GASTA!

Jiaoyang Li, Sherry Lin, Gasta Collective

Genre: Music & Poetry

Language: English & Chinese

Authors: Jiaoyang Li, Sherry Lin, Gasta Collective

Producer: John Tsung

Published in May 2024
 


What is Gatsa!? It is a loose collaborative group led by music producers, singers, guitarists, poets, and scholars from Asia. It is also a roadside motel for travelers to stay at and rest, where they can momentarily forget their age, nationality, the languages they speak, as well the concrete bruises they bear on their bodies. Sipping ice cream cones on the sidewalk, they create a voice card about memory and love, anger and action, translating between languages, poetry, lyrics, art books, and field research projects.

Gatsa! is the label carried by newborns, new immigrants, and dissenters. Cockroaches, creatures that are always being driven away and always come back, represent some of us. In the kitchen of capitalism, they transport remnants of freedom in secrecy; in the filthy underground, they scuttle in the dark, delineating mesmerizing territories. Their marginality and immortality allow them to regenerate between fear and resistance, becoming a new deity with allegorical power.

The Chinese characters for “cockroach” look as if composed of two fly swatters intertwined. They are both the stigma we bear and our talisman, allowing us to traverse this enclave of prejudice.