Micolo's Barbershop No. 1 Literary Magazine

1 July-September 2011

Peluquería con charros y computadora. (Barbershop with charros and computer.)

Cover photograph: “Tres colonias” barbershop. Tehuantepec street, between Monterrey and Medellín, Col. Roma, Mexico City. ®Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2011.

Micolo’s Barbershop is a three monthly, nonprofit electronic publication. Authors are responsible for the texts they sign. Editors do not share necessarily the points of view of the authors. Register pending. Mexico, 2011.

Directory

3rd Street of San Francisco and Puente del Espíritu Santo, Mexico City

Direction, edition and design Georgina Mexía-Amador Direction of translation Fabiola Mercado Translators Georgina Mexía-Amador Fabiola Mercado Nayelli Pérez Editorial Committee Jan Markus Amundsen Nayelli Pérez Victoria Ramírez Contributors César Abril Carlos Ascencio Marisol Vázquez Alonso Zamora

table of contents 5 Preliminary words 8 Installing in the Genealogies. Predecessors and Contemporaries •Georgina Mexía-Amador 10 Maya Poetry by Wildernain Villegas 15 Melancholy and Utopia (An Invitation to Virgil) Acorn Eating People •Rafael Mondragón 20 Natalia Lafourcade, the Vive Latino and Postmodernism •Carlos Ascencio 25 Interview with ISOL. Children’s Literature Authors •Marisol Vázquez y Georgina Mexía-Amador 35 Carlos Sandoval: Emergent Mexican Art 46 in gestation: “Delirium” •Paulina Bermúdez/“From the Abyss” •Juan José Rodríguez García 49 Theater 51 Nirvana in Mexican Decadent Movement •Georgina Mexía Amador, Minh Hien Nguyen Thi, Julio Ruelas 60 Travels and Literature: SRI LANKA •Walter Keller-Kirchhof and Francisco Bulnes 80 Impressions of a Trip to Súkstad •Jan Markus Amundsen 96 Illuminations. Literature Snapshots •Alonso Zamora 87 Poetry from Canada: Albert Moritz 92 Reviews 95 Contributors 97 Illustrations’ Credits

Dear readers from around the world: Most of the times, the preliminary notes are the first section that appears in a magazine, but only once we stand before the first preliminary notes. Thus, it is not just a question of describing and presenting the content of the current issue, but of introducing the project the readers have before them. It is about seducing them, about inviting them to visit periodically the pages we will offer from now on until budget, failure of lack of will puts an end to the project (and we hope this happens to us within in a long, long time).

Therefore, you have in front of you a magazine whose origin is rooted in 19th century Mexico, since we can venture to say that the origin of Mexican literature and the production of literary magazines can be confined to that century. When Mexico City was the size of what nowadays is the city’s Downtown, there was a very famous barbershop whose owner was a Frenchman, M. Micoló. In that place, just as one of our 19th century Modernist writers tells us, Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Mexican intellectuals knew everything concerning arts, sports, literature, politics… More than that, Micoló was a man who knew everything and was also known everywhere. Parting from this idea of reaching most of the aspects of culture is the reason why we have named our project “Micolo’s Barbershop”.

However, an idea that had its origin in the 19th century had to be updated in our context, and this is why we are interested in dealing with the inclusion of different points of view and in a dialogue between a wide range of interlocutors. The attempt of such aim is what you have in front of you, dear reader.

Our first section is entitled “Installing in the genealogies. Predecessors and contemporaries”, in which we will revise the different Mexican literary magazines that have been published, since Mexican literature was mostly divulged through them. Our project wants to be part of this long history of publications and that is why we could not ignore this fact. We also introduce poetry in Maya language by Wildernain Villegas, who in 2008 obtained the Nezahualcóyotl Award, destined to the works written in indigenous languages in Mexico. We are happy to have him since we did not want to confine indigenous literature to governmental publications that still follow a paternalistic perspective towards anything that has to do with “Indians”. We rather think that literature is Universal and we oppose to any classification parting from race or ethnic background. We have chosen to remark the poem written in Maya language. The translation and the photographs are by our editor, Georgina Mexía-Amador.

Rafael Mondragón, poet and young scholar at the National University offers us an essay that parts from a painting by Giovanni Franceso Barbieri, “Il Guercino”. Through its pages we walk by the Arcadia, by the Latin’s melancholy of Polybius until we reach one of Don Quixote’s banquets, since all of them deal with acorns.

In our section entitled and devoted to “Music”, Carlos Ascencio elaborates an interesting criticism on exponents of modern Mexican music, specifically of the singer and musician Natalia Lafourcade; on the Vive Latino, one of the most popular rock music festivals in Latin America, and on Postmodernism. He opens a window into the manipulations and changes within musical industry and for these reasons we think this section is an important part of the cultural dialogue we seek.

Music is followed by the interview that our team made to Isol, a renowned Argentinean author of children’s books that has been translated to many languages (English, German, Norwegian, Portuguese) and has been greatly awarded. We think that approaching the reader to the complexity of children’s literature was vital since the acquaintance with reading and books begins in a great amount of cases during childhood. Samples from the work of Isol illustrate the interview. We present as well the works of a young Mexican artist, Carlos Sandoval, who has experimented during his career with different techniques and themes, such as painting, 3-D, showcase intervention, the exvoto (a trend of Mexican painting in which a miracle is portrayed and is offered as a thanksgiving to the Virgin or a saint, generally painted by common people) and illustration.

In our section entitled “in gestation”, we present novel writers. Paulina Bermúdez and Juan José Rodríguez García offer us a couple of poems. The former is a BA student at the National University and the latter is editor of a literary magazine from San Luis Potosí, México.

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In our section devoted to theater, still small, we included a fragment from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which we wish the readers will find out the problems of theatrical representation stated by the characters. The picture that accompanies this section belongs to a Korean trolley turned into a peculiar theater named “La otra nave” (The other ship), which is found in one of the many parks in Mexico City.

In our aim of “geographical inclusion” (which has been always present amongst Mexican writers and literary magazines) we make a couple of trips to other latitudes: in “Nirvana in Mexican Decadent movement”, Georgina MexíaAmador explores the reception that the word nirvana had amongst Mexican writers of the 19th century. The photographs accompanying this article were taken by a Vietnamese friend, Minh Hien, during her visit to Laos, in Southeast Asia, while the illustrations belong to Mexican Decadent painter Julio Ruelas. In this same line of non temporal and non spatial dialogues, we also present photographs of Sri Lanka by our German friend Walter Keller-Kirchhof, illustrated with fragments of Francisco Bulnes’ diary, a 19th century Mexican who travelled to Sri Lanka and other regions of the world.

We hope this couple of adventures will turn out to be for the reader a “nirvanic” experience.

In the same spirit of travels and diaries, anthropologist Jan Markus Amundsen offers us in this first delivery, his impressions of a trip to a “primitive” village in the Scandinavian forest. Afterwards, Alonso Zamora tells us a luminous anecdote of the great Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, in his section entitled “Illuminations. Literature Snapshots”.

Afterwards, we present three unpublished poems by Albert Moritz, who has been awarded with the Griffin Prize in 2008.

We feel very honored to have the privilege of offering our readers these pieces of his unknown work. Finally, the reader will find a section of reviews and the profiles of our contributors.

The images that illustrate this issue of our magazine belong to the urban landscape of Mexico City, which may be also common to many other cities in the world. One of the concerns of Mexican literary magazines has been the transformation of the city (the arrival of electric light and cars, for instance), and even when we do not claim to be an “urban” magazine we are aware that its name and context are inevitably linked to the city. We have then chosen to illustrate our pages with graffiti, light regulators, posters, buildings and other everyday presences; even when we have not decided to make “art” from them, we do consider that as a part of the urban landscape they could become interesting interlocutors of the texts.

Micolo’s Barbershop

Text and translation from Spanish by Georgina Mexía-Amador

…I do not need to clarify that we did not pay the contributions for Rueca, not even the foreign ones, which had not been published before in most of the cases. This was surprising for some of our friends. We did not get surprised, because people is always generous when we talk of disinterested works, few are the people who are not generous, despite of what can be thought of.

Carmen Toscano talking about Rueca, a Mexican magazine published by women.

The release of a magazine or of any periodical cultural is not only subject to the size of the budget or to the almost suicide sacrifice of its editors to found it and keep it alive; […] other than this necessary material platform, there is an exigency of intellectual, ideological and spiritual order.

Elías Nandino talking about Estaciones, literary magazine.

W

e open this section of Micolo’s Barbershop with a

authors from other parts of the world, and, especially, for offering

couple of epigraphs by two Mexican writers who

their work without expecting anything in return but to have offered

founded two of the most important literary magazines

a product of high quality. We are also not interested in economical

during the 20th century. Mexican literature is found in the

retribution and that is why the access to our barbershop is

magazines. From their pages sprouted the writers that nowadays

completely free. Nobody has demanded a payment for contributing

are indispensable references. And writers that have been forgotten

with us, nor have we received a single cent for working on it. And

with the passing of time have been rescued from them as well. It is

such has been the history of our most important magazines, such as

in Mexican literary magazines where we find the culture, the needs,

Renacimiento, by Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, and Manuel Gutiérrez

the history, the encounters, the polemics, the gestations, the

Nájera’s Revista Azul, two of our major 19th century writers.

different forms of working the beauty of language of our writers. But

In the same way we are aware of our predecessors, we do

not only of Mexico, but also of almost all the world, because we have

not ignore either our contemporaries, who divulge and offer quality

always looked for what is beyond our borders. And this is the reason

literature by means of paper or the web. Inside our barbershop, we

why we also want to dedicate this section to our readers from

like them and read them as well. Carmen Toscano, one of the editors

outside, because they will undoubtedly find themselves in these

of the magazine called Rueca —one of the few magazines made by

pages. We know that our little country is not very well known

women in the early 20th century—, once said that the world of

outside… thus, let us show it to you through its literature and

Mexican literary publications was like an archipelago, in which each

culture.

island barely interacted with the others. To some extent, this is true,

In our task of searching for our predecessors in terms of

since each literary group has created its own magazine, sometimes

literary magazines, we also want to be part of this history of

closing the door to people not belonging to their circle. We think

publications, even when we don’t make use anymore of manual

that, at some point, this image of the islands is still valid, and being

presses, types and paper, but of pixels. We have discovered in our

aware of this, we want to build bridges between our island and the

search, that these magazines have had the same concerns: the

rest. We want to dialogue with both our predecessors and our

inclusion of new voices; the dialogue between generations and

contemporaries, and wish to share this talk with our readers from

different political and religious positions; the rebellion against

around the world. In our next issue, we will begin with a trip to the

cultural monopolies. They have always, always felt interest for what

literary magazines of the 19th century, since we have looked back to

happens in the different areas of art, for translating and introducing

it in search for the name of our magazine and the spirit behind it.

Photos and translation by Georgina Mexía-Amador

“The reading of poetry must not be an effort of understanding but an abandonment of will… It is precise to empty of ourselves so that the other, who will inhabit us for an instant, finds a clean atmosphere, an available space. Its stay must be pleasant for it will always be too short.”

Rito de iniciación (Initiation Rite), Rosario Castellanos.

First moisture The sun inside me sings to you The sacred green trees kiss your hair

K’iine’ ich teen ku k’ayikech

Day shelters the syrup of its hours

Ya’axche’ob ku ts’u’uts’ko’ob u tso’otsel a pool

Night rises and sows its moon

K’iin ku ts’áaik u paynum ch’ujuk súutuko’ob

I sip your body full of instants trees and stars

Ku líik’il áak’ab yéetel ku pak’ik uj Kin xúuchik a wíinklal chuup yéetel súutuko’ob che’ob yéetel éek’o’ob A wiimo’obe’ najilo’ob k’u ku xululo’ob tu’ux yaan éek’o’ob A peele’

joonaj ku je’epajal utia’al u p’atik u k’áasil in

juunil táankab Ko’olel

jumil ixi’in ku k’áaxal

Your breasts are temples that end in stars Your sex

an opening door

leaving the ruin of my solitude outside

Woman melody of raining corn You flood the entire night with Whispers of my thirsty hunger of you The butterfly in your hand caresses my back I strip in you the true beauty of rivers And your hip dances following the rhythm of pantings Our breath germinates fireflies

Bulu’áak’a’ ka bulik yéetel ki’iki juumo’ob in uk’aj wi’ijil ti’

The urgency of my touch shakes in you

teech

And I become silence in your lightning

U péepenil a k’abe ku jáaxtik in paach Ti’ teech kin síilik u jach jats’uts’il áalkab ja’ob Yéetel ku yóok’ot a k’uul ti’ jéesbal Ak múusiik’e’ ku xitik kóoyao’ob Ti’ teech ku xíixmukuytaj in taltanbal Yéetel kin suut ch’ench’enkíil tu jaats’ a cháak.

