Custom Mambo

1992, 5 min. 13 sec.

"Manejar bajo (to drive low) is for the pride. And despacio (slow) is because we want to be seen”.

Crazy George from the "Viejitos" car club. 

Technology can have applications other than material, practical ones. For the Lowrider community, linguistics and aesthetics play a more important role than transportation. They fix their cars in the most incredible, excessive, baroque way ever imagined. Metal flake illustrated paint jobs, gold plated engines and brakes, velvet upholstery, disco lights, video systems and deafening stereos are some of the features that transform Chevies and other makes into shrines to be admired on the streets. Hydraulic systems are used to make the cars jump and dance and the beds of the trucks spin at more than 70 miles per hour. The car symbolizes the Californian way of life. Lowriders slow the freeways disrupting their efficient, pragmatic purpose, transforming them into a playground and meeting place. 

This early nineties video is the first I did about the subject. It doesn't pretend to coldly document this phenomenon but rather functions in a visually seductive way like the machines themselves using images, video technology and effects of dubious taste. The music composed by Xavier Alvarez is an electroacoustic piece that samples Perez Prado (the king of Mambo). Here again new technologies create rhythms and sounds that deal with the notion of "avant garde" and tradition at the same time. "You lower your car for the pride and if you drive too fast, people won't be able to check it out" says Crazy George from the Viejitos car club. These "rides" constitute an effort to be noticed in a society that doesn't want to see the people that ride them. I hope the video conveys the overwhelming experience of the Dyonisian "beauty" that escapes any notion of rationality and at the same time hints at some of the problems it raises.

¡Únicamente la Verdad!

Last week on August 8th and 9th was the world premiere of the opera ¡Únicamente la Verdad! (Only the Truth!) composed by my sister Gabriela Ortiz. I put together the libretto, the video and conceptualized the visuals. 

The opera was presented by the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Indiana University at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. 

More than ten years ago my sister asked me to develop the idea of an opera. Trying to figure out what to do I came across an article of Alarma! magazine from 1986. Alarma! is a sensationalist and morbid Mexican tabloid that claims to show the truth and what others do not dare. This truth consists of explicit images usually of death and mutilated corpses and the stories around them (you can check the link to Alarma! at your own risk and discretion). Any of these stories is a tragedy worthy of an opera but there was something particular and interesting about El Tren le Arrancó la Cabeza! (The Train Chopped his Head!). Eleazar Pacheco Moreno was a 22 year old migrant worker who after being robbed committed suicide in Ciudad Juarez placing his neck on the railroad track to be beheaded. According to Alarma! he was accompanied by his lover Camelia la Texana. They even included a picture of her crying next to the mutilated body. Could she be the original character of Contrabando y Traición (Smuggling and Betrayal) the popular song popularized by Los Tigres del Norte considered to be the first drug smuggling corrido? I started doing research and found interviews with her in La Jornada (an important liberal Mexican newspaper) and TV Azteca (a big Mexican network). However these were from two very different women. The woman interviewed by TV Azteca was Agustina Ramirez and claimed to have stopped smuggling drugs to dedicate her life to the lord. The woman interviewed by La Jornada was called Camelia Maria and claimed to be from Topolobampo, Sinaloa  and never to have smuggled drugs. I also did interview a man from El Paso called Mario Borunda that claimed to have known her and that she was a tall, drug addict, prostitute born in Socorro, Texas. Elijah Wald in his book about Narcocorridos interviewed Ángel Gonzalez who is the composer of Contrabando y Traición. Gonzalez says he invented the story. He knew a Camelia in Los Angeles but she was not from Texas and she did not smuggled drugs. 

All this contradictory information forms the plot of the opera and these are its characters. It has the structure of an experimental documentary where I try to reconstruct the truthful story of a myth or perhaps the mythological story of a truth.

I wanted to develop a system where the singers would sang in front of a green screen to be placed in real time in footage of the original locations of the incidents and interviews. The idea was to deconstruct the creation of a cinematic or televised representation and to contrast it and confront it with the live performance. For this purpose it was crucial the collaboration of former partner in crime in Low Rez Crimez Konstantinos Mavromichalis from Urban Visuals in  Vancouver. He brought the latest VJ technology and practices to this norteño gesamkunstwerk. We had to compromise and learn the theatrical conventions of the genre. 

I would like to thank the musical director Carmen Helena Tellez and Marianne Kielian-Gilbert for their involved support and development of this project with all its passionate discussions, the Stage Director Chía Patiño for putting up with us and for showing us how it gets done, Sound Designers Rodrigo Sigal and Francisco Colasanto, Costume Designer Angela Burkhardt, Managing Producer and Coca Cola Sommelier Mark Brennan Doerries, Technical Director Jacob Lish for his hard work and expertise, Asisstant, Technical Director and Prop Mistress Tina Hanagan, all the singers but in particular Heather Youngquist and Meghan Dewald who were the Camelias, Chris Lysack with his stupendous voice who was the journalist César Güemes from La Jornada, Jonathan Green who gave a lot of presence to Elijah Wald and Jerome Michael S. Síbulo who play the Señor de El Paso and was my favorite character of the opera. 

Also I would like to specially thank Jimmy Mendiola for his help filming the video of the decapitation, Miljohn Ruperto for the special effects, Ricky Delaveaga for his help in the edition and Alejandro Dávila who played a very handsome version of the decapitated Eleazar.

