Alicia A. Delgado and Professor Joseph Ostraff, Visual Arts

Background

Food and eating carry many associations. For the video installation, I wanted to portray a culture partaking of another culture’s foods. I wanted the food of one=s culture to be symbolic of the literal consuming of it. I think it is interesting how often we say, “Oh, I love Mexican food.” But how in touch are you with the culture?

I think of Utah Valley, how it is mostly white, and there are many Mexican restaurants around here. I think of how homogenous the cultural composition of the town is. The people working in the restaurant I chose, those doing the cooking and cleaning, are first or second generation immigrants from Mexico. I want to emphasize with this project that we see another culture through our eyes, and we choose our own experience. We might not ever understand or experience something because we see it how we want to see-through filtered, biased lenses.

I chose to portray a white American family dining out at a Mexican restaurant. But the menu is tame, health conscious, and pleasing to the yuppie palate- no chicken feet in the soup, no cow stomach (tripe), nothing too greasy, etc.

The Creative Team included Joseph Ostraff, his wife, and five of his children; Brian Wilcox, Cinematographer; and myself, Alicia Delgado, Art Director. As the art director, I listed the shots, or desired scenes I wanted to appear in the video. I drew these out and described them for Brian, the cameraman. First we show the family walking through the door. They are seated, and I come to their table as their Latina waitress. I take their order, bring their beverages and food, and then clean up after them. Brian has been getting closeups of each member of the family eating, drinking, chewing, talking, and interacting. Once they are done, I clean up, and soon another family walks through the door and is seated at the same table.

One significant shot is where the dark skinned youth is chopping meat. In the background are pictures by Diego Rivera, showing dark skinned laborers. Another was where Joseph, wearing his USA t-shirt, takes the leftover burritos and puts them in a container. I see this symbolic to where he has “consumed” a culture- he has taken what he wants and is leaving the rest. With this I wanted to allude to the cycle of one culture serving and the other consuming.

I wanted to show those serving: those cleaning and cooking. Those serving are dark skinned and those eating are light skinned. The foods the family eats, like tomato and avocado, are foods the Nahuatl tribes of Mexico had cultivated and named before the Spanish explorers arrived. This is a reference to colonialism.

Progress

I have 42 minutes recorded, and my goal is to cut down to 3 minutes. I have logged the most important shots, and I will review them to make the best decisions on what I will keep or cut. I have contact with BYU film students who can guide me with the technical aspects of editing. Once the segment is completed, that will be recorded repeatedly, which is called a video loop. Sound was not a factor when we were shooting, so no natural ambience will be heard. Instead, . I plan to add fiesta music-howls, laughing, musical instruments, voices in Spanish . It is meant to seem out of place, because the family is just eating, but they are consuming another culture’s food.

Presentation

For my final presentation, Consumer Culture will be shown at the Springville Museum of Art in November 2000. I would like to have a table with video monitors seated on the chair and an assortment of New World foods on the table. All of the objects will contribute to the tone of the installation.

Evaluation

It is hard to say how people will read this, but I want to tell people to look beyond the label, to become familiar with the culture, to go outside their zone. To venture to another place, I wonder if well-intended people go out to a restaurant and think they have done the world in a day.

I admit that this project may seem complicated. I admit that I have feelings about this, because my father is Mexican-American, and my mother is Anglo-American. I have dark skin. People ask me where I’m from, and think they expect me to answer in an accent and tell them another country besides the U.S.

Another challenge with this project was getting volunteers. Joseph offered to have his family be the “consumers of culture.” It was not something I wanted to ask people I didn’t know, because I felt they might not agree to it if they knew what it was about. I feel that maybe this approach is almost confrontational, and I have struggled with it. I avoid confrontations, but will speak up if there is a good reason to.

What is ironic is that I have yet to become more in touch with my Mexican roots. Growing up, my socialization at church has been with white kids, but the population of my town ( Salinas, CA) was largely Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans. I believe this project has helped me examine my intentions as an artist, as a person of mixed heritage, and as an Latter-day Saint.

I am grateful to have had this opportunity. I have enjoyed working with the creative tea. I enjoyed working with the Ostraffs. I was also happy Brian could lend his camera expertise to the project.

By working with others, I have discovered the value and the joy of collaborative work. I usually think of art as solo time, like drawing or painting, but I realize art can and should involve many more people. As a result of this project, I have become more familiar with the media arts and gained confidence in expressing abstract ideas into words and eve motion picture. It is such a familiar medium that I have forgotten the artistic significance. I have also started to establish contacts with people in the creative work force. This experience has opened my eye to possibilities that I might not have entertained, and I am encouraged to continue artistic pursuits.