Ts’o’ok in kutal in paa’ ka’ éemek le k’ujo’obo’,

Where my voice carves

ka’ u ch’a’ob t’aano’ob jujunp’eelil, yéetel ka’u t’ubo’ob

I have sited here to wait

tu yasab sujuy k’aabil k’iin;

for the gods to descend,

ch’éen ba’ale’ le k’ujo’obo’ yaan súutuke’ ka ta’ajkuba’ob,

take words one by one and submerge them in the purest honey of day;

ku makik u chi’ob, k’a’abéet ti’ob u la’ payalchi’.

but they hide, keep quiet, they need more prayer.

I have learnt to find them in the perpetual rush of waves of the oak: they stare at me, trill a prophecy, suddenly they pour the salt of their language in my tongue, and instants become stone where my voice carves.

Ts’o’ok in kanik in kax le k’ujo’obo tu seen ts’íikil ja’il le béeko’; ku paktikeno’ob, bey ch’íich’ ku k’ayo’ob wa ba’ax a’alaj t’aanil, junsúutuke’ ku t’ojiko’ob tin waak’ u ta’abil u t’aano’ob, ix súutuko’obe’ ku súutulo’ob tuunich tu’ux ku póol in t’aan.

Mukulech te’e sujuy t’aana’, kin na’atik u tantanbal u juum a kaal tin t’aan,

Alux

kuxa’anech kex ejoch’e’en le bejla’a, ka k’a’ajsik jmeen tu p’atal ti’ teech mantats’il, ka k’a’ajbesik u yóok’ot neek’, u xíitil ak mukub:

You are an enigma in this verse, I guess your voice in my Word, you live, despite the nocturnal present, you remember the jmeen who molded his eternity in you,

ku líik’sik a wool u túunk’ul k’ujo’ob,

you remember the dance of the seed, germinate of our kin:

báaxal pok’ ku k’a’itik náajal, u ts’ook u paylachi’ aj ba’atéel, u noj k’aay u k’i’k’el.

the drum of temples gives you breath, the ballgame that announces triumph, the last prayer of the warrior,

Alux, mantats’il, ch’ul lu’um yéetel a sáasil, táan u páa’tikech in jáal, wek sáas ti’. ta xíimbal kin pak’ik’ in payalchi’, uti’al tuka’aten

they hymn of his blood.

Alux, permanence, drench the soil with your clarity, spread light in my awaiting boundary.

I sow this prayer in your steps, so that once again,

ti’ amal nal sujuy che’ejnak kool.

to each ear of corn, the cornfield smiles.

Ki’iki óolal k’at, kin k’ubéentik teech u ixi’imil in kukuláankil: Glorious mud,

k’áaxak a k’abo’ob yéetel ka’alak’ u tíitito’ob

I entrust to you the corn of my heartbeats:

che’ob,

may your hands rain shaking trees,

tuunchil tuunchil,

stone by stone,

k’axkech yóok’ol máax okoltik ak taan kóol iik’,

rain over the invader of hope, whistle,

xuuxubnen, chikil u ch’ench’enkíil áak’ab. yéetel u kili’ich chichanil a wíinklal,

rattle the silence of night.

With the sacred smallness of your body, make the enemy fly without return.

meent y p’úuts’ul ix ma’ u suut jloob.

Alux, uk’ le kúubala’.

Sakabe’ u tséent ak k’axt’aan.

Alux, drink this offering.

May the sakab feeds our pact.

Poems taken from U K’aay Ch’i’ibal/El canto de la estirpe, book of poems that won the Nezahualcóyotl Literary Award in Mexican Languages in 2008.

By Rafael Mondragón Translation from Spanish by Nayelli Pérez and Georgina Mexía-Amador

T

he autumnal mane of a tree shucks with the wind passing by. In the background, Leonardo‟s lesson is guessed in a gusty landscape. Two young shepherds

contemplate a skull, left almost by chance on a ruinous stone fence. On the face of one of them, surprise is drawn; on the other one, there is a delicate smile that borders on melancholy.

On the stone of the fence a phrase is written: “Et in Arcadia ego” (= “and me, [even] in Arcadia”). That means that for Il Guercino, Paradise is always about to break; death is also in Arcadia. The shepherd reveals his smile, and understands that because of his smile this longing has sense; the beauty that we live, day after day, eludes us; and today only, while contemplating that smile, we knew it. Then we understand she gently came to remind us these things: we do not have to be afraid of it. And we smile filled with melancholy.

When one remakes the story of our heavens can sometimes find surprises: acorns, folk songs, dresses made of sheepskin. Long time ago, “Arcadia” was just the name of a town. It appeared for the first time in Polybius‟ writings, a Greek soldier who had to live in Rome, captive since Greece lost the war against the rising and ambitious Empire. In the

GIOVANNI FRANCESCO BARBIERI, “IL GUERCINO” Et in Arcadia ego (1622). Corsini Gallery, Rome

House of Scipio family, Polybius wrote the Histories. In the

And Polybius tells us that all this has sense due to poverty

Book IV, he defended Arcadia, his native land, from all the

only; sadness of a difficult land to cultivate that made people,

cruel jokes of townsmen: Arcadians lived in an inaccessible

who lived from it, sick. That those simple people, his people,

mountainous place; they were hick people due to it, who

learned to sing to heal themselves from pain and sadness: I think it was the people of old who introduced these costumes not as a luxury or as something superfluous, but because they saw that everyone worked isolated and because of this life was harsh and difficult; they also considered the austerity in the costumes that happened to them as a consequence of the poorness of their environment and the sadness of all the region that surrounds them, features that every man have ended assimilating in our nature […]. The former people of Arcadia wished to soften and temper the severity of nature, and so they introduced the art of music, and they established that the majority of assemblies and sacrifices were common, with no differences between men and women, and also instituted choruses for maidens and young boys. They thought up everything, in sum, with the aim of soften and sweeten by means of the institution of some costumes the harshness of their spirit. 3

understood very little of the refined ways of Roman society.

Those mockeries hurt Polybius; in an attempt to reply to them, he abandons Philip of Macedonia‟s story (narrated in Book III) and, with the excuse that in certain battle there had been a group of Arcadians, he dedicates the next book to tell the history of his town. Not all Arcadians were as wild as the ones who participated in that battle… No: in that small town there were customs and luminous legends (there are still): It is something known and remarkable that almost only amongst Arcadians the law obliges children to get used to sing hymns and paeans with which each of them, according to ancestral costumes, glorifies the gods and heroes of the country.1 In that small place, men and women grow up while music changes: the learning of a new occupation, births and age changes are marked in Arcadia by the learning of new songs.2 1

(Our English translations are based in the Spanish translation from Latin quoted by the author in the original text: Historias, IV, xx, 8, M. Balasch trad., Madrid, Gredos, 1981. Translator‟s note.)

2 For example, when they grew up, “the youth exercise in military marches following the rhythm of the flute, in a good order, and they train with dances to offer a spectacle to their fellow citizens every year at the theater, by the initiative of the state, that absorbs the costs.” (Historias, IV, xx, 12.).

“They have suffered,” but “we have assimilated.” The Histories, always written in third person (something happened to “them”); 3

Historias IV, xxi, 1-4. (Italics are from the author in the original text in Spanish. Translator‟s note.)

and suddenly, the melancholic trace of the prisoner who, on

civilization.6 All these, stories from a poor town that bears its

remembering his native country, talks about “I” and “we.”

privilege and its punishment even in its etymology: Pliny the

Thanks to that melancholy, Arcadia enters into the field of

elder tells us that, before being known as Arcadia, that region

Literature, and the hunger of its people achieved the dignity of

was called, first, Drymodes (= “wooded”), and after, Pelasgia,7

a legend. Afterwards, Pausanias wrote, in his Description of

because that was the name of the first king that brought them

Greece (c. II a. C.), a whole book about tourist attractions that

civilization, but marked their future: dressed, but with

are worth visiting in that Arcadia.4 On that book he collects

sheepskin (clothes for poor people, as Pausanias notices);8

loads of colorful legends: Pelasgus, the first Arcadian, taught

fed, but with acorns (the most primitive food in the Roman

his subjects to get dressed using sheepskin; he taught them to

imagery.)

live on picking acorns. Lycaon, Pelasgus‟ son, was so cruel

Polybius gave the hunger of his people the dignity of a

that sacrificed a newborn baby on Zeus‟ altar, and due to this

legend and, accidentally, since then he created a legend from

he was turn into a wolf as a punishment for his cruelty. 5 Some

which hunger was going to be talked of with dignity. One day

legends said that he did not remain like this forever, and that

we were in a reunion with Margit Frenk around a table,

he had the chance to return his normal state if after ten years

immersed ourselves in that wonderful practice that is reading

he had not got closed to human flesh. After Lycaon, Nyctimus

aloud. It was the first part of Don Quixote. We were reading the

reigned, and then Arcas did, from whom Arcadia took its name.

chapter 11:

Arcas taught them to cultivate fruits, to knit, to spin and to

group of goatherds that offer them a humble meal: nutty acorns

make bread.

and a half of cheese, “harder than as if was made of mortar”.9

All these are legends where that rural and agricultural element is present, which makes different Arcadians from

4

Book VIII. (Our English translation follows the edition quoted by the author in the original text in Spanish: M. Cruz Herrero, Ma drid, Gredos, 1994. Translator‟s note.)

5 A different legend about this Lycaon (the lycanthrope) is told by Ovid in the Book I of the Metamorphoses, 209-243.

Don Quixote and Sancho are welcomed by a

Don Quixote finishes eating, and he stays looking at the 6

Arcas himself did not marry a normal woman, but with Erato, a dryad, a nymph of the forests.

7 PLINY, Natural History, IV, x, 6.

8 “That is the fashion in which the poor people of Phocis and Euboea dresses” (PAUSANIAS, Description of Greece, VIII, 5). (For our English translation we used the Spanish version of the text originally quoted by the author. Translator‟s note.)

9 (Our English translation follows the Spanish edition from which the autor originally quotes: Don Quijote de la Mancha, I, xi, p. 121, Francisco Rico: Barcelona, Crítica, 2001. Translator‟s note.)

acorns. And then he starts a speech that later becomes

himself because he could not get a feigned shepherdess‟ love.

famous: he has gone insane and talks about a Golden Age in

Such a humble meal is woven in the space that goes from

the beginning of the world, a happy time where “those living in

desire and reality, as the whole Quixote is woven; as life is.

it were not aware of the meaning of yours and mine”10. A friend

Today, I remember that reunion with a smile and I think about

raises his voice to remember that our nobleman went crazy

the real Arcadia, the one described by Pausanias, where

because acorns are a topic from the Golden Age: on

people ate acorns thanks to a legend: a humble meal that

contemplating them, Don Quixote would have remembered

achieved dignity due to a king‟s mythical action. In the other

about the beginning of Metamorphoses (I, vv. 89-112), where

humble meal, Don Quixote‟s, the vital tradition of poverty is

Ovid talks about the beginning of the world and about a first

mixed with the other tradition, the one of the lost paradise.

age where people did good things because they wanted to, and because of that no armies or laws were necessary; everything was for everybody, and the land gave enough fruit so everybody could eat. People fed from acorns then, “which fell from the bushy tree of Jove” (Met. I, v. 106).11 The goatherds do not seem to be surprised by the crazy man‟s words. Perhaps, they are already used to them: Later, we find out there is a large group of young people that love pastoral novels and have decided to live between the goatherds. After listening to a peasant singing a humble romance, we find with a delicate, courtly song, written by a rich young man that killed 10

Ibid.

This is why Virgil says, in the Georgics, when the gods are invoked: “… men changed, a gift of ours, / The Chaonian acorn of fertile ear”: he ceased to eat acorns and began to work the soil, and therefore entered into the Age in which we live. (Our English translation follows the text originally quoted by the author in Spanish: Miguel Antonio Caro: Madrid, Imprenta Central, 1879.Translator‟s note.)

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experimented with bossa nova rhythms, and in songs like “Mañana olvidaré” showed a more intimate aspect, far from the so called mainstream.

Text and Photos by Carlos Ascencio Translation by Fabiola Mercado

M

ore than one person may be wondering which is the relation between the three elements that combined entitle this text. And though they might seem

unconnected at the beginning, the link we are trying to present between this great artist (the physical height is insignificant here), the most important rock festival in Mexico and the term Postmodernism, is not that out of place.

