Posted in July 2010 …

Jul 30 2010
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Random Intoxicants

A GREAT BLOODY SHOUT OF JOY, AND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT FLOWS

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“I love everything that flows, said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the beginning where there is no end….The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.”

-Henry Miller-

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Jul 27 2010
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Random Intoxicants

LA OTRA FAMILIA

Imágenes de Fershow Escarcega, fotógrafo mexicano.

De su serie “La Otra Familia”, varios ‘auto-retratos’ de Fershow con sus juguetes de infancia.

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Fershow tomó el taller de Tóxico_Lab “A tremor in the Structure”con Laurel Ptak;

Tóxico Lab es una nueva serie de talleres creados para (y por) artistas emergentes.

Jul 26 2010
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Random Intoxicants

ONLY AT TIMES, AND IS GONE

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“Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke-

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Jul 26 2010
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Random Intoxicants

POLITICS OF FICTION

TED has already started posting some of the great talks we saw a week ago at Oxford.

Above are two interesting videos that gave me good food for thought regarding how fiction intertwines with politics on this side of reality, in different ways.

Click click click to see, and visit TED to see more.

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(Elif Shafak is a novelist, and  Naif Al-Mutawa creates comic books.)

Jul 24 2010
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Random Intoxicants

MEMORIES OF BROOKLYN No. 001: MYTHIC MINDS

Saw Joshua Ray a couple of weeks ago in NYC. Besides talking our heads off as always (and getting the grand tour of Red Hook), I was also excited to see his new work: which looks amazing in the flesh. Above only a very tiny taste.

(And gracias gracias da Josh for the multiple presents–will be diving into them as soon as I get back to Mexico City.)

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Jul 23 2010
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Tóxico People

MARTHA SE VA A VENECIA

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyF9y1kcggU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Grandes noticias: Martha–la ópera prima del maravilloso Marcelino Islas Hernández–se va al Festival de Venecia, competencia oficial, dentro de la semana internacional de la crítica.

Felicidades a todo el equipo! Estamos celebrando por acá.

Y pronto tequilas en vivo.

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(Marcelino además es el productor del primer proyecto de Tóxico Cinema: un largometraje documental que estamos realizando con apoyo de FOPROCINE, fotografiado por el mismísimo Rodrigo “el Potro” Sandoval, quien también es el director de foto de Martha.)

Jul 22 2010
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Tóxico People, Working in Mexico

MEMENTO MORI

Images  by Juan Carlos López Morales.

Memento Mori–”remember, you will die”:  art or symbolic object that evoke mortality, impermanence.

And from one edge of this reminder, this death, to another: animal and then machine. Animal-machine. Different series that provoke different reflections, that reinvent the relationship between them: from his pictures of biotechnological composites (sewn by hand with traditional surgery techniques that he learned at a vet’s school); to lab drawers that keep unintended jigsaw puzzles of once-were animals (bones sliding down the abstract scale: seal first, then mixing  flamingo and deer bones, and then an unidentifiable something, nameless, forgotten: this is how he found them, how they had been scientifically ‘classified’). And then a still-life at the end. A still-life reminiscent of Renaissance paintings, pointing to the origin in man’s imagination of world that is coming, and that is coming quickly. A cabinet of curiosities poised between our past and our future, let us say.

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Juan Carlos is a young Mexican photographer that has already won several grants and awards; happily, he is also a regular at Tóxico Lab: he has been part of the Fabrica/Colors, Laurel Ptak and Juliana Beasley/Tema Stauffer workshops.

We also just got news that he got an Honorary Mention at the upcoming Photography Biennale in Mexico City–one of the most important photo events in Mexico.

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Jul 12 2010
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Random Intoxicants

AHH, TED

Oxford, England.

Ah, sí.

TED once again: my second conference as part of my TED Senior Fellowship.

And our very own Tom Rielly (alias “Fearless Leader”)  in the picture above, on stage, after the fantastic presentations of the new TED Fellows–a great bunch of people from a myriad of disciplines and countries.

Mmm. I find myself helplessly and happily intoxicated by it all: by the reunions with Senior Fellows, by the new faces, by the talks that range from to the fantastically and fabulously outlandish to the quietly provocative to the rationally optimistic to the plainly brilliant, sí, una y otra vez: and the main-stage conferences have yet to begin tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I have already heard of concepts such as idea-sex; apples whose geographical and ‘personal’ history could be traced with a sweep of the phone; a new project of a driverless car that will soon make its way (by itself) from Europe to Asia… I have also unexpectedly met people who are friends of friends; found out that there are on average one billion transmitors in this world per each living person; and talked to both “Master Inventors” (true job description) and 24 year-old Slovakians that are out to change the education system in their country–and maybe even their country while they are at it.

All of this just at the TED reception party.

And. Yes. Tomorrow. Will be Tweeting news from the main stage as the rest of it happens: @toxicocultura

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Jul 07 2010
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Random Intoxicants

ORDINARY AFFECTS

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“They [ordinary affects] work not through “meanings” per se, but rather in the way that they pick up density and texture as they move through bodies, dreams, dramas, and social worldings of all kinds. Their significance lies in the intensities they build and in what thoughts and feelings they make possible. The question they beg is not what they might mean in an order of representations, or whether they are good or bad in an overarching scheme of things, but where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already somehow present in them in a state of potentiality and resonance.”

-Kathleen Stewart-

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(Gracias Niki N.)

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Jul 02 2010
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Random Intoxicants, Tóxico People

FRAUM BLAUM

Images by Eunice Adorno, from the series “Fraum Blaum”.

Fraum Blaum (Flower Women) is an ongoing project by Eunice, a young Mexican photographer that was part of our last Tóxico workshop “A Tremor In the Structure“–the first of the Tóxico_Lab serie: dialogue platforms specially destined for (and given by) talented emerging artists.

Eunice’s on-going project follows a group of Menonite women who live in Durango, Mexico; the community they live in is one of the most isolated and conservative social structures in our country, and a world unto itself. Eunice had noticed that Menonite women are usually portrayed as being somber and submissive; she is looking to portray a more intimate aspect of their lives, showing those sides of their personalities and communal interactions where their life and social structures becomes more complex and three dimensional.

This is just a small sample of an amazing body of work.

More images by Eunice here.

And more series from other participants soon on the Toxi-blog and www.iheartphotograph.com.

We were very excited to see new work and new faces at Tóxico.

Thank you again Laurel, Museo Tamayo, Colección/Fundación Jumex and The Lift for making these encounters possible.

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(Eunice was also part of the Tóxico Workshop by Tema Stauffer and Juliana Beasley)

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