Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Soy Roxy Love / I am Roxy Love


 "Obama" by Roxy Love
---------------------------------------------
Sometimes , It Is good when us, as reviewers,  just shut the fuck up, and stop  trying to analyze someone´s work of art, or art manifestation. 
So, I just had a short conversation with one of Mexico´s best contemporary illustrator,
Roxy Love.
I don´t know why we don´t see all these un-perfect / perfect projects more published, we have to wait a lot ! And even when they are published, they don´t receive enough attention, and the credit for their work... But that´s why we are here. Everytime I meet this ART GIANTS , I feel more comfortable with my creatives generation. I admire your work, Roxy and the rest of the crew´s work of Taquitojocoque. My conversation? Here.

Hello ! I´m Roxy Love //
I was borned 24 years ago , in Nuevo Laredo,Tamaulipas./ Mexico.
I live in Mexico City. //More than, a style, or technique, THIS IS MY WAY OF LIFE, MY JOB and EVERYTHING.  

My art collective name is taquitojocoque , my partner is Julio Vzm ( used to do collage, in 09 retires from that, because he wanted to stop trying the so called "freelance", and do something more structured). So we started Taquitojocoque: Julio Vzm, Agusto ( my "son", a 3 year old , basset hound ( " he poops, vomits and that, may I say it ? , is Art  these days" )   , and me. 
My Influences : my childhood, the animals, plants, countries, the cultural "behaviors",the way people dresses, music, and those small things in the world that make us feel special. my friends.my texmex culture, my family,cinema, everything I see, and perceived.
mmmmm , I don´t know what else to tell you..... do you wanna ask me something?
--ROXYLOVE

 









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ROXY LOVE Current Exhibit : 


NINEQUI TEQUISTI
Colima 23 
12Feb - 8March 
MEXICO CITY 
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Objectified


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From the Place Where Volcanos and Earthquakes Reside by Javo Onofre

In the next posts i´ll be talking about new latin american music, in the last years there has been a real explosion of bands, projects, labels, netlabels, blogs and i really feel that now more than ever latin independent music has taken a nice turn and there are quite a handful number of interesting projects to talk about and take a good and deep listening to...

I´m going to start with 2 of my favorite bands so far, both curiously from the country that has been in everybody´s mouth these days, Chile...a mix of talent, experience, energy, youth and great musical taste can never go wrong to a musical project and the first example its Fakuta, an electro pop musician/composer/producer/label manager girl from Santiago de Chile...

Fakuta its all about dream pop landscapes, with beautiful vocal arrangements and great structured melodies giving us an elegant outcome when she puts all of this elements together, an example would be "Las partes" track featured on her myspace www.myspace.com/musicafakuta an overwhelming pop piece with a contrasting aesthetic between lyrics and music, where you can feel the strength of the melody breaking inside the post apocalyptic lyrics...

When performing live Fakuta is joined by her vocal girls choir The Laura Palmers giving to the live act a lot of presence and personality which you can percieve in the next video...


If there is something i would like to make emphasis about these projects its the artistry and stage presence they have, there are no pretentions or false poses, they are who they are and they are honest about it, something most musicians/artists keep forgetting nowadays...

Another astonishing proposal would be Dejaneiros an art-pop psychodelia project formed by Milton Mahan and Pablo Muñoz also from Chile, i have to confess that the first time i heard this band my jaw fell to the ground by the impressive and enormous sound they accomplished, both sound engineers and part of another musical projects they made at least from my point of view one of the best independent records of 2009 with multilayered synths and spacial melodies

Plateado its one huge record.

They have a strong epic sound but somehow they managed to put also a lot of feeling into it, a melodramatic soundtrack for modern times...i really recommend Los Caribes track to have a big picture of what this project its all about...check out this great video for they single Montreal

You can find and download for free these and other really interesting music projects in Fakuta´s label Michita Rex here:http://www.michitarex.com/

See you next week...