There were interesting comments made by Brian Dickie the General Director of the Chicago Opera Theater and a review by Peter Jacobi from the Herald Times.

Barbie Parachutes Onto Puerto Vallarta's Wal-Mart

Sand Castles, DV, 60 min (looped continously),  Raza Cósmica Productions, Puerto Vallarta, 2008

Nuevo Vallarta, DV, 60 min (looped continously), Raza Cósmica Productions, 2008.

This text was published in relation to the art festival Puerto Vallarta Arte Contemporaneo 08. "Barbie Parachutes Onto Puerto Vallarta's Wal-Mart," Puerto Vallarta Arte Contemporaneo 08. Extended Borders: Shifting Cartographies, May 28-June 1 2008, Puerto Vallarta, p. 4.

Boundaries constitute obstacles designed to be crossed by tourists, inmigrants, capital funds, products, handcrafts, internationally renowned artists, collectors, etc.

After cruise ships unload their passengers in Puerto Vallarta, the tourists' first destination is the handcraft-selling Wal-Mart. On the other hand, immigrants from Jalisco can find Tejuino (a non-alcoholic, fermented corn beverage) in Los Angeles Mac Arthur Park.

Both destinations become replicas of the places where their visitors originated. Thus, Puerto Vallarta experiences a hasty urban development characterized by skyscrapers, while Southern California shows samples of promiscuous forms of Mexican vernacular architecture. Large cities try to capitalize on culture and turn it into another tourist attraction. Other tourist destinations, striving for a share of visitors' purchasing power, generate hybrid cultural products. The parachuting Barbie constitutes an example of this. From my personal experience, Barbie flies and hovers better than the pretentiously trendy two-line kites sold in Europe and Malibu.

The purchasing power derived from the United States' Social Security system has decreased, and many retired seniors move to Mexican destinations such as Puerto Vallarta because the cost of living is less expensive. According to recent statistical data, the Social Security system in the United States is staving off collapse in part because of taxes paid by the immigrant work force; many of these immigrants are Mexicans. So Social Security in the United States has a direct dependence on the immigrants' contribution to the economy. 

Art fairs in places such as Miami or even Mexico City become interesting destinations for collectors who travel to those cities-they are then able to avoid the need to visit the various cities where international galleries represented in these fairs are located. Artists such as Damien Hirst, who is British, find it useful to produce art at Mexican beaches while obtaining a greater profit by working with a local gallery. On the other hand, some Mexican artists consider it viable to create work for international markets while eliminating links with their local reality. 

This is how contemporary art arrives in Puerto Vallarta, and vice-versa.

MTV and the Border Patrol.

When we finished Alien Toy I received a call asking me about including the truck in a music video. The video was going to be directed by Doug Aitken. At the time I did not know who he was. He contacted me through Cameron Jamie. The music video was for Fatboy Slim and the song was The Rockafeller Skank. I did not know neither who Fatboy Slim was so I called my friend B+ who works with rappers and musicians to find out. B+ told me to hold on and wait for a better opportunity to show the truck in a video of an artist better known. I told the producer that Salvador “Chava” Muñoz wouldn’t dance the truck for less than $500, which was the amount he was getting at car shows. The producer accepted and Chava needed the money.

Eventually the song became a huge hit. Somehow the aesthetic of the video is very similar to Miguel Calderón’s work. The truck is painted like a border patrol but it does not say that. This has some particular meaning and humor to the people that recognize that.

Hexstatic - Auto (Feat. Alien Toy).

I am a big fan of Hexstatic, Coldcut and Ninja Tune in general. Stuart Warren Hill contacted me through my friend and collaborator Konstantinos Mavromichalis from Low Rez Crimez.

Hexstatic made this track and video using hydraulic sounds and footage I had of Alien Toy. Hopefully I will get to meet them some day.

Alien Toy.

This is the original video of Alien Toy that was presented first at Insite 97 in San Diego ten years ago. Tom Pattchet now owns the whole piece. The Tate Modern recently acquired the video. The truck has been shown at Site Santa Fe, Track 16 gallery and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It danced at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, Bergamont Station, the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara and four times in the Lowrider Super show winning the Radical Bed Dancing Award in all of them. The video was presented at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, the Kunst Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes in Mexico City among other places. The truck also appears in video clips of Fatboy Slim and Hextatic and it was featured in the Jay Leno show.

The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Political boundaries start with private property of land protected and defined by force. Real state borders are usually defined by gardens. Modern gardeners have become the urban and industrialized version of peasants and artists. They work for the owners of the land. Southern California is distinct by its beautiful gardens. Workers who have to cross these political and real state boundaries usually tend to these gardens. They own their means of production and have become small entrepreneurs. These are sleek power tools. They are functional and symbolic objects. They pollute and make noise but we depend on them precisely to create the necessary green areas and artificial nature of the city at a low cost.

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a mechanic ballet where the pastoral and the industrial clash and depend on each other. The aesthetic machine is a contradictory means of expression and an end in itself. It is customized technology at the service of art, culture and politics.

Originally presented at “Mixed Feelings,” USC Fischer Gallery, Los Angeles, 2002. Now in the collection of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Original music made with gardening tools: Gabriela Ortiz. Hydraulic engineer and mechanics: Salvador “Chava” Muñoz. With the original participation of Jaime Alemán (vice president of ALAGLA). Thanks to Adrian Alvarez and ALAGLA (Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles).