Filed under Work from Mexico

MARTIN PARR

United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi. The IDEX, the 9th International Defence Exhibition and Conference held at the Abu Dhabi Exhibition Centre. 2009

India. Delhi. Captain Gupta's plane to nowhere. A plane bought by Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired Indian Airlines engineer allows customers to experience plane travel without leaving the ground.

Recent images by Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

Martin–a past Tóxico international guest–was in town a few days ago, to attend the opening of his expo at Centro de la Imagen. We ate ant eggs and enchiladas, we talked, we went to the Lucha Libre where Martin happily clicked clicked clicked his camera at the public while big guys in tight tights huffed and puffed and pounded at each other inches behind him.

Martin also tells me that he is preparing a book about photography books in Latin America, soon to be out in the world; and that it will in some ways redefine the region’s photographical history. Mmm. Interesting. News here as soon as it is out.

Tagged , ,

TWO MILLION HOMES FOR MEXICO

(Imágenes de la fotógrafa mexicana Livia Corona.)

Livia Corona shows us head-on the physiognomy of new urban settlements, derives from that analysis the need to reformulate the traditional notion of “home”. Her images offer a cross section wherein various aspects of the postmodern dwelling are unveiled. Corona’s photographs are an allegoric synthesis: they speak of the regulatory obsessions of capitalism of our times and the imagination of the individual set against that depradation.

***

“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Tagged , , , , ,

A MAN NOT ESCAPED

Cooking Grill No. 1

Cooking Grill No.2

Glass, plate, spoon

Weapons

Weapons made with the border of windows

—-

A few days ago we watched A Man Escaped, by Robert Bresson: a film–based on a true story– that recounts a man’s escape from prison by turning ordinary and seemingly innocent objects into his means to freedom: that turning something into something else.

As the movie ended, I remembered an incredible project by Toño Vega Macotela, wonderful Mexican artist. I also remembered the day I accompanied him to one of Mexico City’s largest prisons, to help him take the pictures you see above. Ah. Sí. That turning something into something else. Not for escape: but for life inside jail. These objects you see in the images above where constructed (illegally of course) by the prisoners.

After the break you can read an interview that I did with Toño for Vice Magazine. where you will find a fuller description of his incredible project.

Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , ,

LEFTOVERS FROM HIROSHIMA INSIDE A BATTERED SUITCASE


“One rainy night eight years ago, in Watertown, Massachusetts, a man was taking his dog for a walk. On the curb, in front of a neighbor’s house, he spotted a pile of trash: old mattresses, cardboard boxes, a few broken lamps. Amidst the garbage he caught sight of a battered suitcase. He bent down, turned the case on its side and popped the clasps.
He was surprised to discover that the suitcase was full of black-and-white photographs. He was even more astonished by their subject matter: devastated buildings, twisted girders, broken bridges — snapshots from an annihilated city. He quickly closed the case and made his way back home.

At the kitchen table, he looked through the photographs again and confirmed what he had suspected. He was looking at something he had never seen before: the effects of the first use of the Atomic bomb. The man was looking at Hiroshima.”

***

This essay was originally published on Design Observer in November, 2008. It is republished here to commemorate the 64th anniversary of Hiroshima, and with a new slideshow of 100 photographs courtesy of the International Center of Photography. See more images and read the full essay here.

***

(Tóxico also found a small battered suitcase, full of old photographs, negatives, postcards and other images, at a flee market in Mexico City a couple of months ago. The contents  are not historical, but it is history nonetheless, a personal history taken, kept,  forgotten and lost and then sold.  We bought it with all it contained. We then invited 15 talented photographers to reinterpret the personal materials–or rather be inspired by them, to propose their own. The suitcase will be presented at the Feria Internacional del libro de artista, in FotoSeptiembre–a bienal-type festival, based in Mexico City– in a couple of weeks. More news here soon.)


Tagged , , , ,

INDEX OR CONSTRUCTED BY WAY OF EXPERIMENT, AND A MAP WITH WHICH TO READ ANOTHER MAP

picture-12

picture-2

By José León Cerrillo, Mexican artist

***

(Cannibalism alone unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically…

It is because we never had grammar books, nor collections of old vegetables. And we never knew what urban, suburban, frontiers and continents were. We were a lazy spot on the world map of Brazil…

Down with the reversible world and objectified ideas. Cannibalized. The curtailment of dynamic thought. The individual as victim of the system. The source of classic injustices. Of romantic injustices. And the forgetting of interior conquests.

—Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto Antropófago, 1928)

***

Says Triple Canopy:

index or constructed by way of experiment was conceived by José León Cerrillo as the Internet-based variation of an existing sculpture, “having to do with suspended symbolic efficiency” (2008). First exhibited at Dispatch Projects in New York, that work is composed of a rack of posters emblazoned with archetypal abstract and architectural forms, drawn from the modernist idiom and the cities of Latin America, respectively. The posters are semi-transparent, and as viewers flip the windows of the rack, they obliterate images as others emerge…

Andrade’s manifesto is a touchstone for Cerrillo. The Brazilian poet suggested, ironically, that in order to develop their own literature, his countrymen should learn from the natives who had cannibalized the first European colonists in order to acquire their strengths. If Brazilians were to apply that method to the arts, surely they would soon have a respectable national style. Of course, this parodic proposal predicted the shape that LatinAmerican architecture and urbanism would take over the course of the twentieth century.

Cerrillo’s work echoes these cannibalizations and acquisitions. “Tudo esta visto,” reads the text cascading down one frame (a quotation from Augusto de Campos’s revision of the cannibal figure in Andrade’s manifesto): Everything is seen, but no orientation emerges. The work is, in Cerrillo’s words, “a map with which to read another map.”

(See the web-based project here)

(Thanks López for the tip)


Tagged ,

BUEN CINE MEXICANO


.

Ayer empezó este ciclo de cine mexicano con el documental “El Ciruelo”, de Emiliano Altuna y Carlos Rossini.

Organizado por Edwin Culp (uno de los socios de Conejo Blanco) el ciclo intenta abordar el tema de la ausencia, vista desde varios ángulos. Y tomando en cuenta lo difícil que es atrapar inclusive las buenas producciones mexicanas en los cines–ya que normalmente duran tan poco en cartelera comerical–el ejercicio de hacer visible lo invisible se vuelve doble.

Aquí las fechas y pelis; la selección está buenísima. Ahí nos vemos con vinito en mano.

Mayo
Domingo 24
Intimidades de Shakespeare y Víctor Hugo (2008, Dir. Yulene Olaizola, 83 min.)

Domingo 31
Roma (2008, Dir. Elisa Miller, 26 min.)
Cafe paraíso (2008, Dir. Alonso Ruizpalacios, 10 min.)
.
Junio
Domingo 7
Wadley (2008, Dir. Matías Meyer, 60 min.)
Domingo 14
Juntos (2009, Dir. Nicolás Pereda, 73 min.)
Domingo 21
Familia Tortuga (2006, Dir. Rubén Imaz, 139 min.)
***
(Edwin Culp y Carlos Rossini tomaron el Tóxico Master-Class de Christopher Doyle. Gabino–el protagonista de Juntos–tomó el Tóxico Workshop de Christoffer Boe)

Tagged , ,

LIGHTNESS OF BEING: A REALM DEVOID OF AIR AND NO LINEAR DIRECTION OR GRAVITY, FLOATING IN POETIC MEMORY

thelightnessofbeing_1-copy

thelightnessofbeing_5

thelightnessofbeing_9

Images by Alinka Echeverría, Mexican artist. From the series Lightness of Being.

And take a look at her mesmerizing video on the same subjet right here.

(The music of the video is by the fantastic Ariel Guzik, with whom we worked on a project while I was still with Laboratorio 060)

***

(“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful… I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a someone enters their first word into our poetic memory.”

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being-)

Tagged , , ,

ES, QUIZÁ

esa cierta deliciosa predisposcición a todas las historias posibles

(como contarnos cuentos a través de nosotros mismos)

(life as a very real fiction)

*

Tagged

ALMOST NAKED

shen_wei_jamesro

yemi

ShenWei01.jpg

Images by Shen Wei

Growing up in Mainland China, I was brought up strictly and conservatively, any untraditional and unconventional ideas of life-style can sometimes lead to misconceptions. The goal of my projects are to raise the question about human nature, about emotions, feelings, desire, instinct and identity, to reveal things that you can feel it, that are unexplainable but yet still solid. I am fascinated with exploring the complexity of emotional nakedness and psychological connection/disconnection, as it is often expressed not specifically but explicitly.”

You can see a video interview with Wei here.