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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Festival Nrmal takes over Monterrey, Mexico // March 13th

The first-ever Festival Nrmal(F/N), organized by Nrmal and Alianza Francesa de Monterrey, is introduced to the world March 13, 2010 in Monterrey, Mexico, on the grounds of the Alianza Francesa de Monterrey during the weekend prior to SXSW. F/N brings a collection of emerging artists and musicians together to showcase their work in a small, intimate setting framed by a Mexican cultural landscape. 

Four stages with a capacity of 700 people each showcase independent bands on the rise to a young Mexican audience who would otherwise not have the opportunity to see them.

More than 40 international acts are performing, including: Yacht, Daedelus, Banda de Turistas, The Death Set, Nite Jewel, Yellow Fever, Julianna Barwick, Awesome Color, Tyvek, Golden Triangle, White Rainbow, Juiceboxxx, The Keyishe, Poirier, and Toy Selectah. A visual arts portion also characterizes the festival, featuring installations created specifically for the event. In the visual realm, Equipo Plastico from Spain and others take the lead.


The festival is an opportunity for artists and audiences of all nationalities to visit Monterrey, get exposure to Mexican culture, and potentially establish artistic collaborations with the international community. The bands slated for F/N come from countries such as Argentina, Spain and Mexico, just to name a few. F/N also helps position Monterrey as a stopping point within the touring circuits of American and international bands.


USA to Monterrey and Back Again


The close proximity between Monterrey and Austin, roughly 6 hours by bus, presents bands slated for peformances at South by Southwest with the opportunity to appear in the Mexican public's radar.


On March 12th at 12:00a.m. the festival organizers will be busing down bands from Austin. There will be seats available for media on the bus ride down, for further info contact raul@nrmal.net.


Fans interested in making the trip down from Austin have a few cheap bus options:
Autobuses Americanos has daily buses from Austin to Monterrey, and Greyhound has a $99 roundtrip ticket available as well.

Monterrey is the third largest city in Mexico - industrial by profession and artistic by nature. Set in the middle of the desert and surrounded by mountains, it is a hot spot for students and young professionals who enjoy the cultural scene and vibrant nightlife that the city has to offer.


Multimedia Links and Ticket Info


Complete line up and additional information on the oficial site:
www.festivalnrmal.net
Feel free to post the eye-ball friendly Festival Nrmal promo video to your site.
Download all Poster Art & Artist Photos for posting.


Pre-sale tickets are available online, make sure to click the "Comprar Ahora" button to confirm the sale.
Early Bird (200 tickets) $15 USD
Pre - Sale (500 tickets) $20 USD
Rest of the tickets and door $23 USD

 She´s a Tease
............................................................................................................

Full Line Up
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YACHT
Daedelus
Banda de Turistas
Death Set
Nite Jewel
Yellow Fever
Julianna Barwick
Juiceboxxx
White Rainbow
The Keyishe
Acosta
Los Amparito
Chico Sonido
Yppah
Awesome Color
Capsula
Tyvek
Golden Triangle
Poirier
Toy Selectah
Rebolledo
Cousin Cole
Electric Electric
Sebastien Schuller
Robot Koch
Ghost Beard
PDP
The Volture
She´s a Tease
60 Tigres
Quid Comba
Los Erres
Yo! Linares
El Cuarto
White Ninja
Black Fo
Uvi Love
Lady Hustle
Sonido San Francisco
La Musique Pop
Milkman

Art Lineup

Equipo Plástico (España/Francia): Nuria Mora, Nano4814, Sixe, Eltono
Los Contratistas (Maf, Skrew, Huizar)
Colectivo Zenzontle (Blast, Sanez, Dose)
PROJECT PROJECTIONS (Virtual Exhibition of 30+ Artists)
Carlos Olvera
Pablo Moreno, PM!

Other Activities

"Minutos Animados" audiovisual projections
Foodcourt
"Mercadito" Music, t-shirts, posters, local design, free stuff...

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Monday, March 1, 2010

Monday Quote

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am.
I know that I am not
a category. I am not
a thing — a noun.
I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an
integral function of
the universe.
— R. Buckminster Fuller
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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Papierkrieg / Origami War


Papierkrieg from Makaio Tisu on Vimeo.


