Justos por Pecadores (Collective Punishment).

Dear readers,

You might have noticed that For the Record went down for a while and that there weren't any postings from July 9 to the 26. The Thing.net in New York hosts this blog. They had to move their servers to Europe after Broadview Networks (their provider of internet connectivity) shut down the Yes Men website Vivoleum.com. Somehow we ended up being innocent victims of this act of censorship.

Here is the full story:

June 28, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EXXON HACKS THE YES MEN
Yes Men badly need sysadmin, server co-location

Contact: people@theyesmen.org

One day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement that ExxonMobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men's spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. The provider, Broadview Networks, also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org before they'd restore the Yes Men's email service.

The Yes Men assume the complainant was Exxon. "Since parody is protected under US law, Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum's a real Exxon product, not just a parody," said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. "Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year," added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. "So maybe it really is credible. What a resource!"

After receiving the complaint June 15, Broadview added a "filter" that disabled the Vivoleum.com IP address (64.115.210.59), and furthermore prevented email from being sent from the Yes Men's primary IP address (64.115.210.58). Even after all Exxon logos were removed from both sites and a disclaimer was placed on Vivoleum.com on Tuesday, Broadview would still not remove the filter. (The disclaimer read: "Although Vivoleum is not a real ExxonMobil program, it might as well be.")

Broadview did restore both IPs on Wednesday, after the Vivoleum.com website was completely disabled and all mention of Exxon was removed from TheYesMen.org.

While this problem is temporarily resolved, the story is far from over. Meanwhile, though, two bigger problems loom, for which we're asking your help:

1. THE YES MEN'S SERVER NEEDS A NEW HOME.

Broadview Networks provides internet connectivity to New York's Thing.net and the websites and servers it hosts, including the Yes Men's server. Thing.net has been a host for many years to numerous activist and artist websites and servers.

At the end of July, Thing.net will terminate its contract with Broadview and move its operations to Germany, where internet expression currently benefits from a friendlier legal climate than in the US, and where baseless threats by large corporations presumably have less weight with providers. At that time, the Yes Men and two other organizations with servers "co-located" at Thing.net will need a new home for those servers. Please write to us if you can offer such help or know of someone who can.

2. THE YES MEN NEED A SYSADMIN.

The Yes Men are desperately in need of a sysadmin. The position is unpaid at the moment, but it shouldn't take much time for someone who knows Debian Linux very well. It involves monitoring the server, keeping it up-to-date, making sure email is working correctly, etc. The person could also maintain the Yes Men's website (which will be updated next week), if she or he wants.

Thing.net also needs a sysadmin: someone living in New York who knows Linux well. The Thing.net position involves some money and the rewards of working for an organization that has consistently and at great personal risk supported groups like the Yes Men over the years.

THE YES MEN AND THING.NET THANK YOU!

The Beauty and the Beasts.

This photograph was taken the day of the "Hand of God" and the Goal of the Century. It was taken from the top of the stadium through binoculars. It is a relic and evidence of a miracle.

Soccer is also known derogatively in Mexico as “panbol” which means the sport of the bakers. It is world wide the cheapest and easiest sport to play. Kids play it with bottle caps and balls made of masking tape when there is not a proper ball.

I was in the nose-bleed section of the Azteca stadium and saw the apocalyptic final of the Pan American games between Mexico and Brazil that ended up as a tie when power in the stadium went out. It was the first time I witnessed the popular local ritual of the “agua de riñón” (kidney water). A drunkard sitting next to me passed me a fetid warm paper cup and asked me to contribute. The cup was half full with urine. Once he figured I wouldn’t dare to help him filling it he threw it down to the more expensive level of the stadium beneath us shouting, “here goes the kidney water!”

Years after, my father took my sister and I to see the most legendary World Cup game. Great Britain kept those freezing rocky islands in the South Atlantic but Diego Armando Maradona beat England two to one and later lifted the cup for Argentina. While he was doing slalom with the British defense and scoring with the help of “God’s hand” I saw two Englishmen wearing their national team jerseys charge against hundreds of Argentinean fans that were dancing with a stolen Union Jack. It was the most stupid act of courage I had ever seen. They ended up rolling down the stairs like tumbleweeds. All hell was breaking loose to the hypnotic beat of drums. A fat guy down below was wearing the light blue striped jersey and punching Brits all around them - beer was flying. A lot of hooligans were arrested that day, after vandalizing the neighborhood. It has been said that rugby is a beastly sport played by gentlemen and soccer is a sport of gentlemen played by beasts.

