10.10.03
MERE A. S.
“He said it”. I hide myself there. Knowledge builds phrases. Phrases convince the receiver “is” takes her or him closer to the essence of something. “Is” feels: now-we-know. Every week other people’s words help us in that way: we delude ourselves with Truths. That which you think you now know is mere Applied Syntax.
“He said it”. I hide myself there. Knowledge builds phrases. Phrases convince the receiver “is” takes her or him closer to the essence of something. “Is” feels: now-we-know. Every week other people’s words help us in that way: we delude ourselves with Truths. That which you think you now know is mere Applied Syntax.
MEXICO ILLUMINATED
Last September 12, "Mexico illuminated," an art exhibition opened in Reading, Pennsylvania. One of the participants was Marcos "Erre" Ramirez, who chose to place a public art piece on a billboard next to the Bingaman Street Bridge. He decided to display (as in Highway signs) 8 cities bombarded by the U.S, and to record on the billboard the dates of those attacks and their distances from Reading.
But the display company refused at the last minute to rent the space, and the piece couldn't be put there. The "community" didn't like this kind of art againts the military to be part of their public space.
Instead, Ramirez mounted an imagen on the gallery on how the piece would be seen if it had being installed. There's a good chronicle of the events by Mike Davis. Clicke here.
The reaction to the piece gives a good idea of the the inability of most Americans to face their own History. The billboard has nothing but facts, and if somebody doesn't want to view those names and numbers it is because they immediately understand there's an American pattern of violence against others.
Preventing the billboard from being displayed is not banning the object itself, but preventing the relation between the object and the individual to take place. It appears American don't want to have a memory. Don't want to see their history as a totality and see the links between the facts, maybe wanting to stay fragmented, dispersed, in order to not make evident what they have been doing, and what other think of them.
A pattern of attacking and invading other countries that started with Mexico, and illegally taking half of our territory in 1848, a date still not forgotten for many Mexicans. Facts that American don't want to take seriously or remember, because American history is full of these kinds of attacks against others and oblivion about it. This is why Americans want to escape from reality. Electing Schwarzenneger for example. Substituting reality with illusory figures.
Marcos Ramirez (aka Erre) is one of the most interesting Tijuana artist, by the way. His piece gives an idea of the growing critical tendency of Mexican culture toward American foreign and national politics.
Last September 12, "Mexico illuminated," an art exhibition opened in Reading, Pennsylvania. One of the participants was Marcos "Erre" Ramirez, who chose to place a public art piece on a billboard next to the Bingaman Street Bridge. He decided to display (as in Highway signs) 8 cities bombarded by the U.S, and to record on the billboard the dates of those attacks and their distances from Reading.
But the display company refused at the last minute to rent the space, and the piece couldn't be put there. The "community" didn't like this kind of art againts the military to be part of their public space.
Instead, Ramirez mounted an imagen on the gallery on how the piece would be seen if it had being installed. There's a good chronicle of the events by Mike Davis. Clicke here.
The reaction to the piece gives a good idea of the the inability of most Americans to face their own History. The billboard has nothing but facts, and if somebody doesn't want to view those names and numbers it is because they immediately understand there's an American pattern of violence against others.
Preventing the billboard from being displayed is not banning the object itself, but preventing the relation between the object and the individual to take place. It appears American don't want to have a memory. Don't want to see their history as a totality and see the links between the facts, maybe wanting to stay fragmented, dispersed, in order to not make evident what they have been doing, and what other think of them.
A pattern of attacking and invading other countries that started with Mexico, and illegally taking half of our territory in 1848, a date still not forgotten for many Mexicans. Facts that American don't want to take seriously or remember, because American history is full of these kinds of attacks against others and oblivion about it. This is why Americans want to escape from reality. Electing Schwarzenneger for example. Substituting reality with illusory figures.
Marcos Ramirez (aka Erre) is one of the most interesting Tijuana artist, by the way. His piece gives an idea of the growing critical tendency of Mexican culture toward American foreign and national politics.