Natalia Lafourcade is a Mexican singer, composer and producer who began her career in the pop group Twist at the end of the 1990‟s. Even when the project was ephemeral, it created to Lafourcade a stigma of “prefabricated artist”, which remained for some time in the memory of the audience. In the year 2002, she edited her first homonymous album, from which singles such as “En el 2000” or “Busca un problema” were promoted; these songs didn‟t detach from a playful aesthetic, and without high pretenses they resembled the cannons of the fearful term pop. However, in other songs that were not promoted, such as “El destino”, she

Natalia Lafourcade

It was a little later, in the year 2003 that her first opportunity to step on the scenario of the Vive Latino arrived. It was just the fourth edition of a festival that began five years ago, and whose continuity was not guaranteed (it didn‟t take place in 1999 nor 2002). This festival was organized by OCESA, the hegemonic enterprise of the entertainment industry in Mexico, in which Grupo Televisa has an important participation, and is part of CIE (Corporación Interamericana de Entretenimiento). This May 11th (the festival used to last a day), water, beer, and all beverages were sold out in the Foro Sol, at the peak of the festival; it was not possible to go back to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez after getting out to rehydrate, and even less with any kind of liquid; the outcome of this was that the people fired up.

The show of that occasion was composed by artists such as

In 2005, Lafourcade was editing Casa, her second album

Café Tacvba, Molotov, El Gran Silencio, Aterciopelados and

produced by Emmanuel del Real, of Café Tacvba. For that

Resorte, among others. Lafourcade was on stage B, the same in

purpose, she reunited with a group of musicians to form a band

which groups like Babasónicos, Enanitos Verdes or Panda were

called Natalia y Lafourquetina, something unusual in the music

already performing. It is remarkable to say that stages were

industry, where it was customary becoming a soloist after taking

named according to hierarchy simply as A, B, C; this last stage

part in a group, and not the other way around.

was dedicated to electronic music.

Later, she would break new ground when editing Las cuatro

With only a CD in her career, the novel promise was faced

estaciones del amor, an album in which the Orquesta Sinfónica

with a public of colossal magnitudes for the first time, with only 19

Juvenil del Estado de Veracruz participated. In 2009, her fourth

years of age and her meter and a half of height; she didn‟t

album entitled Hu Hu Hu was released, and in 2010 she

manage to tame the spectators who abused their power and

participated in the celebrations of the Mexican Bicentennial, along

didn‟t tire of throwing offenses, condemnations, beer and even

with Alondra de la Parra, Lo blondo and Ely Guerra; she also

shoes at her. Lafourcade did her best to withstand the pressure,

entered music producing (as in the second EP of Carla Morrison,

but finally gave up in her attempt to take her music to that

a young promise from Tecate, Baja California), and films (soon

anonymous crowd. The audience felt the space consecrated to

you‟ll be able to watch her in the film El cielo en tu mirada).

rock had been profaned, a space that was denied to them (at

Just a couple of months ago, in April 9th, 2011, a Saturday,

least in the capital city and in those proportions) for a quarter of a

Natalia Lafourcade was part again of the twelfth edition of the

century, since the mythic festival Rock y Ruedas, in Avándaro,

“Vive”, as the Hispanic American festival of musical culture is also

took place in 1971. For the audience, a sacrilege had been

known. After that traumatic experience in 2003, she was ready to

committed and justice had to be attained by their own hands, for

face her demons and make up with the audience that managed to

the organizers themselves programmed an artist that represented

make her leave the stage years before. However, and this is

the bitter enemy of rock, the antagonist par excellence of

where the word Postmodernism surfaces, the public to which she

rebellion: pop. It was curious that only a year later, the word

performed for the first time was not the same as that of 2003.

“rebellious” was trivialized by the media phenomenon of the soap opera Rebelde by Televisa.

This claim seems evident

The desecration of this ritual space (for so it was) devoted to

at first: it is clear that the same

tock music, exposes the shattering of the great paradigms. In

people who went to the show of

music, it has meant the collapse of the barriers between genders,

2003 is not the same than the

for we are in a stage in human history in which everything is

one who now received her with

allowed, in which tolerance and respect for diversity are the more

ovations and applauses. Even

well-worn arguments, and where words like “heterogeneous” or

thinking in a hypothetical way,

“ephemeral” are constant. And because this happened, in my

in spite of them being the same

personal opinion, I crossed the thin line that separated Modernity

people,

and Postmodernism, and stayed, comfortably, thanks to the

their

circumstances

experiences, personal

ambiguity of the term, in an indecision that makes me enjoy just

contexts would have changed

the same Natalia Lafourcade than Charly Montana or Bomba

from what they were some

Estéreo; Chemical Brothers and Tokio Ska Paradise Orchestra

years ago. Lafourcade herself is not the same person: her music,

than Charly García. We have, thus, a collage of genders, roots,

experience and work have matured, achieving success in

and different styles harmoniously cohabiting in the same

different areas related to the artistic world.

fairground. Everything was organized, sponsored and controlled

Natalia Lafourcade

and

But this is not the aspect we want to deal with, but that of

by the same people that invite us to be indecisive, to form a new

the socio-cultural context that has make the audience receive with

anonymous and homogeneous crew, so manipulating us is easier

enthusiasm a proposal that years ago they bluntly rejected. We

in this way and the only “real” decision we have to make is which

do not deny that there have been cases like this in the history of

beer or soda we want to drink.

music. However, what we want to highlight is the fast transition

Without any doubt, in these times there‟s been a greater

that occurred in Mexico, from Modernity to Postmodernism, in the

aperture, a greater approach to what once was called “urban

short period that cover these agitated years of the first decade of

tribes”; there is a constant borrowing of sonorous material that

the 21th century. For us, this transition could be one of the factors

enriches the musical proposals emerging every day. However, a

that helped to disappear the alleged sacredness of a space,

doubt floats in the air: do these “independent” manifestations

allowing the inclusion of pop artists without any resistance.

really honor their name? Or are they the outcome of the decomposition of rock in more attainable musical products, in

order to be consumed by a greater number of people, based on

hats and caps of truck driver. Here we have a clear example: the

mere mercantilist goals?

recent attempt to forbid narcocorridos and the campaigns against

Though we cannot answer these questions with certitude,

perreos, in which reggaeton is demonized for being a dance that

the truth is that the height of the career of all those artists that

favours drugs and sexual violence: Where is the famous

wander constantly between genders, that some years ago would

tolerance?

have been considered antagonistic, has a branched explanation.

To conclude, in this text we do not attempt to favour or

The great industries of the hegemonic power, if not

disfavour the effects of Postmodernism. What

the creators of this boom, have noticed this unusual

we are aiming to is awakening the reflection of

growth and have made the most of this success

the great aperture that is taking place, which

exploiting it and pursuing mere commercial goals.

should be made good use of, and it depends

The idea that rock does not sell anymore is being

very much of how it is used and who owns it.

reinforced by the people in power, to smooth the

The question is whether we keep on letting

way and discourage the competence.

orders be dictated from above about what we

On the other hand, it may be supposed that the positive aspect of the rapprochement between

must or must not tolerate, or if we, from Natalia Lafourcade

beneath, build a criteria of our own to reach

the different musical forms, is that it is now thought in terms of a

higher goals, others than placing an artist in the charts of

mutual acknowledgement of differences and similarities, virtues

popularity against another, that we now choose to make

and defects. However, a broader reading offers a disheartening

illegitimate.

view. In my opinion, what happened is the same as in the

In spite of what we may say, think, write or muse about,

constant wars of the United States against the world: the face of

Postmodernism is a reality that transcends the ideological stands

the enemy has changed; now, pop and rock, for example, can

of the individuals; it is an age of contradictions, in which on one

walk the same path, but will never reach an understanding with

hand tolerance is defended, but on the other individualism is

reggaeton or music produced in the north of Mexico. In other

encouraged in an exacerbated way, and a great quantity of

words, we go back to the previous stance in which everything that

discourses are being generated, which constantly surpass, match

did not resemble me was attacked; whatever was different was

and face each other, inevitably. The difference is that now no one

segregated and seen with hostile eyes; now the enemy wears

is going to try, even a little, to tear their clothes apart, isnâ€&#x;t it?, 

.

Makers of Children's Literature Interview Marisol Vázquez and Georgina Mexía-Amador Translation from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado and Georgina Mexía-Amador

We were about to begin the interview with one of the most

where the reader has to posses a background. I like many

renowned authors of children’s books: Isol, from Argentina. Her

authors that write literature for children and I am not a child,

works have been included in the White Ravens list of the

and I think this is the same for other persons. I think that in a

Internationalen Jugenbibliothek of Munich, and has been finalist in

literary magazine approaching the reader to different genres is

the Hans Christian Andersen Award, considered the “Nobel Prize”

very good because, in general, literature must have a good

of children’s literature. It was midday in Buenos Aires and 10 o’clock in Mexico City. We could see the shining of a window behind Isol

quality. There are people who may not be interested in children‟s books and people who will be.

while saying hello to her through the webcam. She was smiling. And

Marisol: You have defined yourself as an author of children‟s

so the talk began…

literature because you generate both the text and the illustrations of a book. Each of these languages has its own

Marisol: We included in our magazine a section about children‟s literature because literary magazines generally tend to address an adult public, while literary production for children

code and they complement each other in order to create stories. You have published books in which you are an author in this whole sense, and others in which you are just the illustrator, for example: Auggie Wren's Christmas Story by Paul

is made aside, as if it was another world (which it is, in another sense). What would you tell to our readers about children‟s literature?

Auster,

or

Numeralia

Doggy

Slippers,

by

and Jorge

Luján, but why are there no

Isol: Sometimes it is difficult for me to say “children‟s

books where you are just the

literature” because it seems it was written by kids. I think that

generator of the text for others

as most literature, it is written by adults, and though we think it

to illustrate it? What reasons,

has to be read by a child due to certain particularities, quality

born out of art and creativity

must be good enough so that an adult or a child can read it.

make you prefer the language

Children‟s literature has specific features: it has to be more

of images?

synthetic, with stories in which knowing something before hand is not to be expected, as is the case of the literature for adults, Secreto de familia, Isol. Mexico, FCE, 2003.

Isol: Well, when I come up with a text I have already

me new elements and I have discovered unexpected

visualized how I‟m going to

illustration techniques to

illustrate it. When I‟ve had

dialog with texts.

some little texts or something

Marisol: Do you accept to

that I think it can be illustrated

work illustrating the books

by someone else, most of the

of any writer or only of

times it lacks the quality my

those with whom you feel

text has when I illustrate it

identified, admire or have a

myself, for there are parts

connexion in some way?

that

through

Isol: Yes, I only work

drawings. I would not like to

with texts that identify me,

give my idea, my project, to

that‟s why I don‟t have

an illustrator to whom I have

many things done with

are

narrated

to say “look, the drawing

Auggie Wren‟s Christmas Story. Text by Paul Auster. Ilustrations by Isol. UK, Faber & Faber, 2009.

other writers. I say that

goes here”; he would go

what we do as illustrators also puts us as authors. I make very

crazy. I am not used to generating a text and then say “oh, I

few books a year. I make a book and a half per year. Then, the

don‟t know what image it might have.” In the way I work, it is

book must have something that I like, I must feel that

difficult not to imagine the drawings, and if I really like the text I

something is going to happen with it. It has to be something

get enthusiastic about it and want to do it myself. It is not that I

different from what I have already done. The truth is that

produce a lot of individual texts but I think of projects that entail illustration and text, and when I have to illustrate the text of others I get excited because it sets another structure for me, for it was not generated with its illustrations, it comes to me with its own literary images. I achieve other things, other type of figuration because the imagery of the other person brings

choosing my own projects is very difficult to me, and when I am offered other texts, I have to like them and be inspired by them. Marisol: Tell us about the way in which you generate the graphic discourse parting from the techniques you use for illustration. Why do you choose certain colour palette? What

reading can generate in the story a soft or recharged trace, as

from which one stands is taken into account here, and in that

in Vida de perros (A Dog‟s Life)?

story I was questioning certain truth that the mother told the little boy, like “things must be this way,” and he wonders who he is and how things have to be, and sometimes this leads to more mess, doesn‟t it? And in this book the illustration is linked to the textual discourse.

The last book I made, La Bella Griselda (Beautiful Griselda), has a very different colour technique: I did it with four pantone colours: blue, orange, black, and light yellow,

Vida de perros, Isol. Mexico, FCE, 1997.

Isol: For me, this is one of the most interesting things: I have to look for the technique to accompany the story. It is as if you were the director in a movie and you have to say “It is going to be in black and white or in close-up.”

