Rembrandt Peale
George Washington c.a. 1854

de Young museum, from my phone

Ray Beldner
E Plurbus Unum (after Rembrandt Peale George Washington c.a. 1854)

de Yong museum, from my phone

This afternoon I took a trip to the Herzog and DeMeuron
designed de Yong museum. The kind lady at the admissions informed me that if I waited 15 minutes, I could avoid the $10 charge.

She suggested I visit the tower, a kind of squared-off cork screw. I was instantly reminded of recent models I have seen while working out of Fernando Romero’s LAR. In particular, the twisted tower seems to evoke Romero’s design for Carlos Slim’s sumaya museum.

So I took her advice, took the elevator with strangers, and was given a beautiful panorama to appreciate a remarkable city.

I had time to reflect as I waited to see the permanent exhibit. I thought about the beauty of nature, about the possibilities that cities offer to negotiate spaces at different times, on different scales. And mostly, I thought about the people that were in the tower, in that museum.

They weren’t there to make money. They didn’t care about red states or blue states. They were there to be open to new experiences, to listen, as it were, to the works. That struck me, perhaps because outside of New York, the art scene seems slightly less capitalized.

The space and building evoked a sense of turning, perhaps turning on its head, or turning and twisting to see or look in new directions. Or, as happened to me, to turn and look at the people that surround me in the United States of America.

As I looked at George Washington made of dollar bills, I had to ask, is this work a tribute to the power and potential of this system? Or is it a stern warning: that if we do not begin to separate the extreme flow of large corporate private interest in structures and frameworks, we will be left with nothing but crushing “freedom towers” fed by silverstieinian and SOM greed, powered by nationalist sentiments like Palin’s, celebrated in Speerian fashion.

Wednesday August 20 I will be introducing and leading a discussion at the film series

O Morro: Problems in Representation of the Favela

This film series started at the storefront for art and architecture and anthology films, and has been transported to the Kuenstlerhaus Stuttgart

as part of their social diagrams series, curated by Axel Wieder
I am very excited to talk with the attendees, and look forward to challenges from some of the artists here like

Cristóbal Lehyt
The program remains the same as was in the Storefront for Art and Architecture, but a new essay, to follow in a post, has been produced and will be coming out in Arch + later this month.

I will reproduce the text here in English once it has come out.

tonight I will be on Radio UNAM talking about N-RON at 11pm central (12 EST)
http://www.radiounam.unam.mx/

and on Tuesday at 11 pm

on RADIO Ibero

http://www.ibero909.fm/

and it will all be podcast on the amazing show

tripulacion kamikaze

1 hour show in spanish on the collaborator mix

number 1 july 17 2008 mexico city df

thanks gracias to all

photos by michell and james dier

n-ron + small change!

big money

n-ron

PUMA!!!!!

Christina!!!!

Madame Blanche (Sergio!!!)

puma!!!!

beer + needies = success!

mysterious shoes

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n-ron up and coming

wednesday august 6 @ PM club, Mexico City

with damian and luriel

11-1

DF

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I and some friends are throwing a nice little party here in Mexico City.
It is called Número 1.

Number 1.

July 17, 2008
Imperial
DJs:
Abajo:
dj $mall ¢hange (Brooklyn/WFMU/Pure Fire)
DJ N-RON (Brooklyn/Pure Fire/Giant Corporate Records)
Dj Puma (DF/IMECA)

Arriba:
DJ Guera (Karen Afrodita) (DF)
Madame Blanche (Oporto, Portugal)

El Imperial: Alvaro Obregón 293 esq. con Oaxaca, atrás del Sumesa
Ciudad de México, Mexico

10 horas, 100 pesos

hope to see you all there!

speaking truth to power through humor

mexico city is a very large city. it often feels very small. There are a few neighborhoods which are connected by a myriad of backstreets and clogged avenues–la condesa, roma, polanco being the favorites of the cultural (and economic) elite. If you have a destination in mind, you’d better know your way, though, as cabs seem to be reluctant to use maps. Perhaps this is because Mexico City (aka DF, day effay), like the Zona Sul in Rio De Janeiro, operates on a different logic than traditional cartographic mapping strategies can provide.

Here, like Brazil, red lights turn to green at night, both for the safety of the driver, as well as for the speed of the streets. Accidents are frequent, but it is a small price to pay for convenience. I look everywhere for things that connect to each other. Street signs, bodies, waves of cars and psychotic bus drivers only seem to interrupt the flow of Mexico City. The city itself seems to move sluggishly, shifting its weight around, fed by a steady diet of Tequila, Tacos and Tumult.

I used to try to connect the dots in Los Angeles, but there, the sprawl and the car culture seems to overdetermine even the smallest of quotidian desires–a trip to the supermarket is like a small expedition, connected by quasi-anonymous superhighways and bumper to bumper traffic. Here, as I sit in la Condessa, I am reminded more of the Zona Sul in Rio, where I could walk from Leblon to Ipanema, to Copa Cabana, to Leme,or head in to Lagoa, Jardin Botanico and Gavea. I could walk now to la Roma, or to my work, and in a matter of 20 minutes along tree-lined streets, arrive at my desination.

But then there are the connections that go beyond the streets, the ones we can’t quite map. Tomorrow night, I will go see Jose Gonzales play again. Here, in DF, there is a separation from the cosmopolitan Rio. The North/South Divide seems to be ebbing and flowing. Rio, though receptive to visitors from “the exterior”, feeds more from itself, relies on its own ever-expanding repetoire of sounds and art to create its discourse. Perhaps it is the geographic proximity that affords DF the opportunity to have so many artists arriving from metropoles around the world.

Or maybe it is due to a lack of fear, an implicit understanding that no matter what, a strong, fortified, rich national culture only grows with each new arrival, each new guest, each new ex-patriot, each new sound. There is no fear of representation, and a critical gaze towards multinational and transnational corporate power can be felt from all sides, despite the overwhelming participation of its citizens in these power sites.

On the surface, once given the opportunity to nationalize and grow, Mexico seems to emulate this international model, not oppose. Here one only need think of Carlos Slim, the second richest man in the world, owner of just about everything national one sees—from a cellphone monopoly, to a k-mart like store “Sandborns”, to a large stake in phillip morris and all the national production— to understand that what is needed is not “success” but new models for distribution. The average income of a mexican is $7,450 dollars a year. Carlos Slim’s worth is conservatively estimated at 60 billion.

Yet, if one turns on the radio, or walks in Centro, it seems it is as Attali reminds us, that music always leads the way. And the sounds from the streets now are definitively local, often pointing to the depletion of the most cherished national resources–the population of mexico only rises 1% a year, due largely to illegal and legal migration North. What one hears more often than not, like Rio, is a calling for the nation to unite based on local representation, civil strength.

One video: yo soy de puebla–a classic from grupo sonador for those who haven’t already heard. Of course, it’s Puebla, not DF, but the amazing shopping mall starbucks montage vs. old city comparison still sticks…and hard. It is from Eddie..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHgeAi2NXY

My embed here

Get the Flash Player to see this player.
And a second Sonideiro track, which led me to the first video above: La cumbia de los barrios

Listen Now:

 cumbia de los barrios: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (146)