- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Try never get drunk outside yr own house
- Be in love with yr life
- Something that you feel will find its own form
- Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
- Blow as deep as you want to blow
- Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
- The unspeakable visions of the individual
- No time for poetry but exactly what is
- Visionary tics shivering in the chest
- In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
- Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
- Like Proust be an old teahead of time
- Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
- The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
- Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
- Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
- Accept loss forever
- Believe in the holy contour of life
- Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
- Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
- Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
- No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
- Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
- Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
- In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
- Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
- You’re a Genius all the time
- Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
Posted in February 2012 …
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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.)
ON MY WAY TO TED
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.
DALÃ DOES DISNEY
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ClxSnqE5s[/youtube]
NON-LINEAR STATE No. 059: THE PRIVATE AND THE IRREPRESSIBLE
“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
THE FACE OF THE OTHER AT EACH MOMENT DESTROYS AND OVERFLOWS THE PLASTIC IMAGE IT LEAVES ME
Images by Zhang Xiao, young architect and photographer from China.
See more here, and his blog here.
(Title of post: quote by Emmanuel Lévinas)
NON-LINEAR STATE No. 058: THE VOID
“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.)
TÓXICO PROJECT RESEARCH NO. 039: A TYPE OF PLACE WHERE
Image by Maya Goded.
ROSS MCDONNELL EN TÓXICO LAB!
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 $2,250 pesos.
Selección por portafolio.
Cupo limitado.
Interesados favor de mandar una breve bio y links a trabajo a
info@toxicocultura.com.
Les recomendamos escribir lo antes posible porque los talleres de Tóxico se llenan muy rápido.
Gabriella Gómez-Mont
0445521719574
(Y gracias a Taxidermie y a The Lift por el apoyo)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Image by the talented Balazs Gardi–who we hope will be visiting Mexico again soon for a new Tóxico project.
TÓXICO CULTURA: PARTNER PLATFORM FOR THE PRESTIGIOUS FUTURE GENERATION ART PRIZE
Tóxico  is happy to be one the the international Partner Platforms for “The Future Generation Art Prize“. Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, its aim is to discover, recognize and give long-term support to a future generation of artists up to 35 years of age, investing in the artistic development and new production of works. The Main Prize will be awarded to one artist who will receive the amount of US$ 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.
TÓXICO PROJECT RESEARCH No. 038: IDIOGLOSSIA
[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.
CAR POOL
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
BORGES DIXIT
.
No hay en el orbe una cosa que no sea otra, o contraria, o ninguna.
A mà sólo me inquietan las sorpresas sencillas.
.
I LAY AWAKE THINKING AND MY MIND JUMPING AROUND AND THEN I COULDN’T KEEP AWAY FROM IT AND I STARTED TO THINK ABOUT BREATH
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.)
GRACIAS!
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.)