Images by Megatron
Sounds by Qalaih Doskope

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IDENSITAT #5 // MANRESA, BARCELONA

IDENSITAT#5 // Convocatoria para la realización de un proyecto de intervención en el espacio público

Manresa abre una convocatoria de proyectos para participar en el programa de intervenciones en el espacio público que tendrá lugar a mediados del mes de abril de 2010 en diferentes puntos de la ciudad de Manresa.

La convocatoria se dirige a creadores residentes en el ámbito territorial de la Cataluña Central que quieran desarrollar un proyecto de intervención en el espacio público de Manresa. Los participantes tendrán que formular una propuesta que integre el Dispositivo Itinerante de Idensitat y proponer uno o diferentes espacios de la ciudad para su ubicación. Aparte de este condicionante, la característica de la convocatoria es amplia, de manera que los objetivos de los proyectos tanto pueden facilitar respuestas como plantear cuestiones, detectar conflictos o plantear estrategias de diálogo, camuflarse en el espacio u ocuparlo, involucrar a la gente en el proceso o buscar espectadores; sea como sea, la táctica y la formalización tendrán que mantener negociaciones con elementos de tensión latentes en el espacio público. La ubicación definitiva de la propuesta seleccionada en el espacio público estará sujeta a la obtención del permiso municipal.

El proyecto seleccionado formará parte de iD#5 Manresa conjuntamente con los siguientes artistas y colectivos:


Dispositivo Itinerante. En diferentes momentos del 2009 el Dispositivo Itinerante ha formado parte de talleres y seminarios como un elemento expositivo que vehicula actividades específicas generadas en el entorno de Idensitat. Ha estado presente en Calaf (Espacio Hivernacle Cultural), Prat de Llobregat (Torre Muntadas) y Barcelona (La Capella). Persigue la idea de exposición expandida en el territorio y funciona como un emisor-receptor de datos. Su carácter itinerante permite incidir en aspectos específicos del territorio a través de la movilidad. En este caso se propone como elemento de soporte que se integra en el proyecto seleccionado a partir de la convocatoria. El dispositivo itinerante podrá ser modificado y adaptado a las necesidades del proyecto.

El proyecto seleccionado dispondrá de 2.100 eur, de los cuales 600 eur en concepto de honorarios y el resto para producción (impuestos incluidos).

El dispositivo itinerante cuenta con algunos elementos complementarios como son proyector, diversas mesas, sillas, pantallas de proyección y soportes verticales. En caso de proponer varios emplazamientos, el desplazamiento del dispositivo tendrá que estar incluido en el proyecto.

Las propuestas junto con el currículum se pueden enviar por correo electrónico a idensitat@idensitat.net o por correo postal en el Centro Cultural el Casino, paseo Pere III, 27 bajos. 08242 Manresa hasta el 18 de marzo de 2010.
Descargar bases pdf

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Emergent Cities


As any emergent system, a city is a pattern through time.

Intelligence is an emergent system generated by the brain, therefore it is mandatory that we think about cities as a brain, the same way that we think about ant colonies in the scale of a super organism, as patterns of activity that through complexity and intensity generates a city.

Cities are the solution to the human brain storage capacity problem. Cities store and transmit new ideas useful for its general population. Avoiding that new and powerful technologies disappear once they’re invented, as also the communities of self-organized neighborhoods helps its inhabitants to be more ‘intelligent’.

A city its a set of cells that interact among each other, each cell depends strongly of a DNA code for its development, but also need a sense of ‘location’ to perform its specific task in the “organism”. As Jane Jacobs mentioned, sidewalks are the main catalyzer for the flux of information between inhabitants of a city. Information is Anything that has the capacity to change something. Sidewalks provide the correct amount and type of local interactions. This can be thought as the inter-cellular connections in the city life.

The value of the exchange among unknowns lies in how this benefits the city’s super-organism. Life in cities depends on the un-even interaction among unknowns, which produces a change in the individual behavior.

