[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca46VETqpEQ&feature=related[/youtube]
.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_03F1faeV_g[/youtube]
Gare du Nord.
Fabulous short fiction film, in two parts, by the legendary filmmaker Jean Rouch, well-worth reposting.
(The 16 minute short was shown as part of Paris vu par… Others included Rohmer, Chabrol, Godard et al.)
(Gracias Benji Z.)
so excuse this very ugly look and the weird accent thing,
we will be back shortly.
and pretty again.
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
– David Wagoner
“The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself). We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can’t read outside and can’t hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word ‘idiot’ is the word ‘private.’ Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness.”
—Philip K. Dick, Valis
(v @dustfruit)
One of my most happily intoxicating moments every year is when I get to meet the new batch of fellow TED Fellows.
I met Lucy this past February at TED Long Beach, while she was pacing the hotel corridors, nervous about her talk–which, as you will see, she had nothing to worry about. On the contrary. And only later did it finally dawn on me that my dear Sophie Krier (amazing designer, ex Fabricante, living in Holland) had already told me about Lucy and her work, since they are friends and collaborators.
And now, then, bring forth: a body constructed like a whole city unto itself.
Yale University just published a list of the 16 World Fellows chosen for 2012, and I am happy to say I am one of them.
Its an amazing program with a postgraduate standing that basically puts all Yale resources (and then some) at our disposal… so off to Yale and its classes and libraries and campus conversations from August to December. Ajá. Intoxicating world indeed.
(Gracias Yale.)
“If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes.”
- Blade Runner
You don’t need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Don’t even listen, simply wait.
Don’t even wait.
Just be quiet, solitary and still:
The world will freely offer itself to you
To become unmasked, it has no choice,
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.-F. Kafka
Back in Mexico City after a week of great films and impossibly blue oceans.
“The Man Who Lived in a Shoe”, our feature-length doc was in competition.
Had a ball, and a very fun screening–full house and a moving Q&A that lasted almost an hour.
This, here, is an article in Mexican press that recounts that night in Playa del Carmen.
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
-ee cummings
That man. Yes, that man. That man and a wire. Hanging on by a foot–one foot after another–pleasure in vertigo between two twin towers, several years ago, illegally, in New York.
His name is Philippe Petit. And he is my quote of the whole week because he is one of the speakers of this year’s TED, and very probably the one I am most eager to meet this time round. Lovely TED. And lovely crazy people of this world.
(Check out the rest of the TED 2012 speakers right here.)
(“There is no why,” was his answer to the press at that time, as he was being arrested for his little stunt. No why. Just for the pleasure of being here. Or there. On a wire. Por qué no.)
I am at the Mexico City airport, on my way to Long Beach.
And oh so very eager to catch up with my fellow TED Fellows.
Mezcales and red dancing shoes in my luggage. Ajá.
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“From dazzling technology and leading-edge science to the richest veins of human creativity and interconnection, we are assembling our most diverse group of speakers ever for TED2012, with just this in common: they have something remarkable to share, and they are able to share it in a remarkable way. We’re inviting them to develop ”full spectrum”presentations: blizzards of images, new uses of music, extravagant use of under-used senses, intricate choreography between speaker and screen, new ways of involving the audience, breakthroughs in animation, and intense, campfire-style storytelling …”
More info here.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ClxSnqE5s[/youtube]
“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible. . . .â€
-Rainer MarÃa Rilke, letter to his wife, 1907
Images by Zhang Xiao, young architect and photographer from China.
See more here, and his blog here.
(Title of post: quote by Emmanuel Lévinas)
“The subject of this book is not the void exactly, but rather what there is round about or inside it. To start with, then, there isn’t very much: nothingness, the impalpable, the virtually immaterial; extension, the external, what is external to us, what we move about in the midst of, our ambient milieu, the space around us.
Space. Not so much those infinite spaces, whose mutism is so prolonged that it ends by triggering something akin to fear, nor the already almost domesticated interplanetary, intersidereal or intergalactic spaces, but spaces that are much closer at hand, in principle anyway: towns, for example, or the countryside, or the corridors of the Paris Metro, or a public park.
