hitting midnight fever=dusk delusion

up for La Pluma Awards...

Finding beauty in the midst of it all
By Geneva Gamez

San Diego, CA – Recycled garage doors, combined with old pieces of wood piled one on top of the other, coupled with metal sheets and worn out tires, translates to the high percentage of homes found south of the border. Add a rusted fence to the distance between Mexico and the U.S., and it won’t be difficult to understand the grave poverty that unites the inhabitants of these homes with the divisional fence that stands prominently between “us” and “them”.

This is why Maria Teresa Fernandez’s work makes perfect sense. Deteriorating shacks, made out of anything and everything, on the verge of collapsing are brought to life by the simple gesture of a blooming flower coming through a peeping whole in the door. A lock on a slanted door recovers value to the home that may otherwise just be a forgotten space. Recycled tires become whimsical elements within forced passages leading to the entrance of these homes.

“Architects by Force” is Fernandez’s three-year personal project turned into a series of photographs evoking life out of the dead, and color out of the dull. It’s a series intended to show the aesthetics of the unaesthetic and more than that to admirably respect those who are architects by force yet unaccredited for their creations.

Fernandez’s photographs depict a dialogue between form and material, patterns and texture; this combined with the wild range of colors, creates a cacophonous dialect.

“These factors confirm the notion that a piece of discarded material is no longer a piece of trash,” emphasizes the artist, “the colors, the patterns, and the textures conjure up the vitality and imagination required to convert trash into a home,” she says. Not to mention the ingenuous added battle to find anything that serves as a potential shield against the forces of nature.

There isn’t a single photograph in this series that doesn’t tell a story, as behind each one stands a family who once came to Tijuana with the illusion of crossing the border in search of the much acclaimed “American Dream”. Through great anticipation and deceived by even greater rejection, many families give up on the American ideal and settle in forbidden grounds of Tijuana and surrounding areas.

“Like weeds, these homes bloom and spread across any existing territorial opening,” says Fernandez, “…Need is what makes them architects by force.”

As much beauty as can be found in the craftiness of these homes, it’s shocking to see their continuous growth and expansion, leaving no answer as to why social evolution pedals backwards when it’s inevitable to avoid consciousness towards the obvious.

This is how Fernandez was consequently led into her next series of photographs “Cerca de la Cerca”, cerca used with its double meaning in Spanish for close and fence. The title translates to “Close to the Fence” losing a bit of the abstractness and irony of the play with words that the artist uses in Spanish.

“Cerca de la Cerca” also continues to be a work in progress, as the incarcerating truth about the fence (wall that divides Mexico from the U.S.) becomes an ever-changing phenomenon. More so than ever, the fence has become an attraction, a point of reference, and sad but true, something obvious that people seem to have gotten used to.

On the southern side of the fence, you will find anything from artwork (paintings, photographs and even sculptures), to stranded shoes, clothes, and dolls –all symbolic of the human presence.

“I like to shoot things on the fence because they are reminiscent of people,” said Fernandez, adding that, “you don’t need people in the pictures to show that they are present, the items found there represent that.”

Many of Fernandez’s photographs also show the other side of the fence, peeping through a rusted whole in the fiercely designed fence you can see the tides of a somehow desirable beach. Others serve as windows that open up to the sky, as if symbolic for freedom once one is on the other side of the fence. The eye Fernandez has for capturing a moment and documenting a story is amazing, but what’s best is that she finds beauty in the midst of it all.

Surveying the Border: Three Decades of Video Art about the United States and Mexico

This 90-minute program presents some of the best short video works made by artists since the mid-1970s that take the relation between the United States and Mexico as their subject matter.

Politics, Landscape, Humor
The program screens videos that address the experience of immigration and the subsequent reality of living in the neighboring country, including provocative political works by a number of artist activists. More lyrical pieces focus on urban and rural landscapes, while other works comment on the humorous absurdity of stereotypes.

The evening encompasses a number of genres of video, including conceptual and performance art, experimental documentary, short fiction, and music video.

Artists in the Program
"Surveying The Border" features work by artists based in Southern California, Tijuana, New York, Mexico City, Florida, El Paso, and Oaxaca.

Artists include Greg Berger, Ira Scheider, Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF), Alan Calpe, Octavio Castellanos, Ximena Cuevas, Nathan Gibbs, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Art Jones, Juan Laguna, Andrew Lampert, Jesse Lerner, Yoshua Okon, Camilo Ontiveros, Omar Pimienta, Sal V. Ricalde, Alex Rivera, Shannon Spanhake, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Bruno Varela, Willie Varela, and others.