What exists around telling the story is going to determine certain atmosphere and is going to take us to a reading. In Vida de perros, for example, it was a time when I was very enthusiastic about a type of painting that is kind of related with the expressionist thing. This was twelve years ago, or more, and I really liked this kind of plastic; it was sort of savage, and was related to a very Argentine illustration style of the period of the books I read when very little, and also to the way the story in Vida de perros had that rebellious thing about conventions, about the primitive and the “cultural.” The side

in a special ink. Then, I used a contour palette (expecting the colours to be the way they should, because

printing

is

another issue), and I worked with a type of figuration related to my love for the Romanic, for the style of the Middle

Cover of the Norwegian edition of Vida de perros, Gyldendal, 2009.

Ages, but brought of course to a more actual and graphic era. I do not want to give a message with the story; instead, what I look for is that what I say tries to accompany my type of approach to the story. For example, in Griselda you can see heads rolling, but if I had

made it more realistic, it would have been terrible. What I tried

Georgina: Parting from what you just told us, a change in the

was to make it funny, even absurd.

style of your illustrations is evident: from your first books, such

I always prefer that the contour lines defining the image

as Vida de perros, until La Bella Griselda. And thus, such

are not that thin, so that the colours move inside them. I like

transformation has to do with the fact that the stories determine

working with things that seem embossed, such as old books

the technique, the colours.

and the “mistakes” resulting from screen printing: the colour

Isol: Yes, but it also means that 14 years have passed by,

runs and spreads over the outline. For me, this provides

since 1997 [year in which Vida de perros was published]. And

dynamism and freshness to the books, as if the trace was

an artist that is doing the same thing for 14 years is a little

alive. In this way, I keep on finding new things to test, which

weird, isn‟t it?

interest me. The way I choose to narrate graphically will

Marisol: Tell us what influences of other artists can be found

support the interpretation of the story in a certain way.

in your work. Isol: One of the greatest influences for me were some books I had when I was a child: the collection Cuentos de Polidoro (Tales by Polidoro), which was released here in Argentina in the 1970‟s, at the end of the 1960‟s; these were books whose illustrations resembled those of Eastern Europe. They were made by people very aware of what was graphically being made in the world, people who were not thinking that those were just books for kids; the illustrator feeds from many things, and that helps us to not get stuck.

El globo, Isol. Mexico, FCE, 2002.

This was the first

publish it. And I still love these books: one of them is Glasses

thing

that

(Who Needs „Em?), by Lane Smith, and the other is Teddy!

influenced

me,

Where Are You?, a pretty weird book by Steadman. And

people

that

Steadman, who is an English or American illustrator, I don‟t

illustrated very way.

in

a

remember, actually,

personal And

then,

because

is he

very

critical;

doesn‟t

write

specifically for children. I also

my

like

that:

When

one

has

father is a painter,

different audiences and can

since

keep

I

was

a

a

style,

a

way

of

child I saw many

narrating, and knows how to

books

art,

find other languages. Then I

open

had the opportunity to travel to

different ways of

Europe, around the time I

which

of

seeing the world.

Cover of the Canadian edition of

made my first book, and I got

This is the reason why I think it‟s very good to have different

Pantuflas de perrito. Text by Jorge

acquainted

with

publishing

houses

German edition of Secreto de familia. Aufbau, 2010.

styles in the illustrations for children‟s books, because points of

Luján.

Ilustrations

by

Groundwood Books, 2010.

Isol.

many and

views are widened. Something that had great influence on me

illustrators who also gave me

were the books of the Fondo de Cultura Económica [a leading

more strength and more inspiration for what I was doing; one

Mexican publishing house with presence in LA, USA and

of them is Wolf Erlbruch, a German who won the Hans

Spain]: I first bought a book by Lane Smith and another by

Christian Andersen Award some years ago, the most important

Ralph Steadman, and then I thought about entering to Fondo‟s

award in children‟s literature. I also saw the books that were

annual competition of illustrated books, A la Orilla del Viento.

being made in France, which have lots of humor and,

Also, seeing that these things got published gave me the idea

plastically, much ambition; for example, one of these authors is

of making a book in my own way, and that someone could

Olivier Douzou. So, these books were very important. I visually

love this kind of books, I enjoy illustrated books as objects and

people in US only, not to me”. I mean, we are used to consume

I enjoy finding good authors. I need to be told something

what they do to the extent that when it happens otherwise is

interesting, not only cute drawings.

sort of weird. We are so influenced by what these Western

Georgina: Just a moment ago, you were talking

countries offer to us. Our Western culture has a lot in common,

about audiences and how your trips to Europe opened new possibilities of graphic and literary influences and, for example, some of your books have been translated and taken to other cultural contexts, such as Vida de perros, published in Norway, and recently Secreto de familia (Family secret), published in Germany and Brazil. Do you think that these problems that arise in childhood could be in a way “universal”? Isol: I work with situations that are familiar to me or that I think they can be sympathetic with a child‟s point of view. Of course I‟m limited to my experience as a Western middle class girl, and the places

La Bella Griselda, Isol. Mexico, FCE, 2010.

where my books have been translated have this kind of

our way of telling tales, for instance. What seems to me quite

audience, more or less, right? I do not know what people in

complicated to translate is sense of humor, since in every

India would think. In Germany, as far as I‟m concerned,

country is different. For example, Griselda may seem in Mexico

Secreto de familia [in German Wie siehst du den haus?] was

like very hard to endure, the thing about heads rolling may

very well received, while It‟s Useful to Have a Duck had also a

seem terrible because in Mexico people is being killed and

great acceptance in North America. And I think, though, that

beheaded unlike here… for now. So, there are things from

this also has to do with the fact that we are consumers of what

reality that may seem scandalous or not parting from a book.

the other countries do. We don‟t say like “this happens to

And talking about language, in Griselda there‟s a part where it

says that the little princess enjoyed to join pieces of a puzzle,

thinking, just as the school does, and we see that all these

and we had a long discussion of what to do in English,

rules are subjective and depend on the context, and I enjoy to

because in “puzzle” we don‟t have the word “head” or

see these things as for first time, questioning why this is good

something that has to do with it, as it happens in Spanish; so

or bad and how this world could be different. This thing about

we had to find something that more or less worked and it was

perspective is what also happens in It‟s Useful to Have a Duck,

complicated. If this happens with such a little book, I don‟t want

in Vida de perros: how one can look at things from another

to imagine how it is like with poetry.

perspective and find new possibilities. And this is the way in

Marisol: We have been talking about the creation of your

which an artist and a child stare at the world: without prejudice,

books, while children only sit down to read them either alone or

without any former idea of things, and because of this they look

with their parents and enjoy your stories. What do you think

for something different from what already exists, in a fresher

about children as an audience of readers?

way. All this allows more freedom outside the culture already

Isol: Well, I really don‟t think much. I see that they have fun

established. I‟m very interested in identity, in having my own

and there are things that really look like what happens to them

criteria. With the Duck I wanted to achieve something short

in reality. There‟s a book

and funny, something that it‟s not

of mine entitled Petit, the

done just with a single look.

Monster, that has to do

I try to make something

with what‟s wrong and

happen and I guess that if adults

right, and I see how the

enjoy it too, they will tell it in a

very little ones love the

different way, and kids will find things interesting depending on

book because they have a cathartic feeling of what

how parents show books to them.

they are told all the time

If adults find it interesting, the kid

of how to be in life. And I

Petit, the Monster, Isol. Canada, Groundwood Books, 2010.

will look differently at the book.

wasn‟t expecting this; one finds an audience of one‟s own. In

Kids find more things from what

this book I enjoy this thing about trying to establish ways of

already exists and they have to share it with the parents. And

so, the parents may even laugh, as it happens with Secreto de

Isol: Well, each of my books has something of its own. For

familia, which is found enormously hilarious by mothers. I

example, the Duck is a book that each time I have the chance

prefer to work with sense of humor, because I enjoy laughing

of showing I do, because conceptually speaking it can

at solemn things and fears I had when

generate a very interesting reaction in

I was a child, like, for example, “How

the audience. And since I waited so

will the others look at me? Am I really

long for it to be released, six years, I

that strange?”

also appreciate it very much.

There are different ways in

There are other books I also

which we face the world around us,

love but I‟m not sure whether they will

and this is common to us human

work with anyone. I know that Secreto

beings. I cannot judge a kid yet; rather

de familia will work pretty well with

I see his world and find that in general,

It‟s useful to have a duck, Isol. Canada, Groundwood Books, 2008.

kids are still very rebellious. I love that.

mothers, but El globo (The Balloon) is much stranger.

My characters, in general, are like that,

The books of mine I like the

they don‟t accept the first thing they

most are those which I consider more

are told of and I got this influence from

original. However, I always try that the

Mafalda, Alice in Wonderland, since

last ones are the ones I like the most.

they are characters that try to reach to

Right now I love Griselda, because it

their own truth about the world. And

deals with another kind of discourse,

this freedom has to do with fun also,

it‟s more complex; in the books I‟ve

and it works with many people, kids and adults. This makes me

made with Jorge Luján, another kind of discourse can be seen

happy because it encourages me to do something very

because the rhythm of the text changes. That‟s why it‟s hard to

genuine.

me to show my works since I try to change and look for a

Marisol: Is there any of your books that you especially cherish

different style, I mean, “I do this, but I also do this”. I don‟t have

over the rest?

a book which I consider the best, because I try to change and

maybe the first ones are quite out of date in terms of graphic

Marisol: Would you wish to add something else? We talked

now. But if I have to choose one, I guess the Duck is the one I

about the topics we were more interested that you shared with

love the most, it‟s the most original, the most awesome.

us. We are very happy and thankful for your professionalism.

Marisol: What kind of advice would you give to those who

You have left a very good impression in us.

wish to begin in the illustration of children‟s books?

Isol: Well, the only thing that worries me sometimes has to

Isol: I place myself there, because that‟s where I still stand

do with printing presses. Because you work a lot and the last

and well, if you really like this you start to work hard, to try, to

part in the process, that is the press, most of the times, located

research and draw your own path. It‟s a matter of making

in another country, doesn‟t take its job as seriously as it

projects at the level of the people you admire. You cannot be

should. Big publishing houses make so many books that they

so indulgent with yourself. You must enjoy the challenge and

lose control of them at the moment of printing. I wish this

make a book as if it was not of your authorship. There are

wouldn‟t happen. We are talking of illustrated books, I wish

people who think that just because the book is theirs it is

there would be more control and respect for our work. But this

automatically wonderful. If you want something made with

is my only problem, the rest is only happiness to me.

enough quality you also have to show it to other people. The process takes time, and you have to feel free to try different things and never think that you have to find your own style at once. We must look at the books made by other illustrators and look at the things made in other spheres, such as literature, art, museums, because as you become more cultivated, your work will be able to nurture better. When you don‟t have a boss you don‟t have a chance to argue with anyone. So, it‟s good to make projects that are like a small, cheap edition, this is one good option. That‟s the key: find a discourse of your own, and of course it‟s hard when you begin. A book made by oneself is an interesting thing to do. And this was helpful to me.

Intercambio cultural, Isol. Mexico, FCE, 2010.

emergent mexican art

CARLOS SANDOVAL

Texts and design: Carlos Sandoval. Translation from Spanish: Georgina MexĂ­a-Amador

Carlos Sandoval is a plastic artist, currently studying a BA in History of Art at the Lamm House Culture Centre (Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm) in Mexico City. He has participated in a couple of individual exhibitions as well as in four collective exhibitions in Mexico. His work has been part of events such as the Cultural Corridor Roma-Condesa and the contemporary arts festival Zona MACO. He has collaborated in the organization of exhibitions at the National Museum of San Carlos, at the Blue House Museum of Frida Kahlo and the National Museum of Art. His work is included in the catalogue by Lamm House Casa Lamm y sus artistas and in the electronic catalogue Ars-Tesauro sponsored by FONCA, CONACULTA, Laboratorio Arte Alameda and Museum of Art Carrillo Gil.

Yo y mi mu単eca (Me and my doll). Mixed thecnic on wood. 60 x 38 cm 2010.

Taxonomía (Taxonomy). Acrylic on canvas. 20x50 cm 2009.

Wonderland 1.2. Mixed thecnic on wood. 25x20 cm. 2009.

Cambios (Changes) . Acrylic on canvas. 150x50 cm. 2009.

The works of Carlos Sandoval deal with three topics: religion, cultural clashes due to globalization and the concept of simulation. From these three perspectives reflections and bidirectional readings arise between tradition and current happenings, reality and simulation, permanence and transformation. For the artist, it is in everyday reality that juxtaposed relations are established, enunciating the past and time in a symbiosis characterized by exoticism.

Exvoto. Acrylic on canvas. 25x20 cm. 2008.

Los Suicidas (The Suicides). Acrylic on canvas. 25x20 cm. 2010.

Chair. Plastic chair intervened with acrylic paint. 2010.

