough.

I know it might sound corny but every performance I do is geared toward empowering people who have felt shamed in some way and hopefully helping to give them a sense of worth and beauty. 

SJ:  What travel experience changed you forever? 

I worked at an HIV/AIDS youth community centre in a township outside of Zambia’s capital city a few years back.  It is the reason I am a full-time artist today.  I saw young people living with such abandon and courage.  It overwhelmed me how powerfully their art pulsed through them.  It made me hold myself accountable to my own gifts.  Now I can’t allow myself to not sing out fully or completely commit to a role – I would be lying to myself.

SJ:  What was the best audience response you ever received abroad?  I myself performed poems in English while in France, knowing my words wouldn't be understood, but that the energy was absorbed, reciprocated, transformed.  It was a very freeing experience; it was like performing for the deaf in a way and it intensified the necessity to perform and give my full physical and emotional presence to the crowd, and not simply read poetry to an audience.  Did you feel this way, too?

I was performing my one-man play, “Man Up,” last summer in Scotland for the Fringe Festival.  A group of about 15 Japanese high school students came to the show one night.  It was a month-long run at the biggest performing arts festival in the world, so you can imagine how diverse and varied the audiences were.  Well, I noticed about half of the group were whispering to the person next to them between the separate vignettes during the show, which really started to bother me.  The show is an incredibly vulnerable and raw look at masculinity and what it means to be a man.  I basically get up on stage and share my most intimate and revealing secrets over the course of an hour.  The end is about as vulnerable as I could imagine a person ever being on stage.  I’m so stripped down and open.  I’d be scared to death every night.

After the show, one pair from the group came up to me and the guy was sobbing but trying hard to cover his face as he walked up.  The young woman with him said, “He really loved your show.”
“What’s your name, brother?”  I asked the guy.
“He doesn’t speak English,” she said, “but he says he understood and he felt it here,” and she put her hand over her heart.

I realized that all the whispering they were doing throughout had been translating that was being done for those in the group who didn’t speak English.

SJ:   If you could be anywhere in the world at this moment, where would you be? 

I would be playing Wiffle Ball with my little brother and sister, Nicolas and Maya, who live in Austria.  It was their 11th birthday today and it felt like a punch in the chest that I couldn’t see them.
 
SJ:  How has teaching affected your artistry?  How has your artistry affected your teaching?

To me it’s the same thing.  The best of what each field has to offer forces us to reconsider what we think we know and should inspire us to be better people.

SJ:  Who inspires you?

Quiet heroes who never get acknowledged like my sister, Sara Gómez, who has worked for women’s rights in India, Nicaragua, and México over the past seven years or my mom, Dr. Gale Goodwin Gómez, who has fought for indigenous peoples’ rights in the Amazon for 25 years, or my father, Luís Gómez-Echeverri, who has worked for the United Nations with Kyoto Protocol and environmental sustainability and human rights-related projects for over 30 years.

SJ:  What do you want to whisper?

Let go.

SJ:  What do you want to shout?

Nothing.  There’s enough volume in the world.  I would just extend an awkward silence, look a person in the eyes, and take them in.

SJ:  What's your "it" list this year for…

Arts or Culture Venue?  Bar 13 in NYC on a Monday night.  The best poetry I’ve ever seen.
Music? Immortal Technique and Bunny Rabbit
City? New York.  It’s been the “it” city and it will be forever.
Country? Rwanda.  I’m going there in August.
Artist (performing or visual or both) Banksy – one of the most incredible artists on Earth.  Look him up.
Knowledge (newspaper, website, blog, etc.)? Amazing blog – http://riseatjawn.wordpress.com/

Carlos will be embarking on his “Majority of One” college tour this coming October for the ’08-’09 school year.

Carlos Andres Gomez Website:
www.carloslive.com

Keep up with Carlos’ latest gigs and touring – join his Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21169380208

Most important of all, join the DISTINCTLY BEAUTIFUL Movement and share the exercise with someone you love:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14894985121

LONDON:  The Manifesto

 “The function of public art for regeneration is to sex up the control of the underclasses,” (Free Art Collective, August 2005 as part of London in 6 Easy Steps: Real Estate: Art in a Changing City, curated by B+B at the ICA, London) This quote was featured on a billboard in Roding Road in East London in 2005 and appears with other photos of public art projects at www.manifestoofpossibilities.co.uk , a collaboration of B+B founder Sophie Hope and Dr. Cameron Cartiere of Birkbeck College. Dr. Cameron Cartiere is a lecturer in Arts Policy and Management and Director of Doctoral Research for the Faculty of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck, University of London. Sophie Hope is a PhD. student at the University of London. When Dr. Cartiere first developed the Manifesto of Possibilities, the resulting living document proved to be a series of talking points relating to commissioning public art in the urban environment. In a sequence of three symposia in London uniting architects, artists, policymakers, academics, developers, and commissioners, Dr. Cartiere and Ms. Hope developed what Cartiere clarifies is “not a recipe, not guidelines or rules,” for commissioning public art, rather the Manifesto is an articulation of the questions that need to be asked.

The purpose of the symposia was to “uncover the conflicting aspects of the commissioning process; identify key factors for engaging artists on design teams; share effective means of evaluation; explore alternative ways of working with the community; examine the role of the curator in developing public art projects; challenge the trend of compromised art in the public realm,” (The Artists Information Company).

Dr. Cartiere, an inspiration to arts policy students and public art commissioners alike, earned her BFA in Fine Arts: Sculpture from San Francisco Academy of Art College and her MA in Museum Studies: Museum Education from John F. Kennedy University. She worked fulltime at the College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland and went to JFK at night. John F. Kennedy University is one of the two major museum studies programs in the United States, the other being George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After graduating from JFK, she became the curator at the Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael, California.

At Falkirk, Cartiere planned events, developed branding, curated exhibitions, and handled public relations. “That’s where I started working with art in the public realm,” says Cartiere.  With author Suzanne Lacy, Cartiere developed a conference addressing the lack of criticism or discussion of the “new genre public art,” a term coined by Lacy. Lacy’s book,  Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, was published in 1995 by Bay Press. Their work on the conference set the tone for Cartiere’s future PhD in Curatorial Practice/Contemporary Art Theory from Chelsea College of Art & Design in London.

“I was seduced,” says Cartiere, “I was brought over to this side of the world, the public art side of the world that is.”

Cartiere’s appetite for productive dialogue about the public art commission process grew from a view-changing drive up the West Coast after she moved to London.  She had witnessed many different communities, from San Diego to Vancouver, BC that were “reinventing the wheel” of the commission process. She realized professionals in different cities were going through the same challenges but didn’t have a forum to express their shared knowledge. This was the inspiration for the Manifesto project.

Students can now use the Manifesto as a launch pad for new public art projects. Go to www.manifestoofpossibilities.co.uk 

Check out Sophie Hope’s B+B. Click here www.welcomebb.org.uk

Credits: Anna Smith