We live in space, in these spaces, these towns, this countryside, these corridors, these parks. That seems obvious to us. Perhaps indeed it should be obvious. But it isn’t obvious, not just a matter of course. It’s real, obviously, and as a consequence most likely rational. We can touch. We can even allow ourselves to dream. There is nothing, for example, to stop us from imagining things that are neither towns nor countrysides (nor suburbs), or Metro corridors that are at the same time public parks. Nothing to forbid us imagining a Metro in the heart of the countryside.”
-Georges Perec, Species of Spaces
(Libro desempolvado durante el Taller Tóxico  de Manuel Raeder. Se me habÃa olvidado cuánto me encanta el loco de Perec, con o sin “e”s.)
Image by Maya Goded.
TRUE / VISIONS:
EL DOCUMENTAL CREATIVO
UN TALLER DE ROSS MCDONNELL PARA TÓXICO LAB
14 – 17 de febrero / 11.30 am – 6pm
Ross McDonnell. Cineasta y fotógrafo irlandés cuyo trabajo atraviesa los mundos del documental, el reportaje y la ficción. Ha ganado varios importantes premios, incluyendo el First appearance Award del IDFA por su pelÃcula Colony, dos nominaciones del Irish Academy Award (IFTA) y varias becas del Irish Arts Council, the Jerome Fountation y el San Francisco Film Society. Como cinefotógrafo Ross ha collaborado con reconocidos directores de cine independiente, incluyendo Alex Gibney (ganador del Óscar), Kirsten Sheriden y John Carney. Sus fotografÃas han sido publicadas en The New York Times, Time Magazine, Art in America, Washington Post, Observer y Esquire, entre otros, y ha sido exhibido en museos y galerÃas internacionalmente. Recientemente Thom Powers—“Mr. Documentaryâ€, programador del TIFF– nombró a Colony como uno de los mejores 20 documentales de los últimos cinco años.
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En este taller de cuatro dÃas se explorarán las formas y posibilidades del documental creativo. Ross hablará acerca de técnicas narrativas y sobre diversas formas de acercarse a eso que llamamos realidad. El sonido y la imagen jugarán un papel muy importante–asà como la mirada subjetiva–ya que su forma de trabajar, como fotógrafo y también como director, está caracterizada por poner en tensión constante a hechos reales con una hiperactiva sensibilidad estética.
Además Ross hablará a fondo de cómo lograr resultados exponenciales con bajos presupuestos y micro-equipos: “Colonyâ€, su primer largometraje, fue hecho por un equipo de sólo dos personas de principio a fin; sin embargo, después de estrenarse en el Festival Internacional de Cine de Toronto, fue aclamado como uno de los documentales mejor realizados de ese año.
Dados sus comienzos como fotógrafo y el hecho de que la mayorÃa de sus documentales los ha realizado con una Canon 5D, este taller se recomienda tanto para cineastas como para fotógrafos y artistas visuales interesados en ahondar en las posibilidades de la estética documental y su potencial creativo.
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“Colony is the most aesthetically beautiful documentary of the season, as well as one of the most urgent and intelligent†-John Anderson, Variety
“We admire some documentaries for their artistry and others for their urgency. Rarely do we see a film that combines both those qualities as impressively as this debut by directors Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn. Their unlikely topic is the world of honeybee keepers during the on-going crisis of “colony collapse disorder.” Beautifully photographed by McDonnell and skillfully edited by Gunn, their film “Colony†follows several American beekeepers over the course of eighteen months as the country’s economy spirals downward.”
-Thom Powers, TIFF Programmer
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El costo del taller es de $2,250 pesos.
Selección por portafolio.
Cupo limitado.
Interesados favor de mandar una breve bio y links a trabajo a
info@toxicocultura.com.
Les recomendamos escribir lo antes posible porque los talleres de Tóxico se llenan muy rápido.
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
0445521719574
(Y gracias a Taxidermie y a The Lift por el apoyo)
Image by the talented Balazs Gardi–who we hope will be visiting Mexico again soon for a new Tóxico project.
Tóxico  is happy to be one the the international Partner Platforms for “The Future Generation Art Prize“. Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, its aim is to discover, recognize and give long-term support to a future generation of artists up to 35 years of age, investing in the artistic development and new production of works. The Main Prize will be awarded to one artist who will receive the amount of US$ 100,000 from the international jury in the context of an exhibition. The Prize will be split in US$ 60,000 in cash and US$ 40,000 for the investment of new work production.