Tagged ,

JAIME HAYON

“Siento que siempre hay algo más por hacer. Siento que la gente en general no se atreve mucho a hacer lo que realmente  quiere, siempre estamos con esta especie de barrera extraña. Pero cuando uno empieza a experimentar, y empieza a crear su propio mundo poco a poco…”

(Pequeño fragmento de una entrevista que le hize ayer a Jaime,  y que se publicará en el próximo número de la revista Código)

Tagged , , ,

TEASER No. 003

postal-tfp

(Próximamente en la gran Ciudad de México.)

Tagged , , , , ,

BROOKLYN DIARIES No. 05: CAROLL TAVERAS

Great morning with photographer Caroll Taveras, talking over hot chocolate. Saw her photo studio where she just did a new project, and she also showed me her new collage book called Surrender.

(Read an interview on this last one here, recently published by Wallpaper Magazine.)

Tagged , ,

BARCELONA DIARIES No. 01: TOÑO CAMUÑAS

Obra de Toño Camuñas

Images by Toño Camuñas.

(Ah. Spain, and things in Spain. Finished Tóxico 5 -day workshop and lecture last week at the Instituto Europeo de Diseño of Barcelona, and now, at last, I am hitting the streets. Looking again. And again. I will be posting Spain-related things this week. Starting with these images of Toño Camuñas, a Spanish artist that a friend introduced me to in a Mexican cantina, not too long ago.)

Tagged , ,

LOS FAVORITOS DE AMBULANTE

Como probablemente estén enterados si viven en México, ya empezó Ambulante, un gran festival de documentales: cuarenta y cuatro documentales (mexicanos y extranjeros), en esta ocasión, para ser exactos.

Y Elena Fortes–la directora de Ambulante–ayer le dió a Tóxico su lista de cinco películas favoritas para esta edición:

Encuentros en el fin del mundo (Werner Herzog)
Los exiliados (Kent Mackenzie)
Emerald (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Presunto culpable (Roberto Hernández)
La vida moderna (Raymond Depardon)

Más info en la página oficial del festival.

(Gracias Elena.)

Tagged , ,

GEOGRAFÍAS OCULTAS

(De la serie “Geografías Ocultas”, de Mariana Gruener.)

“La motivación inicial para fotografiar el quirófano surge como respuesta a la enfermedad y las intervenciones quirúrgicas que sufrió mi padre. Al igual que la mayoría de las personas, antes de entrar la primera vez a fotografiar el quirófano, iba con temor ante la sola idea de ver un cuerpo intervenido, segura de que me provocaría asco y horror. Curiosamente una vez adentro, descubrí que el quirófano era como estar en el limbo, un espacio donde no entra el dolor. Pues el sufrimiento se queda en la salas de espera, en las salas de recuperación y en los cuartos de hospital.”

Mariana estudió en el School of Visual Arts, y ha sido parte de numerosas exposiciones indiviudales y colectivas; también ha sido seleccionada para la beca de Jóvenes Creadores y Estudios en el Extranjero del FONCA, así como la beca Fullbright García Robles.

(Mariana tomó el Tóxico Master-Class de Martin Parr y Chris Boot.)

Tagged , , , ,

MIRAMAR

(De la serie “Miramar”, por Ramiro Chaves.)

Miramar está en la Provincia de Cordoba, centro geografico de Argentina. Miramar es el único pueblo en la costa de Mar Chiquita. Y Mar Chiquita no es un oceano pequeño como uno podría llegar a pensar, sino más bien es una laguna salina muy grande, la más grande de Latinoamérica.

“Mis imágenes remiten a ficciones banales o familiares, y al mismo tiempo registran espacios auténticos. Me interesa conservar la incógnita que se produce cuando no sabemos si un acontecimiento es ficción o documento. Trato de mantener la energía del primer encuentro con un espacio que nos conflictua y nos seduce a la vez. La fotografías concebidas individualmente se conectan tratando de formar una poética personal, haciendo uso del imaginario especifico de esta región. Trato de fabricar una memoria elusiva, redescubriendo este espacio familiar donde mi sensibilidad y visión del mundo fueron formadas. Un recuento de momentos que describan la belleza, poder, tragedia y complejidad cultural de esta zona.”

(Ramiro es parte del equipo de Tóxico. Ahorita está de vuelta en Miramar, continuando con este proyecto  y visitando a su abuela que vive ahí, entre la realidad y la ficción de su nieto.)

(Puedes ver el nuevo blog de Ramiro aquí.)

Tagged , , , ,

DE CHOPIN

(De la serie “Señoras en Malls”, por Katya Brailovsky. Katya tomó el Tóxico Master Class de Martin Parr y Chris Boot.)