During 2011, Carlos began the project Espacio vacĂ­o (Empty Space), that consist in showcases intervention with artistic aims in Mexico City, with the sponsor of Lamm House, Ars-Tesauro and Nodo Espacio. The cycle of interventions implies the participation of a team that will achieve the installation of five showcases with different topics, with the intention of offering the spectator an alternative within contemporary art that has not yet been explored in Mexico.

In this way, Carlos Sandoval complements his studies with his artistic practice, with the purpose of not only studying the history of art, but of achieving, within his possibilities, creations that strengthen art in Mexico.

in gestation poetry

Paulina Bermúdez

DELIRIum

Yours, this delirium of mine Yours, the bitter circles under my eyes Yours, this lame blow Yours, my ill insomnia

Yours, my evil life my half life if only I had more to give!

Yours, my seas, my breezes; I give you the hot, bastard winds of your broken affections

Yours, my understanding and respect my notion of living my final end

Yours, my silent desire

Translation from Spanish:

my sad whisper

Nayelli Pérez

blossom of those two murderer pillars that move gods and infernal voices

Yours, even my last enlightened point, heavenly body in the sky of your touch; yours, my brakeless madness, slave of your kiss’ firmament;

Yours the drugs guilty of keeping my cardiac lines alive beating, suffering and alive

Yours, my bones marked by your name Yours, my stubborn movements, soldiers of your body

Yours, all my foolish attempts yours, my will attached to your army yours, my deaf “neverminds”

yours, my broken line, lost child in the path resting in the dwelling of your dream

Yours, my changing weather sunny with the contact of your eyes, cloudy if you were hidden by the moments

Yours, this bare confession, safe because is yours… my alien marionette without your strings.

Juan josé rodríguez garcía

FROM THE ABYSS

The beasts are restless at dusk, they work they slash impudence, they feed from it They are like demons, nights and beasts conspire against us, the forgotten prepare us for the insult, for the offense and for the selfishness of the baptized.

With the moon, the beasts flare up betrayals

Watch sickened by my cold doings

Their light hurt as much as the hermit’s stink

I have nothing else but these claws and I die, with cool hands, in my own war

Every time the night falls, I hide from myself

in the supposed unconsciousness

I fear myself so much that I do not know me anymore

of hurting myself

I hate the complicity of nights

or in the most accurate of my defective virtues

and I have no other shelter than sinking in the mirror

that is to know how much pain I own deep inside

and cry out at the narcissism of my souls

and how much I can be an asshole

or get drained of poison

to dislocate myself

Translation from Spanish:

Even believing in the cure

Nayelli Pérez

with these vague illusions I cannot stop being a beast

with the candor of my fierceness or the sorrow that has bent me for days for nights

At dusk storms flow from me with each of my twisted vices

for hours for years

My feet begin a journey to the abyss

caring about without caring

My eyes break up the rules

being afraid of myself so much

The body I own transmute in fright

as if that beast the mirror keeps

I cannot stop feeling captivated by the flames

was more intelligent and powerful than my wandering innocence

Scenic trolley “La otra nave” Sonora street, next to Parque México, Mexico City.

Photo: Georgina Mexía-Amador

T H E A T R e

SNOUT: Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?

STARVELING: I fear it, I promise you.

BOTTOM: Masters, you ought to consider with yourself: to bring in (God shield us!) a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing. For there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look to‟t.

SNOUT: Therefore, another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

BOTTOM: Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion‟s neck, and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect: „Ladies‟, or „Fair ladies —I would wish you‟, or „I would request you‟, or „I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No: I am no such thing: I am a man as other men are.‟ And there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

Act 3, scene 1, A Midsummer Night‟s Dream, William Shakespeare.

NIRVANA IN MEXICAN

l decadentismo en el México finisecular —procurando emular la corriente estética y literaria que surgió

E

en Francia a finales del siglo XIX—, fue poco más que un grito de rebeldía entre los jóvenes

DECADENT MOVEMENT

intelectuales que se extinguió pronto. Su preocupación fue la de sublimar el arte y los sentidos a un

estado que ya no reconociera límites con lo enfermizo, lo macabro, con todo aquello que subvirtiera la moral y el puritanismo: Ciro B. Ceballos se regodeó con una historia de adulterio zoofílico, mientras Bernardo Couto, si acaso el único que se entregó con fe vehemente y ciega al decadentismo, llegó a plantear algo que Thomas de Quincey ya había aventurado: el asesinato como obra de arte. En su cuento “Blanco y rojo”, un cadáver exangüe se desangra como sinfonía cromática, y el artista de tal cuadro aparece como un incomprendido de la sociedad bruta e hipócrita.

En este contexto de inversión de paradigmas, no dudaron los decadentistas en incorporar a sus filas estéticas influjos del orientalismo que había comenzado a filtrarse a Latinoamérica por medio del ocultismo y la Teosofía provenientes de Francia. Y entre dichos influjos, estuvo la palabra nirvana, por la que surgió una fascinación que Jorge Luis Borges constata en sus escritos sobre budismo: “Parece imposible, en efecto, que esa palabra tan sonora y tan enigmática no incluya algo precioso”.

La atracción por este vocablo llevó a los escritores de finales del siglo XIX a incorporarlo en sus obras —a “prodigarlo”, diría Borges— pero, lo hicieron de manera equivocada —aunque, ¿cómo no hacerlo si los filtros europeos por los que recibieron el

Georgina Mexía-Amador • Text Minh Hien Nguyen Thi • Photos of Laos

nirvana ya habían trastocado su sentido original, como la Teosofía

Illustrations by Julio Ruelas

de Madame Helena Blavatsky y el pesimismo nihilista de Arthur

Fabiola Mercado • Translation from Spanish

Schopenhauer?

T

he Decadent movement in Mexico at the end of the 19 th century—endeavouring to emulate the aesthetic and literary movement that emerged in France at the end of this same century—was a little more than a rebellious shout among the intellectual youth, which was soon quenched. Sublimating art

and senses to a state that did not recognize boundaries between what is sick, macabre, and everything that subverts morals and Puritanism was their goal: Ciro B. Ceballos gloated over a story of zoophilic adultery, while Bernardo Couto, probably the only one that devoted himself with vehement and blind faith to Decadence, proposed something that Thomas de Quincey had already ventured: murder as an artwork. In his short story “Blanco y rojo” (White and Red) a worn out corpse bleeds like a chromatic symphony, and the artist of such scene looks like a misfit in a brutish and hypocritical society.

In this context of inversion-of-paradigms, Decadents did not hesitate in incorporating to their aesthetic ranks influences from the Orientalism that was beginning to leak from France to Latin America through Occultism and Theosophy. Among those influences we find the word nirvana, for which a fascination bloomed just as Jorge Luis Borges points out in his writings about Buddhism: “It seems impossible indeed that that greatly sonorous and enigmatic word did not contain something precious.”

The attraction for this term led writers of the end of the 19 th century to include it in their works—“to lavish it,” Borges would say—but they did it wrongly—but how to avoid it when the European filters from which they received nirvana had already disrupted its original meaning, like the Theosophy of Madame Helena Blavatsky and the pessimistic nihilism of Arthur Schopenhauer?

Julio Ruelas, Scorpio-woman, 1904.

Pondering on this, José Vasconcelos states: “Who was the first to think Nirvana as Nothingness, and the same as death and complete annihilation? […] However, some Hindustani sects, the same as almost every European, have interpreted Nirvana as an equivalent of complete annihilation.” To this Fernandez Güell adds: “… Buda never spoke about nothingness […] never preached the annihilation of the spirit but simply its freedom.”

And it was the nihilist influence of Schopenhauer and the boredom of end of century what prepared the terrain for the appropriation of the term nirvana among the Mexican Decadents. The first one who used this enigmatic word — whose definition is even elusive depending on the branch of Buddhism from which it is viewed, whether Mahayana, Hinayana, Theravada— was José Juan Tablada. It is attributed to Tablada the inclusion of hai kú to the poetic structure in Spanish, and at that moment, in which he recognizes himself as Decadent, we see his first incursions into the Orient in a letter of 1893 in which nirvana is Julio Ruelas, Sókrates, 1902.

mentioned.

In this letter, Tablada explains that Decadence, as school, allows the entire freedom of the artist, and that boredom and doubt in religious beliefs determine its moral decadence; hyperesthesia and ultra-sensibility characterize the aesthetic refinement of the decadent artist and that motivates his banishment (whether voluntary or involuntary) from the “bourgeois paradise” that does not accept his poetic ideals. What is singular is that all these ideas are explained in a peculiar religious vocabulary that reminds of catholic liturgy, but he does not only use terms like “chapel,” “convent,” “cells,” or “nuns”, but also introduces eastern terms, like “pagoda” and, evidently, nirvana. The paragraph in which this word is found reads as follows:

Our brain is the lazarium of tedium; frequently, the dreams that float in it, writhing in anguished convulsions, at last are fixed in a black circle that has an awful resemblance to the Buddhist zero, to the fatal symbol of Niro창nah.

Buddhist Theravada temple in Vientiane, Laos.

The metaphor of tedium like a black circle, typical of the feeling of the end of century, is striking, as well as its association with this Buddhist zero, the singular graphic form that derives Niroânah from nirvana and also the conception of this term as a symbol.

This vocabulary and the images used refer to something fatal, terrible, like the black circle metaphor: the circle refers to the infinite, to the symbol of the Ouroboros, but here Tablada seems to be relating it also to nullity when comparing the circle to the shape of the zero. If this is true, comparison would be contradictory (infinite and void), though no less nightmarish, if we become accomplices of the decadent tone in which Tablada writes.

So, this black circle and the Buddhist zero enclose in their eclectic religious imagination both death and weariness; this hypothesis is the outcome of the adjectives with which he refers to the Buddhist zero and

Julio Ruelas, Relentless, 1901.

the Niroânah: “awful resemblance” and “fatal.” However, with what elements does Tablada describe the existence of this Buddhist zero? Why does he conceive the Niroânah as a symbol? I conjecture that in these two concepts, evidently invented by him though he might have taken them from somewhere else, he sees what was already said about the black circle: both the Buddhist zero and this Niroânah are tedium, annihilation, death. It is possible that both are the same thing considering the way the sentence is built: “a black circle that has an awful resemblance to the Buddhist zero, to the fatal symbol of Niroânah.”

So, for Tablada nirvana is a funerary symbol, withholder and representative of the tedium and anguish of his school‟s moral decadence. Considering his statement about the doubt his beliefs generated, in other words, the skepticism and the secularization produced by the Positivism that ruled in Mexico at the end of century, it turns out the Christian terminology and the concepts of the Eastern religions are compatible and alike in his eclectic vocabulary; among them Niroânah is the best example.

Buddhist monks celebrating Awk Phansao in October. Vientiane, Laos.

I cannot not say whether the written form adopted by Tablada is a creation of his, a distortion of something he heard or saw it written that way and reproduced it so. What is clear to me is that the concept barely managed to get through the Mexican literates—Amado Nervo uses Nirvana until 1919 in El estanque de los lotos (The pond of lotuses)—and that is the reason why we have in Tablada an exotic spelling and writing.

One more mention of nirvana is to be found until 1898, in a biographical sketch of the painter Julio Ruelas by Ciro B. Ceballos, which was published in two versions: the first one, in Revista Moderna (Modern Magazine) in 1898; and the second one in En Turania (In Turania), in 1902.

When speaking about Ruelas, Ceballos offers many images in the peculiar style that characterized him— baroque syntax and cultist lexicon—and taking this into account, he offers us this description:

He got over that distraction, crossed his arms, leant the shoulders against the back of the sofa, closed the ironic eyes and stayed for hours immersed in his nirvanish stupor of Brahman, smoking, smoking, smoking‌

Pha That Luang, Vientiane, Laos.

We can see Ceballos uses nirvana as adjective. Although the word is written in an already familiar way, and adapted at the Spanish phonetic, the fact of introducing it as adjective is an outstanding feature, and even more when linked to “stupor.” The sense Ceballos gives it does not seem to be negative, for he understands it as a synonym of a mystic, spiritual state, a state of meditation, as if Ruelas‟ concentration was a medium for his artistic fulfillment.

If we follow that idea, Ceballos‟ description even resembles zen Buddhism, considering its contemplation method, but this would be a wrong interpretation taking into account that the word that follows nirvanish is Brahman, a concept alien to Buddhism; now let‟s remember that Frédéric Lenoir points out in La Rencontre du bouddhisme et de l'occident12 the lack of differentiation between Hinduism and Buddhism in the West since the 18th century. Then, it is evident that Ceballos confounds the field of both terms, nirvana and Brahman, and creates this image of Ruelas in a desire that matches his style: showing

erudition

based

on

eclectic

references—in

the

biographical sketch he mentions just as well beings from classic mythology like the nymph Aretusa and the fauns; and from Germanic mythology, like elves and kobolds—among which those exotic words of Eastern origin were missing. Ceballos‟ lexicon includes also archaisms and neologisms—in a section he speaks about “autumnal landscapes”—and based on that I can explain to myself the transformation of nirvana into adjective.