Besides, “to encourage this new generation of artists, a group of renowned Mentor Artists has committed its long-term participation in the Prize. These artists will provide in-person counsel and support to the prize winners, and one of the Mentor artists will have a parallel show at the same time as each shortlist exhibition. The 2012 Mentor Artists are Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.”
The jury is composed by Ai Wei Wei, Daniel Birnbaum, Ivo Mesquita and Robert Storr, among others.
We have sent over a list with our recommendation of  talented artists that will skip the preliminary rounds; and we hope many more will apply.
Do click here to find out more; the application process is now open.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ITWpozN9k[/youtube]
Fragment from Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Poto and Cabengo.
(Gorin was a close collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard, once upon a time.)
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“Idioglossia. A unique and private language, rarely but usually developed between twins. We would have to assume, twins who are severely neglected by adults. It is not “twin speech,” fairly common with very young twins — a hash of idioms and slurred common words. Idioglossia goes far beyond that; it is a kind of creole, a unique language, complete with grammar and syntax and neologisms.”
“Poto and Cabengo are identical twins (real names Grace and Virginia Kennedy, respectively), who used a language unknown to other people until the age of about eight. They developed their own communication because they had little exposure to spoken language in their early years. Poto and Cabengo were the names they called each other.”
More here.
By Alejandro Cartagena, Mexican photographer.
More here.
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“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies…”
J. Kerouac
.
No hay en el orbe una cosa que no sea otra, o contraria, o ninguna.
A mà sólo me inquietan las sorpresas sencillas.
.
First, an Obsession commercial quoting Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  Then, a commercial about New York: New York and its rats.
By David Lynch?
Yes of course.
Click.
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“The films of David Lynch seem anything but “commercial.†Disturbing, incomprehensible, they shine a flashlight into the darkest regions of the subconscious mind. When you walk out of a theater after watching a David Lynch film you feel like you just woke up from a vivid and unsettling dream.
But Lynch has been leading a double life. While making uncompromisingly artistic works for the movie theaters, he has been directing commercials for television and other media on the side. Why does he do it? “Well,†Lynch told Chris Rodley in Lynch on Lynch, “they’re little bitty films, and I always learn something by doing them.â€
(Says Open Culture. Wonderful website by the way. See many more crazy Lynch commercials here.)
(I love him I do.)
Código Magazine did a survey to find out what projects people think of as “agents of change”, across many disciplines, in Mexico City.
And oh la: what a nice surprise to find out today that Tóxico Cultura is one of the 40 projects on the list.
(Gracias to all! We are honored and touched.)
(And more intoxicashon to come.)
Alinka–Mexican, but oh so very addicted to distances–is in town for a while. Talented photographer and anthropologist, this above is her latest project entitled “Becoming South Sudan”.
“On 9 July 2011, six months after nearly 99 percent of four million voters in a referendum opted for secession from the North, the Republic of South Sudan came into being, becoming the world’s 193rd nation. The run-up to independence witnessed a place and a people in transformation, as some of the millions of exiles who had sought asylum in neighboring countries returned to rebuild their communities and construct their identity as a unified nation. The new government has the task of developing law-enforcing institutions such as the police and prison services out of a rebel movement, and from people trained as combatants, not peacekeepers.”
And I am looking forward to hearing more about what she has been up to when we catch up over mezcales this week.
(Take a look at more of her work right here.)
(Alinka was part of “La (otra) maleta mexicana”, a collective Tóxico art proeject.)
Foto by Erwin Jaquez.
And wet cat as well.
Yes indeed. Come August and September, Tóxico will take over this lil’ beauty here called Casa del Lago, by the Chapultepec lake, right smack in the middle of Mexico City.
Plans for the space started to unfurl Friday night over wine, and I am every time more enchanted with the idea of working from here for two months, and filling it up with things and ideas.
(For starters, daily breakfasts on the terrace, no?)
(Gracias a Willy K. por la invitación.)
(Y a Andrés por los vinos.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc57X0j_UwM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
A scene that did not make it into “The Future“–July’s latest film–has resurfaced as a short video with convenient tips for you and me.
(v Nowness)
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“My work is never only about the story—it is always about what is inside the people who are in the story. But, in the most basic sense, it’s about time: getting through it, minute by minute, stopping it, and the end of it, death.”
-M.J.-
Explorar esos espacios enigmáticos entre las disciplinas es sin duda uno de nuestros ejercicios favoritos. Por lo mismo estamos muy contentos de tener a Manuel Raeder con nosotros en México, impartiendo un taller que seguramente implotará varias fronteras y estará lleno de pre-textos múltiples.
