Catártica: September '21

Septiembre 2021

No. 2

Vol. 9

Catártica is a space to talk about art outside the official discourse, the one that escapes from definitions, and at the same time a place for fiction, essays and poetry to wander around naked, putting the writer and the public in confrontation

Marcela Armas (2008) I-Machinarius Industrial chain and gears, 1/2 HP motor AC, lubricating system, crude oil, and steel tank.

Considering September is Mexico’s patriotic month, the cover of Catártica retakes the critical vision of the Mexican artist Marcela Armas towards her country. The work I-Machinarius was exhibited for the first time at the Alameda Art Laboratory in Mexico City in 2008, as part of an artistic workshop that addressed, among other things, the legislative problems surrounding the country's energy resources. Following this theme, the artwork questions national sovereignty and Mexico's energy dependence within the global context, in the artist's words: "The meaning of this machine arises from the idea that defines it as a conduit for intensifying energy flow, involving the extraction and waste of resources. Its functionality is a stark contrast with the field of the social imaginary, seriously disrupted by the entrenched idea of insecurity, incapacity, and failure.”

The piece, which takes up Mexico’s "inverted" geopolitical outline, is an industrial machine that functions from a lubrication system that provides a flow of crude liquid oil to each gear in the system. The movement and flow are intermittent so that all the energy and oil eventually overflow, incessantly, to the north. The machine represents a symbolic wound, in it we can see Mexico’s body, its political figure, its people, its decadence, its spirit to go on, to work tirelessly, and finally, to waste its energy, as we say in Mexico, a lo wey.

Armas, M. (2014), I-Machinarius, https://www.marcelaarmas.net/

Antonella G.C.

Celestials Celestials

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Actors Actors and and Vessels Vessels

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Ambulantes

El Séptimo Arte

When When itit rains rains in in September September

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Historical Historical Centers Centers

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Noche Derroche Nochera

Ambulantes

Q Q

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Nude Nude in in the the mirror mirror

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Ambulantes

Arts 404

The Reinvention of Love Crónicas de Marte

Paulina Uranga Ambulantes

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Not everything is...

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Brief Curricular Semblance

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Ambulantes

Ambulantes

Golden Scars

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Catalogarte

Motel Crónicas de Marte

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CELESTIALS CELESTIALS Moons.

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We cannot hide from bodies and the mystery they bring us. There are bodies that give us comfort or distress by looking at them just one time.

Bodies that calm us and are by our side at any given moment without us thinking about it. There are many definitions and approaches of what a body is and what constitutes it. Taking it as a concept, as something that changes according the way we look at it is one of the reasons we limit ourselves and don’t comprehend or can’t connect with what is around us.

There are two types of bodies that amaze us and constitute our lives, that have inspire the most greatest artists, that are an inherent part of our culture, that have intrigue all sciences and have dazzle us for centuries, being revered, abhorred, punished and considered the most precious existing thing. The human and celestial bodies.

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But let’s not talk about the human bodies yet, those which are the first thing that comes to our minds when we hear the word bodies. Let’s talk about those bodies that are far, incredible and immensely far from us, but yet still close, like they are next to us. Let’s talk about bodies that form part of the denomination of the one that gives us home. Let’s talk about the celestial bodies. They attract us, they call us. Maybe they are what intrigues us more as humanity and one of the first things that fascinates us when we are kids. We look at the starry night and we overwhelm ourselves, we smile at the Moon that seems visible even in the cloudiest nights, we close us eyes at the Sun and we let us get hug by it during the cold days, in which we appreciate the warm it irradiates more than anything. We look the cosmos and get overwhelmed by its immensity, but we took the celestial bodies and we classify them as objects, categorizing, making them part of a group, taking their singularity and uniqueness of every one of them.

Every celestial body is unique, a white dwarf is not the same as an asteroid even when its components and elements can be the same. They differ in shape, size, energy, but these differences bring them the singular beauty that they possess“Some would say, “The Moon cannot be heard.” Alas, honestly, it cannot be heard. Yet something in its centre may enlighten its listeners. Therefore, the Moon can be listened to.” (Wáng Zhēnyí, as cited in Aderin-Pocock, 2019) The human bodies are not so different to the celestial ones, they are unique amount them, there isn’t a human body the same as another in the same way there aren’t celestial bodies equal to each other, there are not identical in the whole universe and there will never be. Human bodies are different between themselves, they are unique, they are celestial.

