Centro Cultural de la Raza Show to Open With a Flair

In terms of creativity and excitement, no museum in San Diego touches the exuberance of a Centro Cultural de la Raza art opening, one of which will be sprung on San Diego tonight at this museum-in-a-water-tank opposite the Naval Hospital in Balboa Park.

Chicano comedian-turned actor Cheech Marin (“Born in East L.A.”) will do a comic riff. Ruben Guevara and the Con Safos band from East Los Angeles will play Chicano rhythm and blues. Two performance art pieces--Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s “Border Shaman” and “Ice and Fire Behind the Masks of Tijuana” by Tijuana’s Grupo Olmeca--will be performed.

“Border Realities IV” or “Casa de Cambio,” is a wildly innovative curatorial spin on the vogue in “interactive” exhibits. One Centro official dubbed it a “maniacal mystery tour.”

Although some museums refer to recordings that are activated by viewers pushing buttons as interactive, “Casa de Cambio” insists on the viewer’s complete physical involvement.

The art center has been transformed into a maze of twisting, turning passages that lead visitors on a disorienting tour to chambers where art installations and paintings are situated. One installation requires viewers to scoot on their backs through a tunnel lying on an automotive mechanic’s creeper in order to observe the art overhead.

In other exhibits viewers may fingerprint themselves and create their own passports or poke their heads through cutouts of typical border figures, from immigration agents to undocumented workers. The idea is to involve the viewer.

“The whole thing of a gallery seems sort of strange, just to see things nailed to a wall,” said Victor Ochoa, the center’s acting director.

In a typical art exhibit the public has 6 to 12 seconds to analyze artworks, he said.

“This (exhibit) was designed to get the viewer involved with the maze. The idea is to try to capture the audience.”

Sponsored by the Border Arts Workshop (Taller de Arte Fronterizo), a cooperative of San Diego and Tijuana artists, the exhibit is designed specifically to disorient visitors and to change their views of the border. The show includes pieces by Tijuana artists reflecting the recent assassination of Tijuana journalist Hector (Felix) Gato Miranda.

The exhibit’s title refers to the money exchange shops that dot the border region. But translated literally, “Casa de Cambio” means house of change.

One of the key forces behind this Border Realities exhibit is Michael Schnorr, an artist and professor at Southwestern College.

“It’s interesting to me,” Schnorr said in an interview, “if the border is such a mess as it’s portrayed in the media, why have people found a place here to raise their families for generations and generations?”

To point up border reality, Schnorr conceived a video documentary that juxtaposes media and movie stereotypes of the border with the views of residents in San Ysidro and Tijuana. Filmed by Berta Jottar and Alicia Florez, the residents of these two communities speak of the border as their homes.

“Nobody is interested in showing the border as something nice,” said Jottar, a native of Mexico City, who now lives in Tijuana. Even in central Mexico, Tijuana is portrayed as some kind of awful Sodom and Gomorrah, she said. Jottar’s mother tried to prevent her from moving to Tijuana.

“My mother said it’s dangerous, that there might be bandits,” Jottar said. Her experience, however, has been the opposite, with one exception.

“The problem was to talk about the border as a really peaceful place to live without ignoring that the canyons are dangerous places. Away from the urban areas, it has a dangerous zone.”

The 30-minute video, “Backyard to Backyard: Erasing the Line,” may be checked out on cassette as well as viewed at the exhibition, which runs through July 17.

“We’re trying to expose you to all the different things that go on at the border, and we hope it will stimulate the viewer to see things differently, and stimulate a change of attitude,” Ochoa said. “There are so many issues we are trying to cover . . . such as amnesty and zero tolerance. We feel obligated to cover that.

“Somebody from out of town sees things like helicopters around the border as militaristic. But, if you live around the border, it’s something common like mosquitoes or flies around the garbage can.”