United States of Amnesia | José Torres-Tama Performance ( at ArtsXchange)

ArtsXchange is hosting this residency in collaboration with our friends at the historic Academy Theatre in Hapeville. We will welcome revolutionary artist and performance poet José Torres-Tama for a powerful residency that bridges history, memory, and movement.

A bold and unflinching voice in performance art, Torres-Tama will offer three performance workshops and three showings of his searing multimedia solo performance, United States of Amnesia: In a System that Seduces You to Forget, Dare to Remember.

The residency is part of the ArtsXchange’s ongoing commitment to art as resistance and communal healing.

Learn more about all performances and workshops.

Performance tickets are $15.

United States of Amnesia: In a System that Seduces You to Forget, Dare to Remember

In the satirical, genre-bending show, Torres-Tama channels a “shamanistic time traveler” to conjure the past and expose the present.

United States of Amnesia connects the dots across centuries — from the Three-Fifths Compromise and Indian Removal Act to Operation Wetback and Zero Tolerance immigration policies — tracing a brutal through-line of dehumanizing legislation that uplifts white supremacist thinking while exploiting Black, Brown, and Indigenous labor. Through humor and radical remembering, Torres-Tama calls out the hypocrisy of the colonial settler system and demands an awakening from the induced amnesia of empire.

“The most radical thing an artist can do today is dare to remember in a culture submerged in amnesia, lies, and misinformation,” Torres-Tama said.

About the Artist

José Torres-Tama is an Ecuadorian-born interdisciplinary provocateur of Quechua indigenous descent. He is an award-winning performance and visual artist; published playwright and poet; photographer and journalist; and arts educator with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. Among many awards, he has received a Louisiana Theater Fellowship, three NPN Creation Fund Awards, and a MAPFUND Grant award for his Taco Truck Theater diverse ensemble on wheels.

From 2006 to 2011, he contributed post-Katrina commentaries that aired on NPR's Latino USA. He exposed the myriad human rights violations Latin American immigrant reconstruction workers endured while heroically contributing to the resurrection of the flooded port city of New Orleans. United States of Amnesia was developed through National Performance Network Creation Fund Award, and co-commissioned by the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans and GALA Hispanic Theater in Washington, DC.

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Thanks to our funders! The official accommodation provider is Holiday Inn & Suites Atlanta Airport North.