“We are made of star stuff and are part of a magnificent creation.”

(Shapley, 1929) We are the sons of the stars, those who thousands of years ago created the elements that made us and made the universe as we know.

We amaze ourselves with the beauty of the lunar craters, with Saturn’s rings, the eccentric orbit and the apparent lack of shape of the nebulas, but we feel ashamed of our scars, of our wrinkles and our lack of waist. We see the space body as something unique, something unreal because of its beauty, when infront of us we can find that same beautifulness in all its glory.

We are so similar and different to the point our bodies seem to be eternal, that appear to stop consuming themselves and perish. Bodies so different that bring beauty in a infinite diversity, so infinite as our universe.

Aderin-Pocock, M. (2019). The Book of the Moon: A Guide to Our Closest Neighbor (1st ed.). Harry N. Abrams.

Shapley, H. Gordon Garbedian, H. (1929). THE STAR STUFF THAT IS MAN; Out of the Surveys of the Far-flung Universe, Science Presents a New Vision of the Cosmos in Which We Are Pictured as Part of a Magnificent Creation, Startling in Its Gigantic Expanses. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1929/08/11/archives/the-star-stuff-that-is-man-out-of-the-surveys-of-the-farflung.html

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Ernesto Ocaña

The bodies inhabited by film characters reflect the necessary immediacy of the medium, always lacking in time and shy with words. Cinema requires efficiency in transmitting information to the viewer, a lifetime of consuming entertainment media has encoded a common language in our minds that allows cinema to present expectations that quickly establish ideas and possibilities. Midsommar (2019) for example, plays with the contrast of the tender expectations of its color palette and the tense brutality of its plot; that dissonance makes it very effective in causing a feeling of uncertainty that is difficult to pinpoint. The Addams Family (1991) does something similar, only, on the other side of the spectrum; it’s a comedy that suggests some sort of sorrow or darkness that it simply does not have, it’s full of gentle, ridiculous violence.

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I find The Fifth Element (1997) to be quite similar; Leeloo is an intrinsically dissonant character, she is a sexualized woman whose psychological component feels tremendously childish, sometimes even animal-like, like that of a pet.

However, unlike Midsommar, this dissonance does not exist to play up our expectations. The mature appearance of the character is there only to indicate that it’s ok to sexualize them, regardless of the childlike content of their psyche.

Leeloo learns to speak English in just a few days, but despite being supposedly a divine and supremely capable being, she never quite learns to speak as an adult, because the film has a priority in keeping Leeloo infantilized. Dallas, the protagonist, acts both as father and lover, even as a sort of owner or master at times. There is a strong emphasis on the inequality that allows for this gauche eroticism. The plot does not exist to tell a story, it is only a convoluted way to justify the creation of an impossible character, the fetish of a sexualized adult body inhabited by a childlike, innocent mind. This serves to establish that the content of a character’s personality and the interactions they have with their context do not matter, as long as they are the appropriate vessel, everything is justified.

Léon, the Professional (1994) does something akin to that trope too; Mathilda is a precocious girl, impossibly intelligent and bold, inexperienced but overtly sexual and terribly violent. She is the one who romantically pursues Léon, even though

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a he is a grown man, something which simply does not happen in reality. The relationship between these two characters also inhabits an indefinite spot between a parental and a sexual relationship.

Mathilda, like Leeloo is a mixture between a Lolita archetype and a Femme Fatale. Shockingly, both films are directed by Luc Besson, a real-life Humbert Humbert who likes to indulge his fetishes with an added pinch of action, drugs, and guns.

Starting to notice what should be these blatant dissonances is initially unpleasant, suddenly going to the movies ends up being annoying instead of serving as a diversion. But immediately after, these hidden dissonances make cinema much more interesting, film stops creating fictional stories in order to actually deconstruct cultural contexts. This is the tortuous reality of cognition, everything is fallible, imperfect, but also interesting. Although the physical immediacy of the characters is a direct result of the language of cinema, it’s clear that there are other factors that have led to these excesses, such as our sexist, socially neoliberal environment.