All the differentiated abilities like memory, pattern recognition, and computation capacity, have a parallelism with the development of urban centers: it is in their shared-information cores their capacity to mirror and amplify patterns of urban behavior, and the ability to solve complex supply and demand problems.

In any case, intelligent systems depend simultaneously of its “structure and organization” as also in their “interconnection”, intelligence requires connectivity and organization. Intelligent systems have reciprocal relations: you affect your neighbor and your neighbor affects you.

This influence is generated by “informal” encounters of unknown (among each other) agents, Te way ‘informal’ illuminates the city is in stressing patterns that emerge from new relations and interconnections. Te city is a “natural environment” and formal patterns do underlie some of nature (spherical planets, hexagonal snowflakes) but most of the cosmos shows non-linear organisations. Brain waves, heartbeats, or the growth of galaxies show paterns that are fractal and dynamic.

Contemporary and emergent cities are often defined as ‘chaotic’. Chaos definition is: A mathematically determinate state of turbulence. Is it chaos just a different kind of order?, it is more and different patterns and arangements which give order to a whole, all happening at the same time and with different levels of intensity, and emergence can be defined as the internal will of chaotic systems to reach coherence.

Add more information, energy, mass, or whatever, and a system will reach a critical point and jump into a new regime. Under these conditions new patterns of organization are emerging spontaneously: Surfaces not lines, zones not points, Scatter not equal support, and moving locus instead of fixed centers.



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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Rocking at the Whitney Museum of American Art

What if you ask a Brooklyn lofi indie rock band to perform at an American art museum? What if you ask a bro like Ray Concepcion to come and capture the gig with his camera, doing only one long shot for each song?

Well, what happens is that you get a beautiful audiovisual document like this. Woods at the Whitney Museum of American Art.





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Friday, February 26, 2010

NEW YORK // IMPORTANT INFORMATION // SPACE AVAILABLE

or sent an email to 

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Festival NRMAL / 2010 / Monterrey, MEXICO


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TPD/LBA : THE BOOKMARK PROJECT:100 SITES | A YEAR || No. 2



An event about graphic design based in Monterrey, N.L.
...............................................................................................................

Two days of talks by key personalities from Monterrey's design scenario, dealing with different topics related to the local graphics plus workshops with the intention of establishing new projects after the Mitosis congress.

Mitosis010 is meant to promote a sense of community between designers, to remember the conception of the designer in the society and its responsibility towards it, it's a model for theoric analysis of the local graphics that can be applied to a different context and also a kick-start for other projects.


The concept is based on an analogy done between the mitosis, or cellular division. Each piece of the project functions it's related to this core concept. The cell as a micro element, an organism capable of exponential reproduction caused by a little initiative.

To promote the event, publications were and are being produced, each one based on the five phases of the cellular process. A blog is refreshed every week with new content.

Mitosis is all about the one-on-one interaction experience, to celebrate the importance of dialogue, debate and teamwork. A free event about design, focused on cultural and social issues, a place for opinions, but also a workshop for production. We want to convince others to invest their time and intellect in alternative projects, to promote the approach to society through the critic and aesthetic eye of design. We want to prove that its possible to make a free event, with relevant content through everybody's effort.


Concept & Original Idea by 
Gabriela Salinas 
Daniel Miranda
Luis David Bañuelos
Francisco Martínez
Ricardo Ojeda

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Creativity and fear

So, let’s say that you are wealthy and rich, let’s imagine that you don’t have the necessity to generate any kind of income, you simply do not have to worry about it…well, then what would you do? … I assume that for some of you this will be the opportunity to fantasize with different kinds of luxury and excess, so there you go, do it, then try to think a bit more seriously about that, what would you do?

Excess of time, resources and idleness lead to inventions, that it’s not a secret, think about couture, fine arts and sports, they are products of a relatively secure community with enough money and resources. Take for example Stark’s “juicy salif” lemon squeezer, do you think this beautiful object but completely useless product could have been designed and manufactured in a marginal and poor community? I don’t think so, however this product is completely logical to picture it in the hands of a French designer and an Italian manufacturer.