Therefore, the image of the “nirvanish stupor of Brahman” is Julio Ruelas, Hope, 1902.

12

not negative, but it refers to the artistic contemplation, which

This title can be translated as “The W estern Discovery of Buddhism”. This work is not yet translated into English.

borders in its vision in spiritual meditation, and this would be completed by the next repetition: “smoking, smoking, smoking…”

However, though this sense of nirvana can be identified in the context of tedium, moral decadence and even artistic contemplation and meditation of the end of the 19 th century Decadence, it is not possible to grasp the right meaning this word has in the different branches of Buddhism. It continues to be an enigmatic and fascinating word, with a mystical unfathomable breath.

Young Buddhist monk in “nirvanish” stupor, Luan Phrabang, Laos.

Travels and Literature

Photos by Walter Keller-Kirchhoff Texts by Francisco Bulnes Translation from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado

In this section we present a dialogue between photography and literature: Sri Lanka, that island located at the South of India that, even when it has been convulsed by the occupation of Portuguese, Dutch and English, and more recently by the civil war, it does not cease to offer its mysterious beauty to the traveler and the artist. We do not want to approach to her with the eyes of Orientalism or to turn her into an exotic place, but we prefer, though, to give voice to a 19th century Mexican that traveled to that territory, still unknown to many of us. Fragments from Francisco Bulnes, “historiographer of the Mexican Commission sent to Japan by the Supreme Government in order to watch the transit of Venus by the orbit of the Sun”, as he himself tells us in the introduction of his trip chronicle About the Northern Hemisphere, Eleven Thousand Leagues. Impressions of my trips to Cuba, the United States of America, Japan, China, Cochinchina, Egypt and Europe, printed in 1875, accompany the photographies by Walter Keller-Kirchhof. Taken in a period of sixteen years (since 1995), these images tell us of a cultural and religious diversity, of the encounter between the own culture and Western hegemony, of the poverty that does not bury yet the spontaneity of people, of the beauty of a territory yet to be discovered. We wish that the readers share with us this enjoyment and get rid of their former bodies, just as it happens in the legend with which we begin our journey, when crossing in Buddha’s light boat towards this beautiful island.

Georgina Mexía-Amador

“Vain exorcism against the void.”

Bharatanatiyam dancer in Jaffna, North of Sri Lanka.

Previous page: Hindu temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

 An old man selling refreshments along the A9 highway in Northern Sri Lanka.

“More than ten centuries ago, a Chinese pilgrim left Si-an-You to go to India in search of the sacred writings of Buddha’s religion. Seeing his path hindered by the arm of the sea that separated him from Ceylon, he noticed a light boat that sailed toward him, steered by a mysterious pilot. The pilot gestured to the pilgrim, who, trembling, boarded with his three disciples: a monkey, a dog and a man, and was followed by his white horse.”

Sacred cow in Trincomalee beach, Eastern Sri Lanka.

“Suddenly, about the middle of the strait, the pilgrim let out a scream and, terrified, asked: what does that corpse floating on the waves, and in which I recognized myself mean? Do not fear a thing, answered the pilot; you’ve been divested of your old body when approaching this privileged island. At that moment, the boat reached Ceylon’s beach.”

Victims of the February floods. Trincomalee, Eastern Sri Lanka.

“Everywhere, the big trees of dense foliage and penetrating perfume cast their shadow and refresh the burning thirst of the travelers. Among the dark branches, the voice of the Buddhist monks reciting their prayers echoes, and the pilgrim, ecstatic, sees Buddha smiling to him with greater brightness than his emperor.”

ď ž Nallur Kandaswamy, Hindu temple in Jaffna, North of Sri Lanka.

Por todas partes los grandes árboles de espeso follaje y de perfume penetrante, proyectan su sombra y refrescan la ardiente sed de los caminantes. Entre el sombrío ramaje resuena la voz de los religiosos bouddhistas recitando sus oraciones, y el peregrino extasiado vé á Bouddha que le sonríe con mas resplandores que su emperador.

Trip by bullock cart in heavy rain, Sri Lanka Highlands.

“This legend is the Eastern story of Ceylon, the land of wonders and gods, the prettiest pearl of nature, the place where, according to some modern theologians, Paradise on earth was found. Since more than twenty centuries ago Buddhism rules in Ceylon. When this heterodox belief disappeared from Hindustan, defeated by Brahmanism, it took shelter in the enchanted island as in the best of strongholds.”

Harvesting in Northern Jaffna, North of Sri Lanka.

“Today, the believers of the oldest cult sing Buddha’s praises without the edifying zeal that filled the Chinese pilgrim with so much joy: time has toned down the ardor of the faith that has lived with tradition in the twilight of mysteries…”

ď žWoman and Hindu temple in Jaffna, North of Sri Lanka.

Young Muslim boys, Sri Lanka.

“Among Muslims, every physical or psychological function was suppressed, and God was reduced to a metaphysical and abstract concept from which, logically, fatal order emerges.”

ď žMuslim women travelling in Eastern Sri Lanka.

ď žChildren in a pre-school in Point Pedro, Jaffna, North of Sri Lanka.

ď źColombo, Sri Lanka.

ď žOld man in Mankulam, Northern Province, Sri Lanka.

ď žYoung Hindu boys outside a temple, Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

ď žYoung Buddhist monks in Pollonaruwa, Central Sri Lanka.

Buddhist monk, Eastern Sri Lanka.

“[Monks] are seen in the streets of Ceylon getting near the fountains, with their yellow tunics, and filter the water they drink in order to save millions of microscopic animals contained in the liquid.

They walk with the head bent, the eyes half-closed and begging Buddha to spare them from finding elephants, horses, women, cars or soldiers, or anything that could disturb their passions or hurt their sensibility […] They well know that action comes from the spirit, which must be closed to every image capable of printing a guilty act. Sight is a cause for perdition as grave as wicked desires, rage, fear and ignorance.”

“Ceylon is the joyous region that envelops the last remains of Gôtama, its left jaw’s incisor tooth. The tooth is found in a little temple near the palace of the ancient kings of Kandy, carefully enclosed in the bottom of six boxes, one inside the other; the first one is made of gold, is five feet long and three feet wide, and is encrusted with diamonds.”

Buddhist monk in front of the Aukana Buda statue, Central Sri Lanka.

Impressions of a Trip to SĂşkstad

By Jan Markus Amundsen Translation from Norse to English by the Author.

Diary of Jan Markus Amundsen.

ignore this at times, because what I‟m pursuing is more

Student at the Faculty of Social Sciences,

kind of transcendental: I am seeking for the truth (if such

School of Anthropology.

a thing exists).

I know that human kind, among other needs, wants to Lumna. Friday, February 6th.

transcend. I affirm this fact because, otherwise, I wouldn‟t be writing this diary. And I know as well that one of our

The bells tolled in the red church. It is eight o‟clock in the

biggest desires, perhaps the one that obsesses us the

morning. The Murel forest starts to waken covered by the

most, is the search for truth, for one must find answers to

mist while a weak fainting light rises timidly behind the

our questions. And this is exactly the reason why I‟m

White Mountain.

suffering this unusually uncomfortable cold winter in this

It is so cold I feel it in my bones. Menacing clouds

little village of fishermen in Sogn.

run through the dark sky. I‟m sure it will snow during the

I left my native city in the beginnings of January (more

day, just as it snowed during the night. I can hear the

or less a month ago), with the mission of finding the

frozen sound of the river crashing on the stones. The

object of my anthropological study. I look forward to

river then reaches the fiord, after a tiring trip from the

become a “social anthropologist” after studying related

glaciers.

stuff at the University for four years. I finished my studies

Few lights in the village have started to lit; few chimneys let go out strips of smoke.

and what‟s next is to devote time to a research with which I can graduate. But all of this means to me something

I rub my hands but the cold does not leave me. Near

more than just a bureaucratic process, because what I

me, the moths fly around a lamp. I am sitting in a wooden

carry inside is an obsession that rooted in my mind some

bench next to my luggage, inside a very poor hut, and I

years since. It has to do with one of the historical facts

try hard that the wind does not reach me here in this

that changed the course of the History of this country: the

corner. And while I find myself here, I wonder how will the

invasion of the “Bearded” of Skagerrak in 1380, almost

rest of this adventure will be, for I accepted to walk by this

six hundred years ago.

hard road that becomes more difficult every time. I try to

In this task, anthropology and history must work together,

as

something

that

Mauss

has

called

“interrelation between the sciences”. Or “interdiscipline”, as it has been also called.

historical discourse what has brought me here, so I can corroborate how much truth there is in it.

I became interested in this during my first months at University. Let‟s suppose that random is a fact that

I will explain now what I‟m talking about: Official History

sprouts spontaneously, without any apparent reason.

(capital letters are an irony, of course) says that the

Then, by random, one of my professors, Gunnar Olsen,

invasion of 1380 was “peaceful”. King Guttorm, who was

once his class had finished gave me the copy of an

ruling this country at that time, abdicated in favor of King

anonymous document, written by a historian in 1873, in

Karl Gustav Kenberg, the King of Skagerrak. Historical

which the Official History is completely brought down.

discourse has omitted any information about what

In the first paragraphs of his research, the

happened to King Guttorm. There is no mention either of

anonymous historian talks of his stay at Súkstad, a village

any city or fortress. There are only clouds over this

in the West region of the country, lost amidst fiords and

episode. Only thing that has some light shed on it is that

glaciers, and of which no knowledge was even guessed.

on 1395 the city of Kenberg, founded by King Kenberg,

He mentions how the villagers gave him a manuscript

had become the capital of the kingdom.

written by an Irish monk in 1400, and how he started to

History says that our country, before the invasion of

read a very different version of the facts concerning the

1380, was a territory in which “barbarous pagans” lived

invasion. What he found out from the manuscript is that

and ruled, and therefore it was “necessary” that the

the troops of Skagerrak landed in this kingdom in 1380

country was incorporated to a more civilized culture which

and even quotes the words of the Irish monk, for he was

in addition had become Christian. Furthermore, what

an eye-witness of the destruction of farms, villages and

validated the “incorporation” of this territory with the

massacres the invaders performed. The monk says that

kingdom of Skagerrak, was the marriage between King

the main goal of the “Bearded” was to take control over

Kenberg and a native noble woman, whose name is

the territory, justifying their actions in the native‟s

Kristin. With this sort of arguments the invasion was

paganism and their supposed cultural primitivism. With

justified and it is the blanks and contradictions of this

that purpose in mind, they reached the Murel forest (the forest next to Lumna has the same name, by the way).

Amidst the wood there was the fortress of the kings of

Despite all these things, the copy of this document has

old, the Ottargard castle, surrounded by the capital city of

been transmitted for generations as a secret, without

the kingdom, Súkstad. And once they reached the castle,

being confirmed or rejected at all. Scholars keep asking

there is record of a bloody and terrible massacre, from

themselves if what the historian found is truth or not, but

which the invaders rescued the current queen, after

none of them has been able to prove it. The reason why

murdering

supposedly

Olsen decided to give the document to me is something I

abdicated). The name of this queen was Ridstun. So far,

haven‟t dared to ask him, since the passing of it has been

this is what the historian could find out in the manuscript

always made to the chosen ones. Now I remember the

of the monk. Now, my question is: Did that monk say the

day he gave it to me; he stared at me soundly and asked

truth?

me: Would you dare, Jan Markus? Would you go and see

King

Guttorm

(who

had

As it was expected, the professors in the University

if this is true?

doubted of the words of their colleague after reading his

Above all the things I‟ve mentioned as worthy of interest

text, in the 19th century. And he must have felt like that

and questioning, what really caught my attention when

man who, in the Platonic allegory of good and truth,

reading the document was that the historian says that the

comes out of the cave in which he has only seen

society he found at Súkstad was “amazingly primitive”, in

shadows and goes back to tell the others what he has

the fashion of the moyen âge.

seen. If someone thinks the others believed him, he is wrong.