Not any more. Now the sport of the “El Primitivo” Madariaga and the “Hunchback from Coapa” Cuauhtemoc Blanco, is mutating in the United States into a suburban game where mommies drive their kids to play in SUV’s and is mostly played by women. Another extreme mythological transformation is happening. Through David Beckham the game is being sanitized, associated with the rich and the beautiful and made palatable to Anglo America.

While San Francisco competes as the capital of “football” with places like Dallas and Green Bay, Los Angeles places itself around cities like Milan, London, Buenos Aires, Rio and Barcelona. Beckham is certainly not the best soccer player in the world, or from Europe, or England even. He wasn’t the best player for Real Madrid. In fact, he might not even be the best player in the Los Angeles Galaxy. However he is blonde, cute, metro-sexual, relatively decent, married to Posh Spice and friend of Tom Cruise. His cockney accent connotes Hollywood on this side of the pond. His soccer skills are eccentric and not good enough to make England or the Galaxy win, but will his beauty tame the beasts?

A Virtual Magic Reality.

“A Virtual Magic Reality,” Scale, vol 1, UCSD, San Diego, 2004.

In the time of Don Quixote, books were a very dangerous form of entertainment and communication. In fact, reading chivalry literature made him loose his mind. When I was a kid my mother did not want me to watch television and read comic books. She considered them a form of alienating popular culture. Some years later my father was particularly annoyed by the noise of rock & roll. As a composer and player of Latin American folk music he found these electric sounds repetitive and unpleasant for the most part and the lyrics in English incomprehensible. He condemned this form of cultural imperialism and tried his best to instigate in me a love and understanding of Latin American culture, music and history. His friend, the singer Victor Jara, was assassinated in the Santiago stadium in Chile in 1973 after being forced to play the guitar with his fingers chopped by soldiers during the military coup that destroyed Chilean democracy with CIA backing. I explained to my dad that The Clash wrote a song about that.

Nowadays there is concern among mothers and politicians about video games. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology¹ has published studies showing the relation between playing violent video games and the increase of aggressive behavior. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enjoyed playing the Shoot-‘em-up video game Doom before murdering 13, wounding 23 and turning the guns on themselves in Columbine Colorado. The Los Angeles Times published very strange conspiracy theories that blamed anarchist activism in the WTO meeting in Seattle on the Grand Theft Auto game series published by Rock Star. This sounds particularly absurd considering the purpose of the game is to make money without any sort of moral concerns.

There is a video game where you are not the one that creates a blood bath but where your journey begins as the sole survivor of a terrible one. “…You must find four pieces of evidence to bring justice to the memory of your small village.” The illusion of power exerted in the usual fantasy of mass murder without consequences of most video games is substituted with the power of symbolic redemption by reconstructing the erased memory of a real massacre. In 1981 soldiers slaughtered 800 people including 100 children in El Mozote, El Salvador. They thought they got the whole town, but they missed one person: Rufina Amaya. This sole survivor was able to tell the story. She broadcasted what happened through the clandestine radio station Radio Venceremos. In 1932 a mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros representing the tragic continental history was whitewashed in Los Angeles. The game takes its name from the title of his art piece: Tropical America. It explores the causes and effects of the erasure of history.

“Reality is more real in black and white²”
Octavio Paz

The game is actually an animated graphic novel, a new version of a codex, a mural or a comic book. It does not have the common photo realistic look with more than 16 million colors and imperceptible pixilation of new game consoles and newer PC games. It is black and white and its style resembles and relates more to the prints of José Guadalupe Posada and the woodcuts of the Taller de la Gráfica Popular and to other artists like Goya, Daumier, John Heartfield or Barbara Kruger who have favored black and white graphics in order to have an easy to reproduce and direct impact. It extends the long tradition of political graphic work conceived for a wider audience into the Internet and the 21st century. It understands technology not as an end in itself or as a fetish but simply as a tool to effectively tell history or a story.

