John Jota Leaños is raising an army of skeletons against colonialism— at least metaphorically. He’s an animator and filmmaker who’s also directing Imperial Silence: Una Opera Muerta, a Day of the Dead opera that features animated sugar-skull news anchors on DNN, the Dead News Network, dancers and singers performing story songs like “El Corrido de Pat Tillman.”
“We’re in these borderlands,” Leaños says, “in this de-colonial mixed scene, where we get all of these influences and try to make sense of it.” As my co-host A-lan Holt says, Leaños’ work is an “intervention into the long (and often violent) history of tactics used to silence non-white viewpoints in the United States of America.” And there are laughs too. Details here.
