The Wooden People
2021 - Advanced Technology (Advanced Technology)
7 episodes, 7:00 minutes per episodes (49:00 minutes total)
Nao Bustamante
The Wooden People is a 360º virtual reality film series comprising seven episodes. It is written and directed by artist Nao Bustamante and its cast includes notable Los Angeles-based artists Gabriela Ruiz, rafa esparza, San Cha, Markus Kuiland-Nazario, Ron Athey, and Dorian Wood. The work also features a musical and sound score by Nick Hallett and costumes by OLIMA. Addressing representations of queer existence, love, and cosmic connections, The Wooden People merges Mayan myths with the drama of a telenova. The film elaborates on the Mayan origin story of “the Wooden People”, a caste of pre-humans that were ultimately eradicated. The Wooden People are another fallen folk and exemplify an alternative attempt at what it looks like, and means, to be human. In Bustamante’s work the Wooden People are presented as a subcultural group, living in contemporary Los Angeles. Their story includes familiar social structures, such as caste systems, which have existed throughout history and persist today. By contextualizing this group of ancient people in the present day, they appear similarly to how a contemporary subculture (for example, goths) might operate semi-separately from mainstream culture. They follow their own set of rules, customs, and etiquette, yet they are still subject to the broader social systems at play. The overarching story of the series follows Bustamante as she meets a deity figure (played by Gabriela Ruiz), and then returns to narrate the series and explain how society has arrived at our current global circumstances. The project also serves as a mirror of primarily Latinx artists currently working in Los Angeles; each performer is an exciting figure in their own right and featured in their own episode inspired by their artwork.
California-born and internationally recognized, Nao Bustamante cut her teeth as an artist between 1984 and 2001 in San Francisco where she studied in the New Genres department at the San Francisco Art Institute. Bustamante’s occasionally precarious and radically vulnerable work encompasses performance art, video installation, visual art, filmmaking, and writing. As Kevin McGarry from The New York Times succinctly put it, “[Bustamante] has a knack for using her body.”
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