If according to Yogi Berra “the future is not what it used to be” neither is the past. New technology allows us to reconstruct it (or both) in a non-linear way. Like the Julio Cortazar novel Rayuela the story (or stories) can happen in different ways. You can go to different places and historical periods through different routes depending on your actions. You can go from the battles of Bolivar to the single-crop economy of Cuba, from the myth of El Dorado to the poems of Sor Juana de la Cruz, from Fray Bartolomé de las Casas to Radio Venceremos. History and myth collide constructing one Latin America and an animated and politicized form of “magic realism” where Zapatista angels, dancing gods, animals, pirates, runaway slaves and the like tell truthful stories owing as much to Gabriel Garcia Marquez as to Eduardo Galeano. The interdisciplinary nonlinear qualities of Tropical America are not just a postmodern troupe but reflect the baroque way of thinking of the birthplace of contemporary cross-cultural life. This point of view is quite different if not opposite to the one given in computer games such as Sid Meier Colonization where you play a Viceroy and develop a form of colonization subjecting nature, Indians, African slaves, rival colonial powers and eventually revolting against paying taxes to your even more exploiting King. In another game called Tropico you play the leader of a small and poor Caribbean island with little resources where you have to develop some sort of political and economical model negotiating between capitalists, workers, the church, the military, the intellectuals, the Americans and the Russians having to compromise and make complicated moral decisions.

The dead people of El Mozote have finally been given a proper burial in cyberspace. This is as symbolic and in that sense as real as an entombment in a graveyard. By being remembered, the murders did not happened in vain and the victims might finally rest in peace. Worst than losing your land, your wealth and natural resources and the product of your labor is to not even exist in people’s minds. Taking these people into account gives them extra life (beyond the video game sense). To achieve this while wasting your time gaming is an accomplishment in reality.

1. http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp784772.html

Tropical America can be played at http://www.tropicalamerica.com. It is a project of OnRamp Arts and was written by Juán Davis and directed by him and Jessica Irish. It was illustrated by Artemio Rodriguez and developed in collaboration with Los Angeles artists, teachers, writers and high school students. It won the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) award for best E-Entertainment.

Baseball, futbol and the end of the nation state.

Recently the United States defeated México in the final of the Copa de Oro tournament. Football (as in ball played with the feet) is a form of globalization that for the longest time gringos have resisted. They have tried to change its name to “soccer” and for the most part they find it boring. The US national team was recently eliminated from the Copa America where “America” stands actually for South America. In Mexico “America” stands for a Mexico City annoying and wealthy team. For Mexicans to loose against the United States is a traumatic experience. It reminds them the Mexican-American war when the US conquered the North of Mexico and a more contemporary rejection in those same territories (not to even mention the defeat in the 2002 World Cup). For the Unites States players it is also traumatic to win with the majority of the fans rooting against them in their “home” games. Most of their players are fluent in Spanish and most of the media attention they get is in this language.

On another hand Mexico eliminated the United States in the World Baseball Classic. Mexico also got rid of the US team that tried to qualify for the last Olympic games. Once I had the opportunity to hear Tommy Lasorda giving a lecture at Dodger Stadium. He claimed his proudest moment was when he led team USA to the gold medal at the Sydney Olympic games. He insisted in bringing back that medal where it belonged. He was adamant that baseball was an “American” thing. I guess his argument was so convincing that baseball ended up being banned as an Olympic sport. As baseball ambassador he did not seem to be very diplomatic. Will the “World” Series ever be played by the world? Major League Baseball certainly would like to control and capitalize on this if it ever happens. The final of the World Baseball Classic was played between Cuba and Japan with almost no Major League players. Historically the Major Leagues have tried to monopolize the sport. They even have an antitrust exemption. In 1946 Jorge Pasquel, a Mexican businessman, allured more than a dozen American major leaguers with lucrative salaries to play in the Mexican League. The Major Leagues banned them for five years. Now half of the players selected for the next All Star game are Latin American. The game has been surpassed in popularity by “football” and basketball. This is specially truth among African Americans.

