Artists: "Los Cybrids" – John Jota Leaños, Rene Garcia, and Praba Pilar
Exhibition Dates: April 29 – August 25, 2001
Galería de la Raza launches Los Cybrids: la Raza Techno-Crítica, a series of Digital Murals, community Performalogues and a multimedia installation to take place throughout 2001. Los Cybrids is comprised of John Jota Leaños, Mónica Praba Pilar and Rene García. Los Cybrids are digital artists/digital discontents who use performance and high-tech art to instigate radical dialogues about the social, cultural and environmental consequences of information technologies (IT). They resist the idea that cultural difference within cyberspace is non-existent, and instead claim that the expansion of IT accelerates the process of commercial globalization at an unprecedented rate.
"The work of Los Cybrids keeps Galería on the cutting edge of muralism and cultural critique," noted Executive Director Carolina Ponce de León. "The combination of performative dialogues, multi media art, installations and digital murals will provide the artists with a wide range of possibilities for communicating their critical ideas."
Los Cybrids give this warning: "This is not a virus, this is an infectious invasion that has permeated the dominant culture. This is a militaristic exercise in the guise of technological prowess and cultural expression. Beware: The e-medium is the message. if you have yet to be co-opted by the digital revolution, then you've got mail."
ARTIST STATEMENT
The concept of the Digital Divide arises out of a feverish Millennial marketing pitch that insists universal access to computers and the Internet will bridge the chasm between the rich and the poor. Through computers and the Internet, communities of color and the poor within the United States and the Third World will have access to tremendous new opportunities to raise their incomes and standards of living. Bridging the Digital Divide worldwide, we’re told, will provide democracy, broaden public access, extend the global community, fight deforestation, global warming, world hunger and end poverty! The Third World and the poor of the world will bless the day they first encountered the . . . LAPTOP…. and ended corruption, poverty, military rule, repression, joblessness and injustice.
We in communities of color must be very wary of the promises that the high technology industry is peddling. Rather than buying into this techno-mythology, we must ask questions about the real digital divide that is NOT being bridged. Why aren’t people of color getting the high paying high end technology jobs instead of lower paying entry level work? Why aren’t people of color the owners of high technology companies, instead of employees? Why don’t people of color find themselves reflected on the Internet? Who is producing the content? Who is creating it? Does the Internet reflect our world? What are we being taught about technology in OUR schools – how to type, or how to write programs?
We are led to play follow the leader in this game of computing. Everyday we are breathlessly told that the last one to have a computer will be “left behind” and lose the possibility of participating in the “new global e-conomy”. Stand back and take a look at all the money being transferred from our wallets to Bill Gates, watch people of color filling low paying computer manufacturing jobs all over the world, watch toxic computer waste filling landfills in our communities. Who is getting wealthy and who is the real rotten egg?
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| cybrid \si-bred\ n (2000) 1: a Latino digi-tech artist from a disproportionately under-represented demographic in the cyberworld. |