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Characters in conventional cinema have become a body first and foremost, and substance only after that. Luc Besson is a good example of this problem, but he is not the cause. He has continued to make movies during all these years, including many of the same thematic elements. The public just doesn't realize any of this. This hybrid trope between child and sex object aligns perfectly with the patriarchal values ​that still dominate both the film industry and more importantly, our society, but it is not the only archetype that inhabits this culture of appearance.

Perhaps the fetishism of infantilized femininity has decreased in these last two decades, although I would say that it has simply turned into a phenomenon that is better hidden and whose insidious influence is more difficult to identify. On the other hand, our superheroes and protagonists have only become more and more inevitably attractive. The ultra-masculine, muscular and violent stars of the 1980s and 1990s would not survive in today's film industry if it weren't for nostalgia, they aren’t pretty enough. The immediate appearance of the actors is more important than ever. Actors are aesthetic vessels first, before creative individuals or performers. The characters justify themselves through their appearance because it’s more immediate and effective than doing it through their personality. Cinema is an aesthetic medium first and not really visual, it only conveys sensations rather than exploring themes.

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But this obsession with appearance before substance is not endemic to cinema, of course. If anything, I would say that cinema has had a steady increase in quality in the last twenty years, at least technically, clearly this obsession with appearance has not done much to destroy cinema as an industry or form of entertainment. But cinema is not only a consumer product, it is not only its quality that matters, but also its sociocultural influence. The hegemony of patriarchy and capitalism exists because each of the cultural systems of our society feed into each other all these hierarchical values. I want more ethical films, not necessarily more entertaining, I want more humane and honest films..

The Addams Family is a very interesting film, outside of the dissonance between the plot and the immediate visual experience, its main characters are imperfect, quite grotesque, and strangely warm; negligently violent, but never cruel, and monstrously human. Comedy tends to allow itself more imperfect circumstances, and therefore feels more real and relatable, with even more human and consistent bodies. Perhaps comedy as a genre is a good place to start breaking down all these vessels and making this dissonance more noticeable to all and every otherness.

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Uranga, Paulina, (2021) Dirty Games. [Fotografía].

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When it rains in september

The mornings are not so different from the nights,

And the sand blends with the shine of the golden skins,

The sea touches the sky so much that fills the world

I hope the world will soon fill in peace

When it rains in september

Yellow butterflies perch on taciturn necks

And the fingers of my troubadour friends twist, Tisk, Tisk.

Risk, Fingertips.

Ancient echoes bounce off the walls

Looking for new directions to make their nests

And if it doesn't rain in September

Maybe the pet stores won't drown

Or maybe the coins won't stop spinning

Imagen recuperada de Pinterest

But always, it always it rains in September.

@alex.doni.ink

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SOME SOME PROBLEMATICS PROBLEMATICS PROPOSE PROPOSE BY BY

HISTORICAL HISTORICAL CENTERS CENTERS

Emma Patricia Zamudio Salas

When we hear about a historic center, we usually visualize an old city with constructions dating back several centuries, government buildings, museums, cathedrals, many tourists, street vendors and shops selling many things.

The notion historic center is a fairly common one to hear, either to refer to a specific part of the city in which we live or in which we are going to vacation. So it might be difficult to believe that it is a fairly new notion compared to the places it designates.It appeared in the 1960s in Europe from the convergence in the concerns of history, urban planning and architecture to preserve aspects of the past of cities as part of the identity of the place and of the people who inhabit it.

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There are several antecedents of this notion, being able to trace them back to several centuries ago.

The document that establishes the concerns, bases and measures to be taken with respect to historic centers is the Charter of Venice or Internacional Charter on the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites presented by ICOMOS (International Council of Monuments and Sites), a part of the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1964. For example, in its article 1 it says the following verbatim: The notion of historical monument includes the isolated architectural creation as well as the urban or rural ensemble that bears witness to a particular civilization, a significant evolution, or a historical event. It refers not only to great creations but also to modest works that have acquired cultural significance over time. (ICOMOS, Letter of Venice, 1964)

The rest of the document lists the approaches that need to be given to the restoration, conservation and study of the urban complex that will end up composing the historical center.

From the moment the letter is accepted, all countries associated with UNICEF through the United Nations, have the obligation to implement the exposed measures and approaches. As each city has its own history, specific climatic conditions, economy, culture, history, etc. Each city implements its own strategies to follow for its historic center, over time, some of these urban complexes have been classified as World Heritage

by UNICEF, such as the historic centers of Mexico City, Oaxaca City and the City of Puebla..