If we understand security as the loss of preoccupation of a certain thing or matter, we can picture that there are different levels of security, it’s different to be afraid of finding where to pass the night than to be afraid of loosing an appointment with the manicurist. Sure that ironically both could cause the same amount of stress on certain people, but they sure have different consequences.

It is not a surprise that we live on societies with many, exaggerated or not, threats and fears; terrorism, global warming, natural catastrophes, crime, feeding, H1N1, global crisis… you name it, sure there is place for it.

However creation is everywhere, under stressful situations where only a limited amount of resources are available there is also a unique power for inventiveness and innovation, from simple hacks to revolutionary products and systems… We can find one recent popular example in the story of William Kamkwamba a young Malawian boy who found the way to design and build a windmill that generated electrical power for his house, William managed to write and publish his story in the book “The boy who harnessed the windmill”, now he is very popular and supported by all kinds of organizations (as you could imagine).

But this is not extraordinary, is a an everyday thing on many places in the world, one simple look at a Mexican village could give you a huge lesson on how to solve many problems with simple, yet extraordinary inventions.

Now that we are starting to feel the anguish and fear from the much commented war against the drug trafficking in Mexico and other, not less important, problems in our country such as lack of employment and a pretty mediocre education, we as creative people have to analyze where is our opportunity in all of these, where we can find a shifting point in order to change our environment.

Fear, lack of opportunities, violence, ignorance are also stimulants, let’s deal with it.


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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Nuit Blanche : Noir Paris

Set in a film noir Paris,Nuit Blanche explores a fleeting moment between two strangers, revealing their brief connection in a hyper real fantasy. The film captures MAGICALLY, a surprisingly violent moment of connection between these two strangers attracted to each other with such magnetism that neither panes of glass nor speeding vehicles can keep them apart. 

The entire film is told in slow-motion, with sculptural explosions of glass and water enshrining the two would-be lovers like heavenly gossamer. The elongated seconds echo the longing each character feels for the other, and time itself seems to be an expression of their aching desires.

 

Directed by: Arev Manoukian
Produced by: Stephanie Swedlove & Arev Manoukian
VFX by: Marc-Andre Gray
Music by: Samuel Bisson
Starring: Michael Coughlan & Megan Lindley
Cinematographer: Arev Manoukian
Casting: Jeff Marshall
Assistant Director: Andrew Cividino
Production Designer: Arev Manoukian & Marc-Andre Gray
Art Director / Costumes - Dan Levy
Camera Operator: Jay Pavao
Camera Assistant: Max Armstrong
Gaffer: Alan Poon
Editor: Arev Manoukian
Compositor / Animator: Marc-Andre Gray
Effects Supervisors: Marc-Andre Gray & Arev Manoukian
Additional Compositing: Arev Manoukian
Matte Painter: Pat Lau
Colourist: Andre Chlebak


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Boys, Boys, Boys! /// Patterns of Beauty and Function :The Naked Adonis

Image: The Death of Adonis by Giuseppe Mazzuoli / Poster of Mystic Knights of Adonis Mardi Gras Parade.

Since my previous installment was about Venus in Art, I supposed it would be fair ( and logic) to talk about her male equivalent: Adonis, used as a synonym for any depiction of a beautiful boy. Certain formulae have been used to determine this through history.

Image: Kourós / Advertisement for Eau de Toilette Kouros by Yves Saint Laurent

We begin with the Kourói, statues that represented teenage soldiers and were based on geometrical figures. Hair and muscles in perfect symmetry, broad thorax and tiny waist. The pose was stiff; and there’s an awkward attempt of facial expression, an “archaic smile”.

Image: Discobolus of Myron / Logo for Gymnasium UNT, Argentinian high school for men

Stiffness left, eventually. With the Olympics, gorgeous man sculptures were all about action. The Discobolus was an example: twisted right before throwing the disc. Although deadpan, as if he wasn’t making an effort.

Image: Doryphoros of Polykleitos / Marlon Brando as Julius Caesar


The first proper Kanon was developed by Polykleitos. According to it, the idealistic human figure must be eight heads tall, pubis at mid-height, arms so long their wingspan is equal to height, with a certain correlation between the lengths of body parts. However, we’re just about 7-7.5 heads tall.


