“Alien Speech”: Alien Toys, Smart Art Press, Santa Monica, California, 1998.
“Venimos de Marte, ¿de Marte de quién?”.
“Los marcianos llegaron ya y llegaron bailando el ricachá. Ricachá, ricachá, ricachá así llaman en marte el cha cha cha”.
Dr. Octagon says: “Earth people, New York & California, I'm from Jupiter”.
A very strange pick up truck with sixteen hydraulic systems has been sighted close to the San Ysidro border. Images of extraterrestrial phallic creatures drinking beer or in revolutionary outfits can be seen in Tijuana. 39 earthlings got black Nike sneakers before crossing the gate to heaven in Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego. Others haven't been that lucky and have been deported.
The dystopian deconstruction of modernism is what we call desmothernismo from the word desmadre in our mother tongue.
Salvador Chava Muñoz (radical bed dance world champion four years in a row) from San Ysidro altered the shape and the function of his car to an extreme where it is hard to recognize it at all. His research locates him in the avant garde of low rider culture. The Chevy Impala is the classic and revered mechanic icon and fetish of cold war post industrial America. The tradition dictates not to worship other makes. You shall alter the function but not the shape of the Chevy Impala.
Nobody is a prophet in its own planet. Pablo Ruiz Picasso had to leave Spain and settle in Paris in 1904 in order to break with tradition and the original form. As an outsider he was free to break Brunelleschi’s laws of perspective and the notions of French good painting. He finally developed cubism and simultaneity in the picture plane. Picasso was an alien. The other most influential artist of the twentieth century had to migrate not to Paris but from it. After producing several canvases in the current mode of Fauvism, Marcel Duchamp turned toward experimentation and the avant-garde, producing his most famous work, Nude Descending a Staircase, number 2 in 1912; portraying continuous movement through a chain of overlapping cubistic figures, the painting caused a furor at New York City's famous Armory Show in 1913. Marcel Duchamp finally settle in New York and became a U S citizen in 1955. Duchamp was an alien. Aliens have played an essential role even in the development of nationalistic art. The influence of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti was essential in the developing of a Mexican renaissance after the Mexican revolution. A second renaissance is happening there right now with the new arrival of artists from Europe, Cuba and the U.S.
Salvador Muñoz is an alien. He came from Jalisco to California. As an outsider from the low rider community he was able to free himself from the classicism of the Chevy Impala. He is a self taught iconoclast. He transformed a 1973 Nissan pick-up truck into "Wicked Bed". The bed of the truck rises and spins opening itself in four independent parts. The doors shut out and spin fast while the hood jumps off and spins too. The front of the truck separates itself from the back and drives around independently while the rest of the car dances. Like some sort of doctor Frankestein he has given life to this aggresive irrational machine. The future is happening and is out of control like a mutated virus. Technology has been appropiated and used in seductive unexpected ways. It has become a tool of culture jamming and resistance in the streets.
Barrio ballet mechanique.
Desmothernismo.
Cultural exchange is essential in the development of new forms of art and expression. Migration implies cultural exchange. Therefore it is an essential factor in the development of a cosmopolitan avant garde. This certainly locates California in a privileged position to become an important cultural center.
Take me to your leader!!
We come in peace.
Guess what? We don't need any leaders.
Labels: Alien Toy, Aliens, arte, Low Riders, Published Texts, Salvador "Chava" Muñoz, The Border.