Manuel Raeder vive y trabaja en Berlin. Su estudio concibe el diseño como una herramienta para provocar diálogos, y su principal interés está en generar colaboraciones con artistas, plantas, cientÃficos, pájaros, copiadoras, bibliotecarios, rappers, no profesionales y teóricos, siempre cuestionando los mecanismos internos de su práctica y reevaluando la posición que toma el humano frente a sus objetos. También le interesa la forma en que la historia se altera y reinventa, y cómo un libro se expande dentro del espacio y el tiempo, tiempo no-lineal, tiempo enredado y flexible. Su trabajo explora una ámplia gama de formatos, y los bordes entre ellos.
Además, nos da especial gusto que la coordinación del taller está a cargo de Santiago da Silva–talentosÃsimo jóven artista visual, consentido colaborador, y también parte del programa de Internships y residencias internacionales de Tóxico–y quien ha estado trabajando, justamente, en el estudio de Raeder como parte de este programa.
Más sobre el taller aquÃ, y la página de Manuel aquÃ.
Quedan sólo un par de lugares, y se formó un gran grupo.
Gracias Santiago por la idea, gracias Conejo Blanco por el espacio perfecto, gracias Taxidermie por el apoyo de siempre, y bienvenido Manuel al D.F.
Internet Blackout today at over 7,000 websites — including Wikipedia and Google — protesting anti-piracy legislation.
Strangely enough (or not) this idea of collectively going dark truly warms the heart.
(Imagine this world now.)
(More info here.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJD2xlVcgRI&feature=share[/youtube]
This video might be from way back in 2007, but Hussain Chalayan ‘Transformer Dresses’ are quite amazing even as we step into 2012.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/34269442[/vimeo]
Our muy querido Felipe Guerrero–film director and also the editor of “The Man Who Lived in a Shoe”, my first doc–just wrote to let me know that his newest experimental film will have its World Premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Fest, in the Bright Future section.
“Corta” (i.e. Cut) shows how agricultural labourers in Valle del Cauca, Colombia (where Felipe grew up) harvest a field of sugar cane using machetes. “The hypnotic rhythm of the timeless (yet rapidly disappearing) handiwork is masterfully reflected in the making of the 16mm film. Contemplative and pure cinema.”
Hit play, and enjoy a tiny taste. While we celebrate in DF with manzanilla and mezcal.
Manuscripts of Samuel Beckett’s novel, Watt.
“Although popularly thought of as a rather dour and ascetic writer, there is a wonderfully playful aspect to Samuel Beckett’s creative output: the pictorial array of raggle-taggle characters and baroque broidery that scampers through his notebooks and manuscripts. Continuously—from decorating 1930s exercise books to embellishing the scraps of paper bearing his 1970s “Mirlitonnades”—doodling provided an amiable outlet when, yet again, he found himself up against the obduracy of words.
(v @ A piece of monologue)
Yes. News just out. We are soon off to the Guadalajara Film Festival–considered one of the most important showcases for Latin American Films–with our Man and his shoe.
After the break you will find the complete list of selected films.
(I am specially eager to see the new films by Juan Carlos Rulfo and Everardo Gonzalez;Â two of Mexico’s best doc filmmakers, who are also in competition.)
“This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;
It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, Italy, France, Spain—or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India—talking other dialects;
And it seems to me if I could know those men, I should become attached to them, as I do to men in my own lands;
O I know we should be brethren and lovers,
I know I should be happy with them.”
           -W. Whitman-
(They say Whitman was very fond of yearning, using forms of the word 64 times in his poems, according to the LION index.)
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28552670[/vimeo]
Wolf War, by the dearest dear señor Carlos Casas, padrino from another continent and Tóxico record taco eater (16).
(It came to mind when I read about the unmanned drones that will be killing wild wolves in Montana.)
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“El mayor hechicero (escribe memorablemente Novalis) serÃa el que hechizara hasta el punto de tomar sus propias fantasmagorÃas por apariciones autónomas. ¿No serÃa ese nuestro caso?†yo conjeturo que es asÃ. Nosotros (la indivisa divinidad que opera en nosotros) hemos soñado el mundo. Lo hemos soñado resistente, misterioso, visible, ubicuo en el espacio y firme en el tiempo; pero hemos consentido en su arquitectura tenues y eternos intersticios de sinrazón para saber que es falso.
