40: A Loving Trickster: Using Culture, Story, and Disruption to Spark Art & Social Change

Needless to say, this year has been both odd and extraordinary. Odd? --- Well, Pick your poison. Extraordinary? --- Because we spent the year having amazing conversations with dozens of creative change agents who are kicking ass making a real difference in the upside-down world we live in. These conversations have helped us at the Center for the Study of Art & Community manage the lurking shadows and have sparked some new ideas and even optimism. We're excited to be starting our second season on February 2, but in the meantime we thought it might be nice to revisit some of our most popular past episodes. Next up is Normando Ismay, The Loving Trickster. After our initial airing of this episode, we received dozens of emails thanking us for pulling back the curtain on what one listener described as "the wonderfully vibrant and wacky alternative Bizzoso Universe. A place we all need to visit over and over in these grey and uncertain times." So, we invite you to sit back, have a listen, and hitch a ride on Normando's Bizzoso Universe. Normando Ismay – A Loving TricksterIn this episode, Normando Ismay introduces us to ephemeral places like Chilecito and the Mattress Factory. Cafes Beirut. Bizzoso and Success, and an extraordinary cast of characters. that includes Papa Bizzoso, the one-time child, preacher Contralabias, the smuggler, the Last Inca, Pedro Borjehas. And Danimite the drug dealer who succomes in the legendary Atlanta crack attack.BIONormando Ismay was born in the city of All the Saints of the New Rioja in northwest Argentina. As a young adult, he came to the United States, settling in Atlanta to pursue a career as a visual artist. Since then, he has worked in a variety of media including metal, painting, sculpture and installation art.He built a barn-like structure in his backyard and began the operation of the Little Beirut Art Space, a gallery/performance venue for visual art exhibits, poetry readings, storytelling, film, music and dance.At this time, he also began an integration of visual and performing art, combining Andean flutes, drums and stories of magical realism into large- and small-scale performances and performance installations. Normando creates work in Spanish, English and in a bilingual blending. Some of his works include “The Last Inca”, about Pedro de Bohorquez who passes as an Inca and controls northwest Argentina; “Contralabias”, about a North American smuggler, the invention of lipstick and the birth of Argentina.  Normando’s large-scale performance installations accommodate other performing artists and combine paintings, signage, sculptures, video projections, masks, seating, lighting and a stage. Café Bizzoso, Café Cultural de Chamblee, The Condor’s Next Hotel, Bannaland, The Mattress Factory Lounge and Dumpsite, to name a few. Normando’s work has been presented throughout Atlanta and the southeast, as well as in New York, Argentina and Europe. The New York Times, High Performance, the Atlanta Constitution, Art Papers, Mundo Hispanico, and other publications have written about his work. He has received grants from the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Fulton County Arts Council, Georgia Council for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1991 he received the Paul Robeson award in Cultural Democracy.Threshold Questions and Delicious QuotesWhat is Cafe Bezzoso?Well, Cafe Bizzoso, it was a traveling performance space, an art installation specific to the site where I was creating it. Bizzoso came out of a proposal that I made to the Arts Festival of Atlanta. They had invited me to perform in this huge stage. … And it's like me and my solo storytelling act and my public is like twenty feet away from me like no intimacy possible because of that. So, I made him a proposal to build a small performance venue for storyteller’s poets. and like that, and they liked the ideaWas the Crack Attack an art exhibition?And then two or three nights after that, Steve Seaberg hanging with me, and he was like uh, "We have to do something." You know, and we started making art about it. And we started filling up the lot and between my house and the crack house with art. And we kept working empty lot, and we'd turn it into a, do an art show. We called it the Crack Attack Show.Who was the Last Inca?Oh it's, it's, an amazing story straight out of history. And The Last Inca is the story of a Spanish soldier who ends up in Peru and he gets in trouble with the Viceroy and they banish him and to, send to a fort Copiapo in Chile, that they know, is about to fall to the indigenous people from there. And this young man goes there, and he builds a cannon out of wood. That was only good for like a couple of explosions. And then the Canon fell apart, but it was enough to signal to the Araucanos that the Spaniards now had a cannon and they decided to leave. (And that just the beginning)TranscriptBC: [00:00:00] Hello,Normando are you there?Normando ismay, could be described as having a transcendent spirit.Hello Normando,. Let's see.I think you're there somewhere. Oops. Not there.A painter. A poet. A pirate. A conjurer of stories.There you are. Uh, But above all a trickster, a serious trickster shapeshifter.Can you hear me?Who's enigmatic stories, some would say.NI: [00:00:32] Do you see me?BC: [00:00:33] are hard to believe.I do not see you.Yes. Hard to believe. But true.There. you are.my word. You haven'tchanged a bitNI: [00:00:42] I haveBC: [00:00:43] a hundred years. It's good to see you.This is Change the Story / Change the World, a Chronicle of art and community transformation.Now. I've known Normando Ismay, since the time of corded telephones and dollar-a-gallon, fossil fuel. He's one of those people whose story needs absolutely no spin, just a little air and an ear tuned to listening and learning and laughing, which we did together at the end of April 2021.With me in Alameda, California, the ancestral home of the Ohlone people, and Armando, at his relatively new studio in Taccoa, Georgia, the traditional lands of the Tsalaquwetiyi (Cherokee East)Along the way we're introduced to ephemeral places like Chilecito and the Mattress Factory. Cafes with names like Beirut. Bizzoso and Success, And an extraordinary cast of characters. That includes Papa Bizzoso, the one-time child, preacher Contralabias, the smuggler, the last Inca, Pedro Borjehas. And Danimite the drug dealer who succomes in the legendary Atlanta crack attack.Part One Bizzoso, the Mattress, Factory and ChilicitoI'd just like to give you a few questions to set the table and we'll see what happens. So the first one is what is your work? How do you describe your work in the world thus far? NI: [00:02:19] The first thing that I would have to say is my work. Isn't just one kind of work. You know, I've gone through all kinds of medias and work that I've done. I think it was Erich Frome a book I read of him and something that got me was about specialization and dependency. And I think at that point decided I wasn't going to specialize in anything and that's how I've approached my life. You know, working on new skills and sometimes making dramatic shifts in what I was doing. And. So it's hard for me to define what my work is in like a couple of words.BC: [00:03:11] Yes, I hear that. And actually, you have a lot in common with almost everybody I've talked to, which is A very strong intention to follow a winding path that is in service to something more than just a discipline or a skill, but something else. So if you Looked at the horizon line what have you been moving towards with these various paths? NI: [00:03:36] To live. Right. I always say, try my best, not to exploit or be exploited. And of course, you can't be a hundred percent on that. You will get exploited and you will exploit. Trying to keep a degree of honesty in that I think has been here where I've been hanging for years,BC: [00:04:00] yeah. Actually, that echoes what Alice Lovelace said when I asked her the same question; is to try really hard to learn from her mistakes and try not to repeat them with the goal of not causing bad trouble, but just good trouble. Yeah. I was thinking about your move for a long time. You established yourself both as a maker, creative person, but also as a location with Cafe Bizzoso also, and Little Beruit. And I'm wondering if you've imported those to your new space NI: [00:04:37] It does have elements of all of it, so there's the space.BC: [00:04:45] So the idea of Cafe Bizzoso so you know, it, it's not just a performance space, it means something to you. What does it, what does it mean?NI: [00:04:54] Well, Cafe Bizzoso, it was a traveling performance space, an art installation specific to the site where I was creating it.