So, this is what started to obsess my mind, awaking motivations and fears. From the beginning I

After receiving the copy, Gunnar Olsen told me that the

knew the risks of accepting this task. But even when I

polemical text was forgotten until it was found again in the

knew that it was like entering a cave without a single light,

first decades of the 20th century. Once it was found,

I took the risk. Though, when the moment of packing my

scholars made the same questions: How come this

things and leave approached, I hesitated. Fears and

historian contradicts Official History? But I would have

doubts blinded me for days, and I even thought of

asked them: Is it not that you seek truth above all and

abandoning this project. And in those moments, three

that you doubt of what it has been told to you?

persons were there to support me: my father and my

professors Gunnar Olsen and Anne-Grethe Halvorsen.

took them as deities. Above all, what I felt was the hunger

Without them, I wouldn‟t be here.

of adventure. But once I arrived to Lumna, I realized the

Once I decided to face the darkness of this cave, I

real difficulty of what it really meant to be an

traced the itinerary guided by the words of the

anthropologist: a mixture of a stranger, a victim and an

anonymous historian:

individual in white that looks through a microscope,

“Two days distance in car [carriage] from Lumna to

apparently detached. Also, that thing of being friendly and

Northeast, and a day distance Southwest from Hréober,

sociable was the most difficult thing, even when in the

the village of Súkstad rises in the valley of the Murel. The

safety of the classroom seemed to be so easy, as if

wooden walls of the village can be seen from the

people were not people. The first impressions were

mountains…”

enough to sadden my spirits. I asked myself, sunk in

A couple of weeks ago I sent a telegram to my father

desperation: Did I travel from my city for days, passing

and Olsen from The Port, letting them know I was about

the tunnels of the Jostedal mountains, to reach this place

to take the train to Lumna. And once I reached Lumna I

following the mists drawn by a mysterious historian? It

asked myself: what will happen when I pronounce

was theory against practice. I was so afraid of being

between these rustic villagers the word Súkstad? I

rejected by the villagers. When walking by the streets in

confess I was scared to death.

the hills, people stared at me with both curiosity and

When being at the University, I heard incessantly

hostility. I was a stranger, an intruder; my physical

the qualities the anthropologist must develop in order to

features are so different from theirs. For days I wondered

introduce in the “primitive” communities. The main quality

how I was going to start asking them about my real

was a high ability to interact with people and learn their

interest. That was my first obstacle and the second one

culture and language; his character must be sociable,

was the language, since most of the villagers in Lumna

friendly and very smart. It seemed so obvious and easy,

speak an antique form of our language.

since the day for trying that for ourselves was so far

I did not know how to solve these problems, until I

away. The diaries of the ethnologists and anthropologists

remembered something that, under other circumstances,

I read seemed a novel: their difficulties, their triumphs,

would have been obvious. I mean that before beginning

how sometimes the natives were hostile towards them or

the on campus research, the anthropologist must have

the first notions of the culture of study. So, I discovered

of my words and phrases in the contact with the native

that the only way in which I could begin to approach to

speakers (books and grammars are awful to learn a

them was lying about myself. The anthropologist must

language but are a good start point at some level), and I

never reveal his real intentions. So, I changed my name, I

became prepared to leave for Súkstad, my final

pretended I was lost and orphaned and once they

destination. But then, once I started to be confident with

accepted me (or felt pity) I attentively listened to the way

some of the villagers (that in no way was easy) my new

they talked. That was how I could start to get closer to

question was: How will I start to get information about

them. I laughed when they laughed and I incorporated

Súkstad among this people? Who is going to talk to me

more words of their language in my vocabulary. In those

about this place? In what moment I can mention about it?

moments I used to think that if it was so hard for me, a

I lied all the time about my intentions, but I told

young man of 23 years old, it would be even more difficult

them what I had read in the historian‟s text without

for my female colleagues, since patriarchy is still

mentioning at all the University and my city. Because

dominating these societies.

what I was really interested in was whether Súkstad still

with

The matter of language was crucial. I had begun

existed or not. And once I dared to pronounce the name

basic lesions of

to them, to my utter surprise they told me that the village

the

language,

since

every

anthropologist (and mainly one under the rule of Lévi-

is still on foot… and that it is inhabited.

Strauss‟ structuralism as I was) is also a linguist, and one should arrive on site with some knowledge of the language of the community to study. I rearranged some

To be continued in the next issue.

iLUMINAtIONs

The Initiation From the biography of Fernando Pessoa, by João Gaspar Simões:

Literature Snapshots

By Alonso Zamora Translation from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado

About “Illuminations” Some of us have gazed in the night of our earthly prison at the burning light of something that is not life. This is what is pursued here. The purpose of this section is to present illuminating snapshots about literature. Commentary will be inexistent or brief. We do not want to interpose between mind and light. We do not pursue the material light but that light Coleridge referred to when he said “As light to the eye, even such is beauty to the mind.”

Here we present our votive offering to that light.

Doctor Jaime Neves, the poet’s cousin, who had seen him recently, forbid him from drinking: one more cup of liquor and it’d be over. The poet said, serenely, like someone truly convinced of the nonexistence of death: “Novice, there is no such thing as death.”

And he kept on drinking.

"Em flagrante delitro". A picture of Fernando Pessoa in the Bodega Abel Pereira da Fonseca, sent by the poet to Ophelia Queiroz in 1929.

She says one word: “Ridge” and you look at it floating there alone though it’s vanished now, has returned again into the mind’s dark dictionary and

Has she gone mad? What sentence did it leave

silence that takes back

behind it or fly

this room and your ear.

to join, what work gang

But her saying it still quivers, the flower

or purgatory of words? Who are its

on the stalk of your

wife and its brother

memory of her

words, its family of

speaking. You’re a stem

a moment, its place,

connecting her “Ridge”

its generation,

to the endless root

its village of words

of the word buried

to give it a life,

in language, its loam quaking on a core of metal on fire.

Why that one word here?

to come before it, last after, and be grandparents to it, graveyard and church bells, and at last ghost town?

They never appeared.

It rose alone and its “rrr” and its “dge” were the mud on stone of the ridges of her native town and its “id” was the light of the sun rising or setting out from the long forested heights.

You chose the right path in life though as it assures you it abashes you with dominating beauty at each bend— for instance these lines of Neruda you desire the way at eleven you desire a girl: to write just one verse like them, to know the fruitful softness, the whispering of shadows

You two are orphaned, alone, and in guarding you

in light-sprinkled entrances, the female

through forests and the pillared eyes and arms of men

strangeness of their male force. Neruda:

he reaches his own manhood while remaining

as his century passed and the astonishment

the adolescent of many promises, the slender

surrounding him subsided, in you it grew, it grows: as the dead fall away, nothing happens except the living is laid bare

alpha point of unhewn roads. You can feel the feminine abundance and the feminine void grow alert to him, his new power—can feel

more living. You look up from his book

the rising of their hunger,

and are more in the world more world,

their devouring and their tenderness

and you look up from the world and go back to his book as another earth, another early home and childhood. He shelters you even though he overshadows you, not like a giant or a father but an older brother, still a child himself.

as they watch him pass and engulf him, their necessity, their compassion— all the things that to a woman love is, so different from you own love and so dark that you have to long and long endlessly to penetrate it.

My poems, as a making real of my thought you can’t claim to be a record with lacunae, a whole music with holes and tears of silence.

You’re only, in a sea, some islands, huge swelling sea, sporadic islands, not even an archipelago—each isolate fleck a prison world of beauty and hopelessness that we can walk across in a single hour, see across in one glance, despairing remnant of a drowned world, universe of nostalgia in a nutshell, in the god’s temple the carven image of a city never built, then covered by the waters.

David Damrosch and Gayatri Spivak “Comparative Literature/World Literature”

The Master of Go. Yasunari Kawabata This work by the great Japanese novelist is about a Go tournament (a game that resembles chess) that was played in 1938, sponsored by the Nichinichi Diary, of which Kawabata was correspondent, and which was the farewell of a Master of the tradition facing a champion of the new generations. The novel throbs with details that characterize the exquisiteness of Japanese literature since the Genji Monogatari or The Tales of Ise, like the colour of the rain, the particular shape of a cloud, the

One of the activities within the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) in Vancouver, Canada, was the plenary session between David Damrosh (Harvard University) and Gayatri Spivak, in which they dialogued about comparative literature and world literature. They both agreed and questioned the imperialistic methods of comparative literature, since a hegemonic perspective against the Other prevails, while they also criticized critical approaches such as “postcolonial studies”, established within the dichotomy colonizer-colonized in countries occupied by the English. Damrosch suggested widening the amount of languages of study in order not to always depend of translations, since they are an indirect version of the original

blooming of trees. As the death of the Master draws near, the

text. At this point, he referred his difficulty of studying náhuatl at the United States, and

narrator (Kawabata‟s autobiographical fiction) recalls having

how that brought him to Mexico, where he met Miguel León-Portilla. What Damrosch

seen on his face a large brow, the apparent augur of a long life.

states stimulates the argument that indigenous literatures‟ criticism must yield: studying

The encounter of the two players before the Go board turns out

the texts in the original language instead of always using the Spanish translation.

to be overwhelming for them, for the spectators, for the reader.

Spivak, on the other hand, with the complexity (or unintelligibility) that characterizes

At times, the game seems to be endless: the Master is very ill

her, spoke of the necessary suspension of identity when dealing with the study of world

and Otake, his rival, often stands up to go to the bathroom

literature and questioned the concept of “global village” standing from the paradigms of

between turns. Both get ill and Kawabata questions the way the

domination from which literature is still studied. And she pointed out for the European

art of playing Go has been degraded to a mere media

context (from her solid Western education), that even the more well-known figures such

competition. As the narration of the game goes on, the reader

as Beethoven and Rembrandt (each of them according to their system of

finds the diagrams of the Go board and the way the stones

representation) are susceptible to be universalizable but not universal. What worries us

move: White for the Master and black for Otake; this is an interesting inclusion, for it also implies a graphic reading. In short, the game (and the novel) is the transition between tradition, respectful to a certain extent of the rituals, of time and what is modern and “sporty”, where the only important thing is winning.

is that the perspective from which both scholars criticized all these issues does not cease to be a hegemonic one, for they used the terms of “North America” as a synonym of only Canada and US, while they were looking for an attempt of “recognizing” those other zones of world literature. And even when we confess our admiration towards Spivak, the colonialism from which she speaks is the one that England had over India; it is evident that it cannot be in a different way, but it is clear that for this case Latin America is absent. Thus, we cannot talk of “postcolonial studies”

César Abril Translated from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado

in Latin America. Summing up, this was a complex conference whose statements keep on raising questions.

Text and translation by Georgina Mexía-Amador

Medieval Fashion at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York From May 20th to September 4th, 2011, this museum presents the exhibition “Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and

Benjamin Bagby

the Netherlands.”

Beowulf

Making use of miniatures and the recreation of

medieval garments, the exhibition aims to illustrate the changes in fashion during the two hundred years before the Renaissance and explore the historic and social factors that led to such transformations, as well as illustrating the symbolisms behind the garments considering the colours and the context in which they were used. The exhibition is available online, with a virtual tour in which every manuscript is digitalized; thanks to this, visitors can get near with the zoom tool to see the miniatures and the rich details not only of the clothes, but of the entire visual whole that comprises images and calligraphy. Each manuscript is accompanied by a card that contains details about its history and the images there represented, as well as historical and social notes about the garments. For those who are curious about manuscripts and medieval art in general, the possibility of this online tour will be an “illuminating” experience.

Benjamin Bagby (Illinois, USA), interpreter and co-founder of medieval music ensemble Sequentia, presents in this website his project of interpreting Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf accompanied by an harp, just as the Germanic and Northern European bards did during the Middle Ages. One of the more studied aspects of Beowulf is its oral origin, which is evident in the rhetorical formulae, epithets, formal structure and the inclusion of stories within the main story shared by Germanic cultural context.

Wishing to portray this aspect of Beowulf, Bagby presented his epic performance in 2006 and his presentation in Helsingborg, Sweden, was released in DVD. The website includes information about Beowulf, the planning of the project, gallery of images, links to articles and a short video in which Bagby‟s performance can be watched. His style of singing and playing the harp will

The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, NY

undoubtedly resemble the work he did with some of the poems belonging to the Edda (Sequentia, Edda. Myths from Medieval

On-line exhibition: •http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/IlluminatingFashion/ César Abril Translated from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado

Iceland, 1999), since the harsh and cold beauty of the medieval harp accompanies the enchanting words in this distant and forgotten language. For those who wish to penetrate the most seductive and dark hidden places of Medieval England Bagby‟s project will become a great discovery.