-JL Borges-
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[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11712366[/vimeo]
France, summer 1944. The public punishment of women accused of having affairs with Germans during the war.
(Great use of archive material and sound.)
(Gracias querido Andrés C.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JDaOOw0MEE[/youtube]
“A Trip to the Moon. 1902 French black and white silent science fiction film, loosely based on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston. The film runs 14 minutes if projected at 16 frames per second, which was the standard frame rate at the time the film was produced. It was extremely popular at the time of its release and is the best-known of the hundreds of fantasy films made by Méliès. A Trip to the Moon is the first science fiction film, and utilizes innovative animation and special effects, including the iconic shot of the rocketship landing in the moon’s eye.”
This Version features a Soundtrack by Erich Wolfgang Korngold & Laurence Rosenthal.
Though I must say I like it more with the sound muted.
Krulwich highlights the time zone with the most people able to celebrate New Years at one time:
If you look at this world time zone map, one zone, which we’ve highlighted it in yellow has, as you can see, all of China, all 1.3 billion of ‘em, plus a hunk of Siberia, plus Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, a chunk of Indonesia, Timor and a cut of Australia. Altogether, that’s got to be at least 1.5 billion people who will greet 2012 at the very same moment.
(Happy New Year to those billions and the other billions that compose the rest of us.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxW18RDJk6A&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Happy 91st birthday Ray Bradbury!
(Travel back to the 70s and listen to him talk of literature and art as the safety valve of humanity.)
(v Open Culture)
[nggallery id=54]
Rokuro TaniÂuchi. JapanÂese illusÂtraÂtor, 1921 – 1981.
Taniuchi Rokuro’s painted more than 1300 covers for Shukan Shincho, a pioneering weekly news and literary magazine in Japan.
(v 50 Watts)
(More beauties here)
Says Colossal:
“For a third consecutive year the city of Kaunas, Lithuania approached artist Jolanta Å midtienÄ— to assist with their annual holiday decorating. Recognizing the city’s somewhat dire financial state the artist challenged herself to build something that wouldn’t rely on any administrative funds set aside for the event. The result: an enormous 13-meter tall Christmas tree made from nearly 40,000 recycled green bottles and zip ties. At night the tree is lit from the inside resulting in a glowing, translucent, emerald green spruce that’s making headlines across the country.”
And
“Feliz navidad”
says I.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sye1PbLbzhg&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Arthur Lipsett |1962
v @carlosmcasas, padrino
Exactly one year from today this calendar above abruptly comes to a halt. So maybe–just maybe–the world will explode. Or collapse. Or fall into a traveling black hole. And so the Mexico Mayan region is officially launching their apocalypse countdown: they even built a regressive clock in the town of Tapachula, and are planing on a yearlong farewell party too of course.
(Click here to read more, and please do R.S.V.P.)
(La última y nos vamos, o qué.)
Yep. Bernard is in town once again. But this time he is not only descending for tacos, but actually back in Mexico for good, after many years of living in NYC.
Which makes me very happy indeed. So as part of my own personal celebration, I am reposting a blog entry I wrote in Feb 2010 about a VBS.tv episode that Bernardo and I did together.
Enjoy.
(Y bienvenido señor!)
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Some months ago, I got a call from Bernardo Loyola–senior editor at VBS, (plus DP, occasional producer, also director and now a dear friend who brings gifts in the form of chocolates with truffle oil and sea salt when he comes to visit Mexico City).
He had just read an article of mine that was published in Vice Magazine, which started off describing a certain amusement park in a certain indigenous town:
(“There is a certain amusement park in Alberto Town, in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. It is run by hñahñu Indians. There, instead of the usual merry-go-round or what not, amusement takes a different turn: one can pretend for a couple of hours to be an illegal immigrant trying to get across the border. You will be chased for 18 kilometers; there will be shots, barbed-wire fences, cactuses, sirens, shouting, running for cover and even a theatrical death or two: all for 25 bucks a head. It is a simulacrum of the “torturous travails of a ‘mojado’ crossing the border, with educational objectivesâ€, the organizers have explained several times. Non withstanding its educational and entertainment value “for the whole family, sometimes people even bring babies, like in real lifeâ€, the amusement park has been criticized by some as so-called training grounds for people who are truly planning to get across the border; by others for treating lightly the terrifying ordeal that real immigrants go through, in search for something a lot more basic than the American dream: just plain old food on the table and a roof over their families heads.