Image: The Vitrubian Man / Stormtrooper

Then Da Vinci drew The Vitrubian Man, or Canon of Proportions; accompanied by notes on the architect Vitruvius, who considered humans the main source of proportion in classic architecture. Everything was based on the width of palms and feet, and distances were strictly calculated.


Image: Le Modulor / Real human comparing himself at habitational unit in Marseilles

In the 20th century, Le Corbusier brought these ideas back with Le Modulor. He used him as a universal scale in construction. The first version was 2.16m tall – including raised arm, with a body shape similar to that of the kourós. Not quite realistic, yet the arm up and relaxed position are meant to leave enough room, in theory.

Today, we use any of these patterns - or a mixture of them - to represent men as units, sex-symbols, or mere depictions.

Now that we agree beauty is subjective, and mathematics aren’t always right: are they still of any use? Do we need new ones? Or none at all? / Cynthia Rodriguez

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EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION


presents the exhibition
EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION
March 5 - April 8, 2010
Opening: March 5 17.00-20.00





Participants:
Luke Fowler (GB),
 Hanif Kureishi (GB),
 Thomas Hirschhorn (CH),
Renzo Martens (NL/CG),
 Taller Popular De Serigrafia (AR),
 Michel Tournier (FR). 
Curator: Razvan Ion
Assistant curator: Silvia Vasilesco


The return of the repressed is a crucial theme, a key to understanding recent history. "The project of the West, the Nietzschean project, has been to drive out religion and to produce a secular society in which men and women make their own values because morality is gone. Then suddenly radical religion returns from the Third World. How can you not laugh at that? How can you not find that a deep historical irony?" (Hanif Kureishi, in International Herald Tribune).

According to Freud, the very act of entering into civilized society entails the repression of various archaic, primitive desires. For Freud repression is a normal part of human development; indeed, the analysis of dreams, literature, jokes, and "Freudian slips" illustrates the ways that our secret desires continue to find outlet in perfectly well-adjusted individuals. However, when we are faced with obstacles to satisfaction of our libido's cathexis, when we experience traumatic events, or when we remain fixated on earlier phases of our development, the conflict between the libido and the ego (or between the ego and the superego) can lead to alternative sexual discharges.

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." This return of the repressed, of ideologies forced to marginalization, of sexuality subject to forced secrecy, has resulted, in recent years, in an almost dramatic change of a society filled with anguish, hallucinations, repression imposed by unnecessary regulations that serve to the repressive violence of governments against their own citizens. (Excerpt from the text "Exploring the return of repression" by Razvan Ion).

Publications:
EXPLORING THE RETURN OF REPRESSION
Edited by Razvan Ion. Texts by: Andrei Craciun, Tatiana Greif, Daraka Larimore Hall, Razvan Ion, Rolling Thunder, Ronald F. King, Urban Larssen, Jose Louis Meiras, Suzana Milevska, Naeem Mohaiemen, Maria Eva Blotta & Diego Posadas, Eugen Radescu, Michel Tournier.
31,5 x 42 cm, 32 pages, black & white, English/Romana
Published by Pavilion, Bucharest.
Distributed for free. 

Free download of pdf version:
http://pavilionunicredit.ro/ziar_ETRR.pdf


This exhibition is a version of the "Exploring the Return of Repression", exhibition presented at PAVILION UNICREDIT, Bucharest, Romania.

Image: Taller Popular de Serigrafia, "Serigraphy Workshop for the Masses - Dario and Maxi presents / Work, Dignity, Social Change", July 26, 2002. Image printed for the first time at the cultural day celebrated at the Puente Pueyrredón (province of Buenos Aires, Argentina), a month after the shooting execution of Maximiliano Kosteki and DarioSantillán assasinated by the state armed forces, in the name of democracy. "Work, dignity, social change" was the principal slogan of the politically active organization, the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (MTD)-Anibal Verón.

 
Opening hours:
Thursdays 14.00-17-00 and by appointment

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