After-Screening Discussion
Please join us following the screening for a discussion between artists Ximena Cuevas, Andrew Lampert, and Rubén Ortiz Torres moderated by Rita Gonzalez, assistant curator at the Center for Art of the Americas at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Date: Thursday, September 29, 2005, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Harold M. Williams Auditorium, Getty Center
Admission: Free. Reservations required. Call (310) 440-7300 or use the "Make Reservation" button below.

passage of time

love the sky, lose the fear, use your wings

-Geneva

2 minutes of silence on Nov. 11, 2005

We know warfare, tyranny, and strife. We have pitted neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe, nation against nation, and faith against faith. We have seen tensions rise. We have seen hatred boil over. And we have seen peace won at terrible costs.
Now we are faced with a global conflict that is so nebulous, so ill-defined and ill-conceived, that it may never end. All we are told is that there is our side, and there is the other side. That our way of life is at stake, and we must triumph at all costs. As the coffins multiply, we grieve our own losses.
But the horror of neverending war brings with it the chance for a truly global resistance.
And so we will create a new side – the side that wants to understand, the side that seeks out the root causes of our struggle, the side that will triumph over conflict itself.

We will devise a ritual to transcend the double-standard of grief, to transform their dead into our dead, and our dead into theirs. And then we will challenge those around us to do the same.
Two minutes is all that we need for this global ritual of reconciliation. On November 11th, fall silent for two minutes in honor of all innocent victims – in London, in Afghanistan, in New York, in Iraq, in Chechnya, in Madrid. Two minutes of silence, of remembrance, of reflection, to consider the choices that we have made and the path we will follow into the future.

asi que:

se dice que las mujeres son las de perder mas al morir.
es por esa razon que el 99.9% de las leyendas urbanas y historias de fantasmas tienen que ver con aquella mujer de bata blanca en busca de sus hijos; esa nina de vestido blanco corriendo y escondiendose por el jardin; la abuelita que aun despues de tres meses sigue meciando la poltrona y acostandose al lado del abuelo...
se piensa que hay una especie de encarnacion con la madre tierra que causa una dificultad extrema al tener que despegarse de ella y por esa razon los seres femeninos son los que tienden a regresar en espiritu.
la mujer engendra a los hijos, los lleva ligados en el hilo omblilical...son carne y sangre propia: es por eso que la mujer es mas probable a ser fantasma que el hombre.....o asi se dice.

noches de relampago en la sala con jules, emilio, y omar.

Feliz Cumpleanos

xog

BOTTLE BATTLE

Adbusters: Nov/Dec 2005 #62 Volume 13 Number 6

In March of 2004, the Coca Cola company completely withdrew its Dasani line of bottled water from the UK market, just five weeks after its extravagant multi-million pound launch. Initially, the launch went off without a hitch -that is, until several British dailies caught wind of one of Coke's dirty little secrets: Dasani is just tap water, purified, with added mineral salts. Even in the wake of such gleeful headlines as "Coke sells tap water for 95p," the company stuck behind its flagship water line. But a few weeks later it had to admit defeat after it was forced to recall 500,000 bottles found to contain illegaly high levels of bromate. Bromate is a mutagenic and carcinogenic toxin that can cause hearing impairment, kidney failure and death. It is a by-product of the filtration process itself.

Just something to consider next time that Dasani bottle calls you at the register.

the greatest loss of time

"The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty." Seneca

How's NYC?!!

NY is how life should be: business man in a suit sitting next to a Puerto Rican punk rocker next to a black guy with nylon head rag next to an old Asian lady with her eyes closed next to an orthodox Jew as we all get lulled by the subway train on its way somewhere. I live in a part of town, little did I really know when I rented, that is very great and people always say Oh my my you live There...

-Robert
 
I agree with you one hundred percent about NY life –if even half of NY’s diversity and free spirit was transported over this way, it would make life in San Diego far more interesting. I always think of San Diego as a small city with great aspirations. I think eventually it will grow to become like the big cities, but never quite like NY; people here are too conservative and even the most flamboyant seem timid. You never know though, with so many people settling in, it may not be a farfetched reality that we are definitely growing. I think the cost of living is what restricts the potential diversity that would otherwise flock in though.

-Geneva

sept. 7,2005

Filling in the Gap

Local artist and UCSD student, Shannon Spanhake, tells us about one of her current projects.

Geneva Gamez: What is ‘The Garden of Convergence’ project?

Shannon Spanhake: 'The Garden of Convergence' is a community garden inhabiting the negative space of potholes around Tijuana. Flowers and vegetables are planted with a note inviting members of the community to add, change, take from, and care for the garden. The act of filling in this negative shape is intended to create an urban landmark of exchange, to activate both the tectonic space and the social structure of the city.

I have always been fascinated with potholes - their capacity to reveal what the concrete hides, the organic nature of their shape and how they are made, and also, how they represent a flaw in the over-all system of urbanization - and simply, they are such an interesting container to make use of. The first realization of this project took place in Chicago, where I filled potholes on Dearborn Street with plaster and embedded sound chips that played audio from historical race riots that took place on that street.

GG: Who is involved in the realization of this project?

SS: I came up with the initial idea, however Camilo Ontiveros [local artist] helps me to actually make it happen, but more importantly are the members of the communities actively engaged in the project.

GG: When and where is ‘The Garden of Convergence’ taking place?

SS: This is an on-going project and currently the garden sprawls from the border into potholes downtown. However, it is constantly changing.