Football soccer and baseball offer two different models of internationalization. Baseball has a centralized system dominated by the Major Leagues. All the minor leagues feed the Majors and there is no relegation. The Majors would like to be the center of an international baseball “melting pot”. Like United States democracy it offers an exclusive model of multiculturalism and integration. Soccer on the other hand functions through the International Federation of Association Football commonly known as FIFA. Like the European Union or the United Nations it is a humongous, bureaucratic and not very efficient international organization. Teams play against each other in all sorts of tournaments and championships. There are local and international tournaments and minor league teams can be promoted while failing big teams can be relegated. Certainly the European leagues have the economical clout to attract the best players from the rest of the world. However they regularly loose against poorer Argentinean or Brazilian teams in the Club World Cup. Baseball is a more complicated and elaborate game than soccer. More than any other sport it needs diversity. Every position requires particular characteristics, catchers need to be strong and resistant, shortstops fast, first bases tall, second bases quick, opener pitchers need stamina, etc. The game allows individualism as part of a collective effort. In that sense it represents the best of the American experiment. The exclusive monopoly and control the Major Leagues want to have of the game represent the worst. It replicates the contradictory attempts to impose and control democracy. Here is where baseball and the United States can learn from football (futbol), soccer, or whatever you want to call it and realize they are part of the world and not viceversa.

¿De a Como el Bolillo?

Esta es la versión original sin editar del texto que escribí para el libro de la Panadería.

La Panadería, Editorial Turner de México, Mexico, 2005, p. 102.

Si no mal recuerdo en 1982 fui invitado junto con el ahora cinematógrafo Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki a una tertulia de precoces jóvenes intelectuales que intentarían determinar el futuro de la cultura en México. La mayoría habiamos padecido la alineada y partisana educación del Centro Activo Freyre y algunos habían militado diréctamente en las juventudes del partido comunista. La cita era en casa del estudiante de cinematografía y ahora astrólogo Luis Lesúr. Christopher Dominguez leyó fragmentos de una novela que estaba escribiendo y Gabriel Orozco presentó pinturas detallistas y dibujos semiabstractos que recordaban la obra de Gabriel Macotela. Con arrogante confianza se intentaría establecer “la” nueva mafia cultural. Para esto era necesario que esta vanguardia intelectuál se vinculara al poder real. Por lo tanto invitaban y cortejaban al hijo de Miguél Gonzalez Avelár (en áquel entonces secretario de educación).

Si bien es cierto que algunos de estos ambiciosos jóvenes lograron realizar su sueño de convertirse en caciques culturales y artistas oficiales, el proyecto no resultó tan simple y previsible como se planteó. A pesar de las afiliaciones de izquierda, esta casta realmente no consideraba la posibilidad de que surgieran jóvenes artistas e intelectuales de otros círculos, regiones, contextos, posiciones o clases sociales. El plan no contaba con pintores de Oaxaca o Puebla como Germán Venegas o artistas gay de Monterrey como Julio Galán. Tampoco incluía a artistas de procedencia menos privilegiada con obra mas conceptual y específica a la ciudad de México como Adolfo Patiño o Eloy Tarcisio. Esta agenda mucho menos concebía la posibilidad de que un grupo de artistas mas jóvenes de la colonia Condesa y de escuelas privadas como el Colegio Americano tuviera el interés y la capacidad de generar un arte y una escena mas abierta, inclusiva, crítica y menos complaciente como veremos a continuación.

A diferencia de la literatura, la música y de otras expresiones culturales, las artes plásticas han funcionado de manera menos centralizada. El apoyo del estado ha coexistido con el de la iniciativa privada y el mercado. En los ochentas el Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Televisa y las galerías privadas generaron un sistema de validación paralelo que no siempre coincidió con el del estado. Además comezaron a surgir de manera tal vez caótica una serie de espacios independientes generados por los mismos artistas con la ayuda de algunos generosos filántropos con intenciones y posibilidades de participar. Haydee Rovirosa y los hermanos Quiñones permitieron que propiedades suyas fueran utilizadas como laboratorios donde nuevos artistas experimentaban como hacer el fenómeno artístico. El experimento mas duradero y exitoso fue finalmente la panaderia en que Lázaro Okón permitió a su hijo Yoshua y a sus amigos hornear un pastel estético por lo general mas crudo que cocido.