•http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/index.html Text and translation by Georgina Mexía-Amador

Mercurio de las voces y el deseo Literary Magazine

Niwemang (Half Moon) (Iran-Austria-France-Iraq, 2006. Dir. Bahman Ghobadi) Shut away from the rest of society, 1334 women inhabit a village in the wild mountains of Iran because they broke one of their prohibitions: singing. Defying the omen of his death and the rules, even after Saddam Hussein fell, the old musician Mamo decides to travel with his sons to the Iraqi Kurdistan to give a concert and revitalize the music that was forbidden during the dictatorship. But the orchestra he directs with his sons has a special member: a woman, Heshow, who they have to hide from the military posts. Women cannot sing, and even less in

This is an independent, three monthly magazine whose first

public. However, Mamo persists in attaining his last wish… for he has already

issue was released in November 2009. It had its origin in the

foretold his death. One night, Heshow abandons them and leaves a piece of paper

minds of a group of Hispanic literature students of the San Luis

with tree written words; one of them is “Niwemang.” Mamo has been assaulted

Potosi Autonomous University, México. In four issues (the last

during the trip by different visions: one of them is the half moon seen from his

one released in February, 2011), they have compiled the

tomb, and the other, a woman dragging his own coffin through the snow. Mamo

literary production of young creators and consolidated figures

falls ill and when he is about to go back to Iran, a beautiful woman appears out of

from different parts of the country. Poems, narrations and

nowhere in front of him and his sons, who offers to be the substitute singer. Her

essays dialogue between them in an impeccable and simple

name: Niwemang. By the Kurdish-Iranian director, Bahman Ghobadi, this film is a

edition, with an eye-catching cover and pages including graphic

formidable fusion of Kurdish music (such as the majestic pieces “Lay Lahen” and

works according to the topic of each number. Fertile pages that

“Vernal Presence” by Hossein Alizadeh), of the supernatural and of comedy,

have nothing to do with the barren environment of the city in

masterfully embodied in the character of Kako. But the film also denounces the

which this magazine is produced; leafing through it is worth a

non-recognition of the Kurdish independence and the censure of art. Niwemang

try: it is an oasis in the desert.

was filmed to celebrate the 250 anniversary of Mozart‟s birth, and is mainly spoken in Kurdish.

Founders: Lilia Ávalos, Yael González, Alejandro Lárraga, Nelly Gutiérrez y Juan José José Rodríguez García, whose poem “From the Abyss” is included in this number.

Printed format.

Contributions: mercurioliteraria.vyd@gmail.com César Abril Translated from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado

Georgina Mexía-Amador Translated from Spanish by Fabiola Mercado

CONTRIBUTORS

Paulina Bermúdez. She‟s currently a student of the BA in Development and Intercultural Administration at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “I love poetry because either being lonely or not it opens its doors to me. I feel serious about what I do and I think I do better each time. I struggle during life with those closing seasons, with people that just leave without a farewell; betrayal; abandonment; solitude that becomes tears and bitterness… But there is one thing that will never leave me and that will always take me with it: writing.”

Francisco Bulnes (Mexico, 1847-1924). Mexican writer and polititian who, during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, took part in the group known as “The Scientists”. In his literary works he devoted to demystify great figures of Mexican history, such as Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz. He used to entitle his Works as “The truth about…” or “The big lies about…” He was one of the first Mexicans who travelled to the Far East, since he was a member of the commission that travelled to Japan and Europe; in his trip, we visited Sri Lanka and other Asian countries. He also wrote theater and won a National Award for that.

Isol (Buenos Aires, 1972). Illustrator and sometimes also a writer of her books. She has published more than 20 books in different countries. Her speciality is narrating through the dialogue between images and text. Her work has been internationally renowned and has been won the Golden Apple Award in 2003, and has been finalist in the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 and 2007, being selected as one of the five best illustrators of children‟s books in the world. http://www.isol-isol.com.ar / http://isolisol.blogspot.com Walter Keller-Kirchhof (Alemania, 1951). Currently holding the post of Senior Advisor in the Performance Improvement Project in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The project is being financed jointly by the German and the Australian Government and works to improve public service delivery through a number of activities. He has been engaged mainly in Asian countries before moving to Sri Lanka and they include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Timor Leste. Between 1985 and 2003 he worked as a journalist and photographer.

Rafael Mondragón (Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico, 1983). Scholar at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the UNAM. He has published in Mexican literary magazines such as Acequias, Alforja, Periódico de poesía and Tierra Adentro. His published books are Los mejores poemas mexicanos, de 2005, Espacio en disidencia and Anuario de poesía mexicana 2007.

Albert F. Moritz. His book The Sentinel (2008). received the annual $75,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, the most prestigious award for a single poetry volume in the English-speaking world. In 1993, a volume of his poems in Spanish translations by Gilberto Meza, Ciudad interior, was published by the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas press. He was an invited poet at the Fourth Poetry Festival: Languages of the Americas: Carlos Montemayor, in October 2010 at UNAM. He currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

Juan José Rodríguez García. He was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, in April 14th, 1988. He currently studies the last year of the BA in Hispano American Literatures at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí. He is editorial director of the independent literary magazine Mercurio de las Voces y el Deseo. He loves the desert and the rainy days, loves reading and considers himself and emergent writer. If he had to choose a place to live it would be the wuthering heights: yes, he is a chronic romantic.

Julio Ruelas. (1870-1907). Painter and engraver from Zacatecas, Mexico. His best known works are the illustrations he made for the literary magazines Revista Moderna and Revista Moderna de México. His style includes macabre characters such as satyrs, corpses, skeletons, Scorpio-women, Salomes. Because of his th style he is considered a representative of the Decadent movement, at the end of the 19 century. He studied at the Karsruhe Academy in Germany, and died in Paris. He is buried at the Montparnasse graveyard.

Wildernain Villegas Carrillo (Peto, Yucatán, Mexico, 1981). He has a BA in secondary education, and a specialization in telesecondary. He has got scholarships from FONCA and the Cultural Institute of Quintana Roo, Mexico. He won in 2005 the Award for Indigenous Youth and, in 2008, he obtained the Nezahualcóyotl Award for Indigenous Languages. He has translated poems into Maya language and his texts have been published in regional and national magazines. His goal is to share with the new generations Maya culture through literature.

Jan Markus Amundsen (Osberg, 1976). Anthropologist and Linguist, he studied at the University of Bergen, Norway. His thesis was about the historical discourse within a “primitive” village in Western Norway. He is a graduate student in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures. He has published essays on medieval literature in publications in Norway and Iceland. This is his first incursion in the Latin American context.

Carlos Ascencio (Mexico City, 1986). He is currently studying a BA in Ethnomusicology at the National School of Music of the UNAM. He is currently working as contributor of the radio broadcast Mercado Negro, which plays Latin American indie music in the broadcasting station Ibero 90.9, and was nominated as radio broadcast program of the year in the last edition of the Indie-O Music Awards. He has also taken part as editorial assistant in the Indie Rocks! magazine. He won the 2nd place in the 1st Universitary Broadcasting Station Contest of Radio UNAM, in the category of musical broadcast.

Carlos Sandoval (Mexico City, 1986). Emergent artist. He is studying a BA in History of Art at the Casa Lamm Cultural Center. He has taken part in individual and collective exhibitions. He has colaborated in the organization of exhibitions at different museums. His works appear in the catalogue Casa Lamm y sus Artistas (Lamm's House and its Artists) by Galería Casa Lamm and in the Diccionario de Artistas Emergentes Ars-tesauro (Ars-tesauro Dictionary of Emergent Artists). He currently coordinates a series of installations at the Balmori Building, in the Colonia Roma, in Mexico City.

Marisol Vázquez (Mexico City, 1979). She studied a BA in Pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the UNAM. She has a Masters in Educational Informatics by the Universidad del Desarrollo Empresarial y Pedagógico (UNIVDEP). She has labored in the fields of Human Resources, Museopedagogy, Special Education, Vocational Orientation, Educative Software, Books for Youths and Children and Cultural Administration. She currently directs Arte con Letra.

Alonso Zamora Corona (Mexico City, 1985). He has a BA in Hispanic Literature at the UNAM. He won the José Emilio Pacheco Poetry Award, in 2006, by the Universidad Veracruzana. His thesis dissertation dealt with the infinite in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Georg Cantor and Jorge Luis Borges. He currently studies Masters on Mesoamerican Studies, with a thesis on the relation between Venus and sacrifice in the mythology of the wirrárika (huicholes).

Georgina Mexía-Amador (Mexico City, 1985). She abandoned a not very promising career as pianist in order to devote to Literature. She studied English Literature at UNAM and her dissertation won the First Colin White Award. She studied Norwegian Literature at the University of Oslo. She worked as editorial assistant at Fondo de Cultura Económica, where she got acquainted with the works of Isol. She has read papers in literary conferences in Mexico, USA, Canada and Brazil, as well as her own literary works. She currently studies a Masters in Literature at UNAM, in addition to reading, writing and beginning the direction of this magazine.

Créditos de las ilustraciones p. 3: Madero and Palma streets, Mexico City’s Downtown. Image taken from the book Cine y sociedad en México. Vivir de sueños. Vol. I 1896-1920 by Aurelio de los Reyes (we could not locate date nor author of the picture since our source does not specify them either). Mexico: UNAM, 1996; p. 60. p. 4: Light regulator amidst the ruins of Relox building. Insurgentes South Avenue, Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2006. p. 8: Collage made of Mexican literary magazines: Cover from Revista Moderna Portada de la Revista Moderna, México, 1.ª quincena de junio de 1903, año VI, n.º 11. Carátula y «Máscara de Amado Nervo» por Julio Ruelas.

Taken from Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes’ website: http://bib.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/lopezvelarde/graf/fotos/contextoc/100_s.jpg Cover of the second Revista Azul, México, marzo de 1907, tomo VI. Taken from Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes’ website: http://bib.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/lopezvelarde/pcuartonivel.jsp?conten=imagenes&pagina=imagenes16.jsp&fqstr=1&qPagina=0&qImagen=3 Cuadernos del unicornio. Image taken from: http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/8685272 Tierra adentro. Cover taken from: http://www.conaculta.gob.mx/tierra/images_cont/revista/047_060/revista_047.htm El corno emplumado. Cover taken from: http://lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com/ La palabra florida. Cover taken from: http://www.nacionmulticultural.unam.mx/eliac/produccion/02palabra.html Nuni. Cover taken from: http://www.excentricaonline.com/libros/wp-revistas-single.php?id=244_0_6_0_M El Hijo Pródigo. Cover taken from: http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar/jm/img?s=MLA&f=96766344_2688.jpg&v=E

p. 8: Detail of light regulator between the ruins of the Cine Continental, Coyoacán Av. Corner with Eje 4 Xola, Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2011. p. 15: Landscape in a rural road from San Antonio Rayón to Tecuantepec, Veracruz, Mexico. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2007. p. 20: Poster on one of the walls of the ruins of the Cine Continental, Coyoacán Av. Corner with Eje 4 Xola, Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2011. p. 25: Illustration for a postcard of the Fondo de Cultura Económica in Spain, on ocassion of the Festival “Viva América”. Isol, Leer es descubrir. Vengo del Nuevo Mundo (no date). p. 27-34: Images belonging to the works of Isol were taken with her permission from her website: www.isol-isol.com.ar p. 46: Sticker on a light regulator between the ruins of the Cine Continental, Coyoacán Av. Corner with Eje 4 Xola, Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2011. p. 49: Scenic trolley “La otra nave”, México Park, Sonora Av., Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2006. p. 51: Window from a Buddhist temple in Vientiane, Laos. Minh Hien Nguyen Thi, 2008. pp. 52, 53, 55, 58: Illustrations by Julio Ruelas were taken from: Carlos Monsiváis, Antonio Saborit and Teresa del Conde, El viajero lúgubre. Julio Ruelas modernista, 1870-1907, México, RM-Museo Nacional de Arte-Patronato del Museo Nacional de Arte, 2007, pp. 40, 100, 106, 101, 76. p. 80: Church at Sogndal, Norway. (Original image in color). Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2002. p. 87: Windows of a building standing in the corner of Insurgentes Av. Corner and Universidad Av., Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2006. p. 92: Gayatri Spivak picture taken from: http://fctworld.org/bpc-third_balvant_parekh_distinguished%20lecture-gayathri.htm p. 93: a) On-line exhibition “Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands” with the image of the Roman de la Rose manuscript. Taken from: http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/IlluminatingFashion/manuscript.asp?page=4 p. 93: b) Home page of “Benjamin Bagby’s Beowulf” website: http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/index.html p. 94: a) Cover of the 4th issue of Mercurio de las voces y el deseo, February 2011. p. 94: b) Image of the film Niwemang taken from: http://www.pozorcompany.com/half_moon_polumesec.html p. 95: Building in ruins in Insurgentes Av., between Sonora and Querétaro streets, Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2006. p. 98: “Del Valle” barbershop. Moras st., between Parroquia and Félix Cuevas, Mexico City. Georgina Mexía-Amador, 2011.

lapeluqueriademicolo.com Facebook: La peluquería de Micoló/Micolo’s Barbershop