The idea for the theme park—even if it is in central Mexico, far from the real border– was not gratuitous. The town’s number of inhabitants dwindled to a little over two hundred (compared to an average of two thousand in former years) because their population started immigrating to the USA. So a council was formed and they decided upon a strategy: to gather stories of people who have been there and done that, all while reviving an ecological park and guaranteeing steady income for their townsmen so they would no longer feel the need to cross the border; only pretend to everyday. Almost 80 towns-people work there, don their police uniforms or become masked coyotes for the tourists as soon as the sun comes down, so they can imagine what the real thing is like.”)
So, yes, Bernardo had read this, and was calling from New York with a proposal: that we travel together to Alberto and do a 30 minute documentary for VBS.
And so we did. We ran in the dark for a few hours, huddled beneath the bushes,  hopped on ‘Border Patrol’ trucks with wailing sirens, heard stories of real crossings, and all the time our feelings verged madly between enjoying the surreality of it all and quietly pondering the complex social scenario at our northern border–so palpably visible in this small town–, mulling over questions with no easy answers. Bernardo, Rodrigo Teie (who assisted us with an additional camera) and I where in a thoughtful mood on our drive back to Mexico City.
No easy answers, no. But creative ones in Alberto: that, for sure.
Click, click click to see the short VBS documentary.
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“Short and round, he wore elevator shoes, oversize sunglasses and a bouffant hairdo — a Hollywood stereotype of the wacky post-cold war dictator. Mr. Kim himself was fascinated by film. He orchestrated the kidnapping of an actress and a director, both of them South Koreans, in an effort to build a domestic movie industry. He was said to keep a personal library of 20,000 foreign films, including the complete James Bond series, his favorite. But he rarely saw the outside world, save from the windows of his luxury train, which occasionally took him to China.”
Says the New York Times today, as the news broke that Kim had died, after 17 years of abuses to human rights.
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+
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they’re made out of meat.”
“Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”
“Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take long. Do you have any idea what’s the life span of meat?”
“Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
“Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They’re meat all the way through.”
“No brain?”
“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
    “So … what does the thinking?”
“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”
“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umKjoyfIiI&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
By Gustav Deutsch.
(v @carlosmcasas)
“Julia Pastrana (1834–25 March 1860) was a woman born with hypertrichosis who took part in 19th-century exhibition tours in Europe. Pastrana, an indigenous woman from Mexico, was born in 1834, somewhere in the Sierra of Sinaloa State. She had hypertrichosis terminalis; that is, her face and body were covered with straight black hair. Her ears and nose were unusually large and her teeth were irregular. Charles Darwin described her as: “Julia Pastrana, a Spanish dancer, was a remarkably fine woman, but she had a thick masculine beard and a hairy forehead; she was photographed, and her stuffed skin was exhibited as a show; but what concerns us is, that she had in both the upper and lower jaw an irregular double set of teeth, one row being placed within the other, of which Dr. Purland took a cast. From the redundancy of the teeth her mouth projected, and her face had a gorilla-like appearance.”
Theodore Lent (also known as Lewis B Lent) discovered her and purchased her from a woman who might have been her mother. Lent taught her to dance and play music and took her on a worldwide tour with the name “Bearded and Hairy Lady”. She also learned to read and write in three languages. They married and she became pregnant.
During a tour in Moscow, Pastrana gave birth to a baby with features similar to her own. The child survived only two days, and Pastrana died of post-birth complications five days later.
Lent did not abandon the tour; he contacted Professor Sukolov of Moscow University, had his wife and son mummified and displayed them in a glass cabinet. He later found another woman with similar features, married her and named her Zenora Pastrana. He was eventually committed to a mental institution.
The mummies disappeared from the public view. They appeared in Norway in 1921 and were on display until the 1970s when there was an outcry over a proposed tour of the USA and they were withdrawn from public view. Vandals broke into the storage facility in August 1976 and mutilated the baby’s mummy. The remains were consumed by mice. Julia’s mummy was stolen in 1979 but stored at the Oslo Forensic Institute after the body was reported to police but not identified. It was identified in 1990 and has rested in a sealed coffin at the Department of Anatomy, Oslo University since 1997. In 1994, the Norway Senate recommended burying her but the Minister of Sciences decided to keep her, so scientists could perform research on her. A special permit must be obtained to gain access to her remains.”
