On inventing new futures

I’m curious about when you first decided you wanted to become an artist. Tell me a little bit about your background.

I started as a musician. I’ve been working in the experimental music scene in Peru since 2001. Back then, people who played experimental music didn’t necessarily think of themselves as artists. Because I organized so many events and experimental operas—always starting with sound and then developing them into multimedia projects—people began to recognize me as an experimental opera director.

At one point, I applied for a residency at the Delfina Foundation in London, where my project was to create an experimental opera. When I returned, the gallery that supported my residency told me, “We don’t want an opera. We have a gallery, and we need to fill it with your work for three months.”

So I said, “Okay, I’m going to combine the language of the visual arts with my sound practices.” I decided to create an installation, which I called an opera without actors. On the day of the opening, when the museum director introduced me, he said, “I want to introduce the artist, Alan Poma.” That was the moment I became an artist.

You’re constantly working on so many different projects—you’ve written the Andean Futurist Text Manifesto, you teach, you do these lectures on Indigenous art, you’re also developing a new opera. How do you balance all of these different projects?

There are two important things. First of all is that they are all connected through Andean Futurism. Through it, I’m building up a practice and a concept at the same time. It doesn’t matter what my practice is now, it’s all related with this concept—Andean Futurism, which sometimes feels external to me. It needs to be filled up with ideas, with creativity, with love.

It’s also tied to the concept of the artist within Andean Futurism: a person who makes things come alive, who brings life into the world. So everything I do—whether I’m writing, teaching, or working on an artistic project or performance—is a way to share that kind of energy.

Could you talk about the inspiration for the Andean Futurism Manifesto and your process of writing the text?

It was a long journey. Before I wrote the Andean Futurism Manifesto, I first developed the concept of Andean Futurism itself. At that time, if you searched for Andean Futurism on Google, nothing would come up—it was a concept I had to build from the ground up.

I developed it through a practice I had worked on for about seven years: my adaptation of the Russian Cubo-Futurist opera, The Victory Over the Sun. That experience allowed me to finally put my ideas into words. I was inspired by the Russian Cubo-Futurist Manifestos, particularly how they embraced collaboration. If you look at Russian Futurist books, they are collaborations between painters, designers, and poets. I wanted to do something similar—a project that brought together artists from Lima.

And I was thinking about the people around me back in 2019. Many of them were feeling really depressed. I wanted to create something that could help people feel proud—something that said, “We have a history, but it’s not frozen in museums. We can engage with these ancient paths, recreate them, and build something for the future. Just because we don’t have an ancient written language doesn’t mean we didn’t develop our own tradition of aesthetics or philosophical ideas.”

I think you’re such an interesting artist because you engage with the ancient in your work in such an immediate way. Would you encourage other artists to and engage with the ancient, or even the pre-written?

I think I’m related with the ancient, but I think it’s more related with time. So I think that in the manifesto, I encourage people to invent futures. Mark Fisher said that Western civilization are not able to make futures. We are living in dystopic futures because Western civilization is unable to imagine something good.

And so I responded to that. I wasn’t reading this from the UK, or LA. I was reading this in Peru, in the Andes. So what’s my response to this? And I said, “Okay, Mark Fisher, you’re amazing, but I want you challenge me, and I want to develop a tool to create Andean futures.” So what I tried to propose to the people or suggest people do is to imagine Andean futures.

And you grew up in Peru, and now you live in LA and you go to residencies. Could you talk a little bit about your relationship to place and where you are affects your work?

Yeah. As part of the methodology of Andean Futurism, there’s the idea of diving deep into the past and reimagining it into the future. My initial connection with California was geographical. If you look at the San Andreas Fault, you can trace a line that connects directly to the Andes. I wouldn’t say it’s the same mountain range, but it feels like they’re all connected in some way. I learned that the ancient llama was actually found in California.

Really?

Yes. And even more fascinating, DNA studies of ancient burials on the northern islands of California show connections to the Southern Andes—specifically to ancient peoples from Chile and Bolivia. That realization made me think about the nomadic nature of existence—not just of humans, but of all of nature. That nomadism led me to feel that my ancestors moved through this part of the world.

That’s how I first connected with California. But in a broader sense, as you mentioned, I also went to a residency in St. Louis, Missouri, where I visited Cahokia. There, I saw how Indigenous ancient traditions form a vast network, connecting North America with the ancient traditions of Central and South America. I connect to these places through the air, through the soil, through the sound, through the light. That’s how I feel the connection.

