DEREKH FROUDE/Arizona Daily Wildcat Sunday evening marked the Open House of Las Sinfronteras' new space, a non-profit organization that breaks down the barrier between the aesthetic power of art and the socially conscious voice of activism.

At the Le Tigre concert last night, there was a queer rendition of the "Good Ship Lollipop." The performers wore tutus of obnoxiously pastel colors and licked lollipops that read "Lies," "Silent" and "Blind."

The performance - created by the local feminist collective Las Sinfronteras - parodied the cultural stereotype of overly sweet femininity.

This is what can happen when art and activism collide.

Those two categories are largely conceived of as separate.

Art, in all its visual, literary and musical forms, is associated with entertainment, with fun, with surface.

Activism, conversely, is considered a whole different animal - didactic, boring. But activists, like members of Las Sinfronteras, which started in August 2000, have explored the potential behind politicizing art.

"Art is really only one strategy (for activist work)," said Las Sinfronteras member Veronica Del Real. "Ultimately, we want to challenge what is art and what is activism."

Assistant University of Arizona professor of women's studies Sandra Soto worked with a non-profit Latino organization while living in Austin, Texas. She said the categories "activist" and "artist" often overlap.

"I think a lot of activists conceive of their activist practice as a kind of art, as a kind of creative endeavor," she said. "Related to that is a real kind of sense of boredom with (traditional) activism. How many marches can we go to where we hear speaker after speaker - these talking heads basically."

DEREKH FROUDE/Arizona Daily Wildcat Tucsonan Banessa Schmidt views a painting at the opening of Las Sinfronteras Sunday evening. The feminist collective plans to exhibit several works of art by various artists, feminist and otherwise, in their new space.

And so is the way with Las Sinfronteras, which seeks to redefine what it means to put on a performance, what it means to be politically active, what it means to be, as Del Real said, "creatively living feminism."

Las Sinfronteras, which held an open house for its new space on Congress Street Sunday, uses art not only as a means of reaching diverse audiences - performing at a Fugazi show and the Take Back the Night marches - but also to inspire its own members.

"I think a lot of the women (in the collective) ... have had some sort of experience either as an artist on their own time or (who) do some sort of feminist expression in their art ... have felt really isolated in those communities and were looking for a space to bring (their art and activism) together," said member Koren Manning, a women's studies junior.

Members hope the new Congress Street location will be this space. In addition to acting as an exhibition site for art works, the collective plans to open the space to other local organizations, play host to workshops about sexuality and reproductive rights education, and maintain a multimedia feminist library.

"It will be a safe space of women and feminists of all kinds to come together," said Laura Angeley, senior at Flowing Wells High School and Las Sinfronteras member.

Soto emphasized the way art can rally resistance movements by providing compelling art works around which a community can be formed.

"The way people (in Austin) were able to mobilize a wide range of people · largely had to do with their ability to offer up a kind of poetry, a kind of mural, a kind of song that reached across those different divides," she said. "Art was always seen as crucial to that mobilization."

Just as Las Sinfronteras' mission continually changes - the group focuses on such diverse issues as sexuality education, anti-racism and anti-border campaigns - its performances evolve as well, often as old members leave and new ones join the collective.

"We have a new group of people with new ideas and new identities. So we're always changing as the group changes," Del Real said.

The collective, for example, is often associated with radical cheerleading, a performance piece featuring cheerleaders dressed in black yelling feminist cheers. The performance re-appropriated the cheerleader image for feminist ends, using the strategies of irony and parody. The radical cheerleaders became a local phenomenon, performing at several local venues.

Las Sinfronteras has stopped radical cheerleading, as members found that their politics were lost behind the compelling nature of the performance.

The group struggles with what Manning called "too much of the sugar and not enough of the politics." On one hand, they have to entertain their audience, but at the same time, they risk losing their message behind the pretty package.

"We're living in an MTV world that looks at an image that's really cool and packages it," Del Real said. "It's easy, it's fun, it looks neat, and it just becomes this image. And it doesn't become political anymore.

"People are not having discussions with us about the border and our politics," she added. "People are just saying, 'Oh, that's so great; you're a radical cheerleader. They get lots of attention.' Some people might argue that that's great, but I want to push further."

Las Sinfronteras pushed further with its "Queer Circus" performance last night at the Le Tigre show. In one "lion-taming" segment, the collective used the metaphor of a male and female lion and their trainer to demonstrate how "women are trained to be women and men to be men," Angeley said.

Manning said she doesn't know how long Las Sinfronteras will stick with "Queer Circus", because the collective wants to keep adapting. Regardless, the group will continue to use art toward activist goals and to challenge the distinctions between the two.

As Manning said, "I see art and any sort of cultural production as just one strategy (for activism), but really a central one for me. It really has the power to transform people's consciousness."

Las Sinfronteras can be reached at 623-8935 or by e-mail at lassinfronteras@yahoo.com and is located at 137 E. Congress St.