Obsesionada con el fenómeno señora, fotografío en espacios públicos malls. He hecho retratos de gente (señoras) a quien pido

permiso.

Estos seres fantástico-exuberantes surcan los laberintos de ropa y otros objetos en tiendas y aparadores, -travestís de museos-. Buscan lo mismo que yo: saciar una humana hambre visual. Y en este saciar mutuo (mío y el de las sras. retratadas), al hacer la foto, completo el mirar que pareciera anhelan al acicalar con tanto cuidado, estas sras., sus exóticos plumajes.

Y a su vez, por un sesentavo de segundo, recupero a mi abuela, y todos los sábados de salón de belleza y Palacio de Hierro Durango para comprar sorpresas que yo misma podía escoger.

-Katya Brailovsky

Tagged , ,

MR. GONE WITH THE WIND, MEXICO CITY

(Photo by Dante Busquets.)

(On certain days it is oh so nice, almost necessary I would venture to say, to arrive home–to arrive home riding one´s blue bike (the long route) back after a dinner with friends, soup freshly made and talks about  the theater of storms, fifth floor–to arrive home and then walk to the desk by the window, thinking of getting back to work right away and then suddenly find, from another friend across the park, a link, some words and a man looking in just that exact and precise way at life through his glasses.)

(Gracias D.) (Fiddle-dee-dee.)

“Style is not something applied,” wrote the poet Wallace Stevens. “It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man.”

This guy…he’s got him some style. It didn’t come from putting on that hat or pulling that tie off the tie rack, it didn’t come from his choice of eyewear or his personal trainer, and it sure as hell didn’t come from his tailor. No sir, this guy’s style comes right straight out of his bones. It’s in the way he carries himself, the way he holds his head. The bearing of a man, the bearing of a poem…one is the same as the other.

Now, that’s a powerfully cool hat, no mistake. And that tie speaks for itself, Rhett and Scarlet getting all sweaty like that. But those things are just the expression of his style, not the source. You didn’t really think it was the source, did you? Fiddle-dee-dee.

- Greg Fallis, on Mr. Gone With The Wind by Dante Busquets

Tagged , , ,

CRAP CARS: DF

Rick Shearman, ex-Fabricante y diseñador de  Australia, vino a México a visitar y a tomar el Tóxico Workshop de Stefan Sagmeister. Estando aquí se enamoró perdidamente: se quedaba durante horas sentado de banqueta en banqueta dibujando en su cuaderno negro coches viejos que se iba encontrando en las calles cerca (y no tan cerca) de mi casa. La serie se llama “Crap Cars”.

Tagged , , , , ,

FUNDACIÓN ADOPTE UN ESCRITOR

fundación adopte a un escritor
manifiesto introducible

de rubén bonet*

la Fundación Adopte a un Escritor es una organización de carácter situacionista vital, rubeniana e irresoluble. desdeñamos lo binario. y un par de cosas más.

la Fundación Adopte se declara situacionista porque después de tantas y tantas posturas y actitudes ensayadas en la vida y después también de haberlo pensado mucho no hemos encontrado ninguna otra organización en el mundo a la que nos gustaría pertenecer. todas son un asco. de manera efervescente nos declaramos primordialmente situacionistas. y sabemos de antemano que esto no significa nada. nada que valga la pena me refiero.

nuestro eslogan: la lucidez espanta. la idiotez nos mata. sin embargo padecemos una flaqueza irresponsable por toda la parafernalia que rodea a los aperitivos y hacemos gala de un excelente sentido del humor. como muestra de esto último también nos tenemos preparado un magnífico prepitafio: gozamos de una mala salud de hierro. amén.

la Fundación Adopte es un enigma. este enigma goza de una gran ventaja sobre todos los demás: no tiene solución. con lo que para empezar nos ahorramos varias preguntas inútiles.

el objetivo de la Fundación Adopte es, como su nombre indica, buscar el mayor número de afiliaciones adoptantes para procurar el cobijo y la infraestructura mínima necesaria para que un Escritor pueda desarrollar su obra y su vida dedicado exclusivamente a la literatura -y otras actividades relacionadas, como la promoción, el performance etílico, etc.,- sin pasar penalidades económicas y el consiguiente desasosiego espiritual.
les informo seriamente que sin dinero en el bolsillo es imposible escribir de nada. amén.

no sé si esté de más decirlo pero el escritor a adoptar soy yo, Rubén Bonet, y queda excluída –por lo menos en esta Fundación- la posibilidad de cualquier tipo de ampliación a la adopción de otros escritores.

