Raphael Montañez Ortiz: Chopping Up the Classics (Copy)
Puerto Ricans in Action is proud to be community partners with UCLA Film and Television Archive for this screening.
It's not often we get historically important events like this in California, so we are incredibly proud to partner with UCLA Library Film & Television Archive and the Echo Park Film Collective on this two-day symposium honoring the videography repertoire of Raphael Montañez Ortiz.
During his life, Rafael Montañez Ortíz created materials for schools in East and Central Harlem that would highlight Puerto Rican art, history, folklore, and culture.
In Museo del Barrio's founding documents, Montañez Ortiz stated, "The cultural disenfranchisement I experience as a Puerto Rican has prompted me to seek a practical alternative to the orthodox museum, which fails to meet my needs for an authentic ethnic experience. To afford me and others the opportunity to establish living connections with our own culture, I founded El Museo del Barrio." He served as director of the institution from when it was founded, June 1969, to Spring 1971.
Throughout his career, Montañez Ortiz assessed the symbolic meaning of his actions as a destruction artist and his engaged political position. He noted:
"There are today, throughout the world, a handful of artists working in a way, which is truly unique in art history. Theirs is an art which separates the makers from the unmakers, the assemblers from the disassemblers, the constructors from the destructors. These artists are destroyers, materialists, and sensualists dealing with processes directly. These artists are destructivists and do not pretend to play God's happy game of creation; on the contrary, theirs is a response to the pervading will to kill. It is not the trauma of birth which concerns the destructivist. He understands that there is no need for magic in living. It is one's sense of death which needs the life-giving nourishment of transcendental ritual."
Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.