La crítica y reacción en contra del “neomexicanismo” durante los noventas inventó un enemigo fantasma vulnerable al cuál acuso simultáneamente de folklórico y regionalista y como producto de exportación salinista. En realidad los artistas acusados fueron coleccionados casi en su totalidad locálmente. Paradójicamente es ahora que existen galerías que ni siquiera tienen local y cuyo mercado y público existe fuera del pais. Lo que se quizo entender como nacionalismo chauvinista las mas de las veces fue una crítica irónica de lo mismo y nunca existió como movimiento coherente. El colapso de un modelo de gobierno paternalista y centralizado en México junto con una apertura forzada por el multiculturalismo y la globalización primero en los Estados Unidos y luego en Europa crearon una coyuntura que obligó a artistas mexicanos a buscar espacios internacionales en donde pudieron encontrar cierta aceptación. Esta posibilidad ha situado en una posición ventajosa a quiénes tienen acceso a viajes y bilingüismo. Yoshua Okón, Miguél Calderón y Daniela Rossell son algunos de estos artistas. Su obra en vez de eludir y ocultar esta condición hace de ella el contenido ideal para reflejar su momento histórico. Instalaciones de estereos robados, barrocas fotografías de ricas rubias oxigenadas recreando en sus mansiones fantasias de chicas cosmo frente a sus sirvientas, películas de juniors disfrutando del abuso de poder desmedido, etc. Estas obras no solo deconstruyen la posición social de los artistas sino que también reflejan y generan la estética de una década donde la apertura al libre comercio y una incipiente democracia se tradujo en violencia, inseguridad y un mayor contraste social. En este sentido el trabajo de ellos se anticipa al nuevo cine mexicano y películas como Amores Perros y Tu Mama También. Su obra es específica a una ciudad y un momento histórico determinado y resulta en su crudeza universal sin pretenderlo.

El mundo del arte y la política mexicana no han sido espacios particularmente virtuosos. La mezcla de ambos ha generado conflictos de intereses y ejemplos de corrupción particulares. La una vez directora del museo de arte moderno era al mismo tiempo la crítica de arte de un periódico de oposición. Si esto no era ya suficiente problema, escribiría reseñas de las exposiciones presentadas en el mismo museo. En otro periódico, un joven crítico y artista hizo una reseña lírica y cursi de la exposición de su maestro. Esto no hubiera sido tan grave si no hubiera sido el mismo uno de los escritores del catálogo. No es de sorprendernos que su maestro lo seleccionara para representar a México en la bienal de Venecia. Dicho maestro le daría una lección de como ser juez y parte pues además de curador sería artista de la misma. Es de mencionar que la obra de ambos ha sido reconocida sin necesidad de este tipo de “favores”.

La corrupción y los mecanismos de poder han sido un tema explorado con provocativa audacia en las video acciones de Yoshua Okón donde documenta sus interacciones e intentos de soborno a la policia. En estas obras el poder económico se confronta con la autoridad de las armas y el estado generando desenlaces absurdos e imprevisibles. Utilizando los recursos y mecanismos del documentalismo y la “reality tv” se anticipó al empresario Carlos Ahumada autoretratándose en video mientras compraba a funcionarios desesperados. Estas infames transacciones recientemente fueron transmitidas por la televisión mexicana como evidencia y espectáculo sensacionalista. Políticos y artistas suelen traicionar ideales ante una desesperada necesidad de poder participar. En este caso La Panadería nos presentó un modelo simple y autogestivo para participar de manera abierta en el discurso artístico. Finalmente esta libertad de expresión básica es parte del ejercicio democrático y no esta totalmente regulada por el mercado y el poder institucional de los museos. Es un ejemplo claro de que tanto el espacio artístico como político se puede generar sin comprometerlo.

Uno como artista e individuo no es responsable de donde viene pero si de a donde va.

Linda Pace 1945-2007

Linda Pace died of cancer today. She was an artist, philanthropist and founder of Artpace, a foundation for contemporary art that offers artist residencies and exhibitions in San Antonio. Pace was the only daughter of Pace Picante Sauce founder David Pace.

I had a chance to meet her when I was an artist in residence there. I made a series of artworks with filmmaker Jimmy Mendiola in relation to history, mythology and spectacle in the Alamo. Even though her relationship to the place was certainly different than ours she was a good sport and very supportive. I believe she even had some involvement in the Imax Alamo movie.

The residence program at Artpace found a balance between the local and the global. It confronted local, national and international artists engaging San Antonio in a broader art circuit.