la Fundación Adopte a un Escritor está inspirada en la gloriosa Fundación Joe Gould, sujeto que nunca llegó a publicar su gran Historia Oral de Nuestros Días, pero que dio a conocer de manera selectiva el necesario ensayo de cómo el consumo indiscriminado de salsa de tomate incidía negativamente en el número de accidentes ferroviarios en Estados Unidos.
thanxs for all Joe.

la Fundación Adopte también se inspira en la constatación de hechos a primera vista inverosímiles como que algunos gringos se dediquen a adoptar pedazos de autopista. si existe ese espíritu solidario hacia unos centenares de metros de concreto cómo no van a haber almas comprometidas con el desarrollo espiritual de un Escritor, sin contar con la ventaja afectiva de que yo soy mucho más simpático e interactivo que unos cuantos metros de cemento aplanados por el que nada más pasan coches a 65 millas por hora.

(Para más sobre la fundación click en “continued”.)

Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , ,

EXPAT

(“Expat” series by Mark Powell. Mark took the Tóxico Master-Class by Martin Parr and the Stefan Ruiz workshop.) (Click on images to enlarge.)

Traveling into San Miguel Allende from Mexico City you are suddenly presented, around a final descending highway bend, the view of El Bajio region where the pueblo San Miguel de Allende is located within the prehistoric remnant of an old volcanic crater. If it is late in the day, a placating warm light hits La Parroquia towers of the church turning them a soft, dry red. The church clearly marks the center of the village from the distance into a cozy and idealized view.

After World War II, US veterans discovered San Miguel de Allende and using the GI bill of rights which paid for education for the ex-armed forces personnel, they came to study Spanish and art at the Instituto de Allende. This started a long lineage of Americans coming and going. Later the town was discovered by the Beats, Neal Cassady lived there for a while and died there along side train tracks creating a certain iconoclastic aura for future travelers to seek. For the past fifty years, San Miguel de Allende has been a center of American immigration to Mexico, being far from the US border it also represents the most committed immigrants, the ones who take the giant leap to Mexico to start new life away from the States.

The town over the years has become a magnet for interesting characters that all interpret and embrace the Mexican way of life in different ways, often embracing an idealized version of Mexican culture that can border escapism at its best, not unlike the tidy offerings of a cult. A friendly, sunny cult that only Mexico could give.

-Mark Powell

Tagged , ,

M DE MICHOACÁN

(“M de Michoacán” por Carlos Álvarez Montero.)

Muchos hombres de Jacona, Michoacán, cruzaron la frontera de noche y se fueron a vivir a Los Ángeles. Muchos de ellos regresaron años después; volvieron con costumbres, valores y aptitudes que aprendieron ahí, del otro lado, en el primer mundo. Y así, la cultura del gang, importada, tropicalizada, sin fronteras. La M. Tatuada en la espalda, o LA en la cabeza, desde acá para allá para acá para siempre.

(Carlos tomó el Tóxico Master-Class de Martin Parr y Chris Boot.)

Tagged , , , ,

JESUS!

Photo by Guillermo Rivero, a.k.a g2–now officially and internationally.

(And yes, true, it is really San Judas Tadeo. Or maybe Jesus in disguise so he can calmly ride the subway.)

(We stole the photo from his Red Marker website.)

THE (UN)AVERAGE MAN

Photos from “El hombre promedio”, by Mexican photographer José Luis Cuevas. Ongoing series of portraits of average bureaucrats that work in Mexico City, caught by Cuevas on their lunch break or on their way back home. (A little phrase of Nietzsche´s comes to mind: “the only normal people are the ones you don´t know that well”. Or don´t see that well, for that matter.)

Another series of his called “Amateur”–about the business of homemade porn will be published in Vice Magazine worldwide; special issue on Mexico City, guest-edited by Tóxico.

(José Luis enrolled in the Martin Parr Tóxico Master-Class and portfolio review.)

Tagged

NEL DESIGN COLLECTIVE IN SALONE SATELITE MILÁN

NEL exhibited its new collection “CIUDAD SATÉLITE” [Satellite City] during the FouriSalone in Milan. They includied projects such as Tinacos, Trepadoras, SCT and Torres de Satélite. The pieces incorporate urban elements, with the mixture of utopia and decay found in large metropolis around the world.