(v Wikipedia)
(fig. a)
This, here, is the Taxidermie Master-Plan (drawn by none other than señor Blak) for its 200m2 space at SXSW. It will showcase amazing Latin American digital talent, and, simultaneously, Tóxico will be curating a list of neuron-popping Mexican artists that work at the intersection between art and technology, who will also be present.
(And tacos will be present too.)
So if you’re at SXSW this year come say hello and see how the image above translates into real life and hot salsa on the tip of the tongue.
(Gracias Taxidermie. Very happy to be involved.)
The first seismograph (seen above) was invented in 132 A.D. by the Chinese astronomer and mathematician Chang Heng: “Each of the eight dragons had a bronze ball in its mouth. Whenever there was even a slight earth tremor, a mechanism inside the seismograph would open the mouth of one dragon. The bronze ball would fall into the open mouth of one of the toads, making enough noise to alert someone that an earthquake had just happened. Imperial watchman could tell which direction the earthquake came from by seeing which dragon’s mouth was empty.â€
(A 6.8 earthquake hit Mexico yesterday night. Fortunately all is well across the city, ’cause it sure shook long and strong.)
Was on the road, and had too much to do in the real world.
But. Yes. I am back. For more.
(Hola to you)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOaZspeSBZU&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
Arthur C Clarke in 1964 predicting what the city of the future will be like in the year 2000.
.
“When I think about it now, I can’t help but being astonished that I always managed to completely return from the world of these fevers and was able to adjust to that social existence where everybody wanted to be assured that they were among familiar objects and people, where they all conspired to remain in the realm of the intelligible. If you looked forward to something, it either came or it didn’t come, there was no third possibility. There were things that were sad, once and for all, and there were pleasant things, and a great number of incidental ones. And if a joy was arranged for you, it was in fact a joy, and you had to behave accordingly. All this was basically very simple, and once got the knack of it, it took care of itself. For everything entered into these appointed boundaries…”
.-Rainer MarÃa Rilke-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj7sJmt1r94&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
“The lone man should find his symphony within himself, not only in conceiving the music in abstract, but in being his own instrument. A lone man possesses considerably more than the twelve notes of the pitched voice. He cries, he whistles, he walks, he thumps his fist, he laughs, he groans. His heart beats, his breathing accelerates, he utters words, launches calls and other calls reply to him. Nothing echoes more a solitary cry than the clamour of crowds.”
(Symphonie pour un homme seul is a musical composition by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, composed in 1949–1950. It is an important early example of musique concrète.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5b_59mls4M[/youtube]
“The city multiplies man’s power to think, to remember, to educate, to communicate, and so to make possible associations which bridge and bypass nations, cultures. This mixture, this cosmopolitanism, is the chief source of the city’s vitality. And we must enlarge and enrich it as we move towards a new urban form.â€
In 1963, the National Film Board of Canada produced six 27-minute documentaries for a series entitled ‘Mumford On The City’. In this rare surviving footage of the series’ closing titles, Mumford articulates the ideology of urbanism long before it reached its contemporary tipping point and presages essential issues we grapple with today as we try to understand and optimize our cities, from transportation to communication to violent protest.
Great to see James Mollison–whom I know from our FABRICA/Colors Magazine days together–doing such interesting work lately.
And the “Where Children Sleep” book published by the dear Chris Boot, past Tóxico International Guest. Small world. Mmm.
Says Brainpickings:
The Library of Congress is a treasure trove of archival gems — from antique maps of the universe to the vintage design gems of the Works Progress Administration to fascinating films from the 1940s romanticizing bookmaking. Today, we turn to The Empire That Was Russia, a curious online exhibition of life in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. Culled here are some remarkable archival images of ethnic diversity in Russia during that period, which at the time included not only all the countries that would eventually become the Soviet Union, but also present-day Finland and Poland. With its 150 million people, of whom only about half were ethnic Russians, the country was home to some fascinating subcultures, captured here in restored and colored negatives by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii , photographer to the Tsar, with captions by the exhibition team.
Learn more about the fascinating process of making color images from Prokudin-Gorskii’s negatives, a technique known as “Digichromatography,†made all the more challenging by the fact that no known replica or illustration of the camera that Prokudin-Gorskii used exists today.