What have your experiences been like sharing Andean cultural narratives in an academic setting outside of Peru, namely, I guess, in the United States?

First, I feel very surprised because, in the academic world that surrounds me or that I observe, if you talk about Andean cultures, people don’t know much about them. But when I explain the concepts and ideas—because I’ve been teaching both artists and scholars—they approach these concepts differently. Artists tend to engage with them in a more practical way, while scholars or art historians focus more on the conceptual.

However, I think both approaches connect. For example, when I talk to students or artists from other parts of the world—Asia, Europe, or North America—and I share the ancient traditions of the Andes or practices related to art, they feel connected because their cultures have similar traditions.

This shows that words are sometimes used to build walls, to separate ideas or people. It’s as if only South American or Indigenous people can relate to these concepts. But that’s not true. Even in Western civilization, even within Christianity, there are magical elements—like the wine becoming blood during mass. That’s not so far removed from these ideas, and people can understand it. In this way, I think people feel deeply connected. Students and scholars alike are also searching for alternatives to the Western ideal of the future.

You lectured at Human Resources Gallery in LA about the importance of parties to indigenous culture, but also to radical political movements. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I think a lot about the idea of the party, and I also think about noise. If there’s noise, it’s because there is silence. So I ask myself, “What is that silence?” In our societies, minorities are often silenced. Noise is something that breaks out of the status quo—it starts to appear.

You can see this in certain types of popular culture, but at parties, it’s different. Parties are spaces where things are out of control. In that permissive environment that society gives you—to party, to get drunk—you can say things you normally wouldn’t. There’s a kind of energy that rises up; you feel free. You start to dance. You begin to unlock those repressive feelings that people carry in their daily lives as they work and function within society.

So I think the party is related to that: the creation of a possibility, a space where something unexpected can happen—where creativity opens up. You can say, “I’ll do a satire. I’ll become something else. I’ll transform my body. I’ll be someone else tonight. Or I’ll become an animal tonight.”

That connects to a concept in the manifesto: transrationality. It’s about accessing a way of understanding that goes beyond the rational—something more connected to the senses, to our basic human need to express and communicate.

Going off of that answer, the party is a good metaphor for creativity in general, this freedom. And living in today’s age surrounded by technology, which a lot of people would say, limits our freedom or stunts this free expression. Would you agree with that—do you think that technology in any way limits the artists of today in a way that they didn’t in the past?

Sometimes I try to expand the concept of technology and think of it in broader terms. For example, if we consider ancient technologies—like the ability to predict whether the next year will bring a rainy season—this knowledge comes from observing the stars. These kinds of practices are still alive in the Andes today. I know some people might read this and say, “No way, that’s impossible.” But that is a form of technology, because by observing, you are able to say, “Okay, this is going to happen next.” It’s like, you try and there’s an error, and you try and there’s an error. Eventually, you come to know that if you see something in the sky, or if you notice an animal underground, you can predict rain or other events in the environment. It’s about listening to nature, to the environment.

This kind of relationship with technology is important, particularly in the communities I work with in Peru—the Andean communities. My approach to technology, when I really think about it, is both engaged and critical.

For example, there’s a type of technology designed to kill—like weapons—and that is often tied to ideas from Italian Futurism. Italian Futurists embraced technology as a path to the future, celebrating war, destruction, and chaos. But history shows us that this approach led to disaster. I want to approach technology differently—through a poetic lens. I’m interested in the historical weight of technology, how it intersects with poetry, and how that, in turn, is tied to politics. That’s what I find interesting. Your question made me think about a performance I recently attended, which explored Indigenous relationships to AI and technology. I went with a couple of friends, and afterward, one of them said, “I don’t understand how these people are making performances about AI when AI is going to kill them.”

Would you say you’re hopeful or maybe tentatively suspending any judgment on AI until we see what happens next, because we always treat technology suspiciously at first?

But in terms of technology, for example, how you could transform the technology through Andean Futurism? Or if some people are related with these creative things for good, again, not for destruction or worse, or hate, it will be good to work with AI. The problem is not the AI. The problem is the people.

Do you think it’s hard to be an artist today? What are the biggest difficulties facing you and your students as artists?

I think there’s a lot of hope in Peru. Life is difficult for artists, but I still see hope—in students who are searching for new ways to understand reality or to reconnect with something they feel has been lost. It’s also significant [for me] how people from the Andean diaspora connect with my work, with Andean Futurism. I find that very interesting, and I feel deeply grateful for that connection.