Tinacos (2008)

Nel transposes onto the scale and shape of a porcelain vase the monumentality and identity of a water tank. The pieces are intervened in the same manner as real-life buildings, making each of them unique, with scaled-down cracks, graffiti, tags and stencils, as well as political campaigns and music concert advertising.

Trepadoras (2008)

On a slightly apocalyptic note, the decay of urban infrastructure and the reclaiming of cities by nature is symbolised by Trepadoras [Creepers], a series of pots which imitate neon signs and electricity pylons being slowly devoured by climbing plants.

Also part of this series, Migración shows the area of the Mexico-United States border where most of the illegal migration takes place.

Trepadoras

—–

SCT (2008)

SCT (Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes – Ministry of Communications and Transportation), is comprised of four wooden sculptures shaped like telecommunications towers that reference the abandonment of human infrastructure, and suggest a possible second use for whole typological classes after the objects stop serving a purpose.


—–

NEL is a platform for experimentation formed by an evolving collective of Mexican designers. The collective experiments and focuses on the conceptual and playful side of design.

Participants in projects above: Ricardo Casas, Alejandro Castro, Héctor Esrawe, Emiliano Godoy, Cecilia León de la Barra

(Héctor Esrawe, Cecilia León de la Barra and Óscar Nunez took the Martí Guixé Tóxico Workshop in 2007. Emiliano Godoy is on the Tóxico advisory comitee 2008)

Tagged ,

LOST & FOUND. OR, LA OFICINA DE OBJETOS PERDIDOS

Photos from “Oficina de objetos perdidos“, series by Ramiro Chaves. The series was done in the lost and found office of a Mexico City Metro station.

wouldn’t it be nice if there were a place in the city where all that is suddenly gone from our lives could actually go to, end up there. and i am not only referring to the plastic surgery book one usually reads on the morning subway to work (tantalizing literature to flip through as the train screeches to a halt and then jumps again, as the skin of the face constantly lunges backwards and forwards); not only a ball that bounced away (is it maybe the one dylan thomas lost as a kid?); not only a tv set (how the hell does one lose a tv set?) but also the place where to find alongside the lost umbrella those sticky red pieces of lost guts or lost heart; lost lungs, lost thoughts, lost love, lost friends, lost moments, lost time. forgotten or mislaid or wasted or runaway or simply absent or taken or strayed; gone missing once, but somewhere expecting to be reclaimed again. still there.

and i also wonder if i one day saw some of my lost opportunities (for example) waiting patiently covered in dust upon a shelf in a dusty office: would i recognize them as mine? or do things sometimes become so lost that there comes a moment that we don´t even realize anymore they once were ours? (maybe we should mark everything we own with our initials from now on—our guts, our thoughts, our sleep, our hearts. our friends with tattoos so it won´t wash off.)

mmm.
yes. wouldn’t that be nice if there existed such an office.

because then, instead of downing a couple of blue or pink pills with the third tequila (straight) we could just go and pick up our lost sleep or our lost hope with the old man in the gray jacket. who would verify the initials against some official document or other of ours, makes us sign a few paper, hand it over. and that would be that. un-lost. or home.

but. impossible i guess. one must be a realist, in spanish at least. oficina de objetos perdidos: perdidos: lost. no found (to be found) anywhere, not in mexico, not en español. lost in a missing word of our language all the things we lost of ourselves.

g

—-

(Ramiro took the Martin Parr Master-Class and Christoffer Boe Workshop.)

Tagged

Laboratorio 060 wins Best Art Practice Award

The project “Frontera” won the 2008 First Prize of the Best Art Practices Award by the Italian Government.

Continue reading

Intoxicating Vice

Jesse Pearson, editor of Vice Magazine, invited Gabriella Gómez-Mont (founder of Tóxico) to be guest-editor of the next Vice Magazine. The issue will be all about (and around and under) Mexico City. Poetically, the issue is running on Mexican time: we were given a 10-day deadline to pitch ideas, gather images, commission stories and have it all ready to be put together from inside a computer in New York. Oh God what do you mean ten days oh no no no way impossible but oh yes yes yes suddenly we could not resist when Jesse said: the only ground-rules are for content to be “weird, funny, intelligent and maybe dark or even angry”. Mmm. We like those words. And since the Tóxico team is always up for a bit of adrenaline in these unseasonably rainy days…

“Too much sense, the starkest madness,” Emily Dickinson once said.

So. Out in June. Worldwide. Guest-edited by Tóxico. Great local collaborators. A million copies it seems. Not bad for a 10-day spree.

www.viceland.com