GG: Why did you choose Tijuana?

SS: This iteration that takes place in Tijuana was prompted by an unfulfilled promise made by the city to grant a certain amount of land to its residents for personal use. This combined with the small amount of access that residents have to vegetation made this an ideal location for a second iteration of the project.

GG: What do you hope the outcome will be?

SS: This project seeks to interrupt the monotony of the everyday. The many rectangles that make up the city are often constricting both in space and time. They are everywhere, defining our past while in a horizontal position; they establish an edge of the horizon - an abstraction of the fundamental position of our origins. And when vertical, they become an indicator and measure of us – raising awareness to our upright position on the earth between the ground and sky. Used repetitively and in different sizes, this creates the tectonic structure of the city, which plays a large role in how we orient ourselves and our interactions with others. Urban landmarks are typically limited to attractions for tourists, but there are also landmarks created and used by local residents that really help to define the urban fabric of the city. In much the same way as the payphone became a landmark for drug dealers, a dumpster for prostitutes, or a hot dog stand for business deals, the ambition for this project is to create a landmark with the capacity to alter behaviors, perception, and orientation, while making proactive use of a space otherwise considered a flaw.

GG: How are people responding?

SS: So far the most interesting response has been the way vehicles carefully avoid this space, as if the lines on the street have changed - they turn slowly and the passengers peak their heads out to see what it is. And how when pedestrians walk past, they stop to look and ask each other questions. The pothole really changes how people move through the space and their actions while in it.

GG: How long is this project going to last?

SS: It's difficult to say since the garden is really the result of a dialogue…I guess it will continue until people get tired of talking.

GG: Are there plans of expanding and moving the project into other cities?

SS: I would like this garden to extend to wherever there exist a pothole that frames the surrounding environment in an interesting way.

GG: Aside from the actual locations, where else can people experience ‘The Garden of Convergence’?

SS: Photographs of some of the potholes will be on display in October at the MCA [Museum of Contemporary Art] in downtown San Diego. I hope to begin organizing ‘The Garden of Convergence’ tours sometime in the fall.

Conciencia Artistica: Sept. 16, 2005

CAUTION: Something to think about
By Geneva Gamez

San Diego, CA -In the past few weeks, you may not even be aware, but we were all part of quite a few artistic public interventions. It all started with this idea an artist had in mind; the brainstorming, the efforts and the risks involved in the process of bringing this amazing idea of the CAUTION project to life.
 
While the fruited idea may have stirred offense to drivers-by, or seemed like a redundant thematic to others, some actually found it exciting -but that may be credited to those that find anything risky fun. The CAUTION project, however, was not meant to be offensive, redundant, or exciting –the truth is though, it is –and that’s what makes this project so unique in its originality to tell the same story in a different way.
 
On August 26, 2005, a local artist, member of the DoEAT, Inc. (Department of Ecological Authoring Tactics) art collective, brave enough to go against all odds, posted several magnetic phrases over the yellow signs showing the well known “immigrant family crossing the freeway”. The large magnetic strips, painted yellow as the original sign, read phrases like “FREE MARKET”, “NO BENEFITS”, “NOW HIRING”, and “WANTED” in bold black print.
 
It was interesting to see how people react to unexpected disturbances in their everyday lives, and funny how some things hit us harder than others. As cars slowed down and heads turned trying to make out the new wording of the disturbed signs along I-5 and Highway 905, some phrases seemed to hold a stronger meaning than others; in fact, the “NOW HIRING” sign posted along Highway 905 was brought down by an spectator hours soon after it was posted –ironically, the “FREE MARKET” one, which was posted right over on the other side of the road was still up after five days. The intervention was already having an effect on the public.
 
The point of public interventions isn’t only for artists to parade their work around public places, but to get the people involved. It’s not about anyone liking it or accepting it; it’s about doing something to reach out to an otherwise numb public to become aware, conscious and active. It’s about creating a piece of art that will in turn create a reaction –and whatever that reaction may be, it’ll fulfill the reason for the intervention.
 
In continuation with the CAUTION project’s first phase, DoEAT, Inc. went out on their second mission during Labor Day weekend and impacted more CAUTION signs. Added phrases included “CASH ONLY”, “HOME OF THE FREE” and “GREAT EXPECTATIONS”. These phrases relate in one way or another to illegal immigrant’s labor in the United States and carry an underlining criticism towards commercialism. It features a raw reality that is more relevant to the present situation that illegal immigrants face once they find themselves looking for jobs on this side of the border.
 
Although, we are all aware that ill paid labor is better saved for those who are here illegally, these interventions have served as a bitter reminder that we are too comfortable with the issue. Hopefully, the vivid phrases plastered on the non-efficient signs, disturbed a comfort zone that is screaming to become active.
 
There is no reason for anyone living in the United States, or anywhere for that matter, to be treated anything less than human.
 
Stay tuned for more public interventions and artistic projects by DoEAT, Inc.
 
To contact the writer e-mail: gamezgeneva@yahoo.com

nada de nada

first blog test -i forgot my password already