The different strategies and approaches for the conservation of historic centers are many, so they will not be explored in this text. However, its positive and negative consequences are visible in the city and the people who inhabit them, so as the title says, I would like to present some of my personal reflections regarding the problems that affect the notion of the historic center.

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First of all, it must be made clear that the historical centers were conceived as a strategy against the abandonment or death of these urban areas that at some point were the economic, political and social center of the cities.

Therefore, the historic center is a strategy to rehabilitate the area where the city began, bur the over time, population growth, the development of new technologies and the emergence of new needs/commodities have led to its eviction.

In a way, the city can be thought of as a body to which we, its inhabitants, give life, making it grow, develop, age and in some cases die.

In a very general way, the problems of the historic center are reduced to a search to reconcile the new with the old. When looking for the best way to intertwine them, some practices have led to:

The restoration of buildings using original materials or modern alternatives respecting the original forms, a detail that can put in check the restorers who can choose to stick to the original or adapt to the current requirements of light, water, space, etc. thus extending the useful life of the building. These restored buildings tend to be use for government agencies, rearrange traditional businesses and in recent years have been occupied by international franchises to attract modern consumers. This last point fits with what the sociologist George Ritzer calls Macdonalization, which in simple terms is the fact that certain brands need to be present everywhere, generating opinions for and against their appearance. This leads to many questions such as: Should historic centers be a time capsule?

Circulation is quite an issue since most of the streets in the historic centers were built when no one would have imagined that there would exist cars, trucks and other means of transportation that we currently use. Not to mention the amount of people who use those streets producing heavy traffic and stagnations.

This problem has existed for centuries and to face it, some buildings and terrains within the center have been adapted as parking lots that can house vehicles, at a cost. Another approach has been to close streets to the circulation of vehicles to turn them into walkways, which directly affects the problem of small streets to circulate and the difficulties in find a place to park. On the other hand, the gases emitted by internal combustion vehicles do not help much to the conservation of buildings.

Who are the people who use the historic centers, because as already expressed above the city grows and people move, causing the number of local people living in the center of a city to decrease.

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Local people who visit the center do so for commercial reasons, like purchase and sale products and services, as well as government procedures. Leaving as occupants of the center mostly tourists, who in fact end up consuming the greatest amount of cultural and historical content that the center offers as part of the activities to do when visiting a city.

The historical centers raise many doubts and endless approaches. As a historian I consider that they have value for society, but only if society connects with them, if not a historic center can be considered dead.

In this text, I did not want to focus on the historical value of the buildings, in a particular historical center or in historical centers that are world heritage sites.

I thought it was better to use this space to give us time to reflect on why the historic centers are there, why they should be preserved, which implies different resolutions to keep a historic center and in a few words, to think about whether they have an impact on our lives or maybe reflect if the one closest to us is dying in the middle of the body of the modern city.

ICOMOS, (1964) Carta internacional sobre la conservación y la restauración de monumentos y sitios (Carta de Venecia 1964), II Congreso Internacional de Arquitectos y Técnicos de Monumentos Históricos, Venecia 1964. https://www.icomos.org/charters/venice_sp.pdf Rodríguez Alomá, Patricia (2008) El centro histórico: del concepto a la acción integral, Centro-h, núm. 1, agosto, 2008, pp. 51-64 https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/1151/115112534005.pdf Chateloin, Felicia (2008) EL CENTRO HISTÓRICO ¿CONCEPTO O CRITERIO EN DESARROLLO? Arquitectura y Urbanismo, vol.

XXIX, núm.

2-3, 2008, pp.

10-23 https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/3768/376839855003.pdf

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Q

Gabriela Aguilar

The morning started with a couple of slow waves that barely dared to touch the shore. The sea, which I know to be strong and willful, seemed calmer than usual. The sun was not yet fully risen. I could even swear that there was fog beginning to surround me, never thick enough to cause me the anguish it has always caused me. The entire beach was deserted and, for some reason, that brought more peace to me. It didn't seem like a special day beyond the pleasure of feeling the sand between my feet. Maybe, at the end of it all, it would be more special for me than it was for you.

Without turning around at any point, I knew when you sat down next to me. I turned my face to look at you for a few seconds and it felt as if I had been waiting for you all my life.

- What is it that you look at with such apathy?

- I have never liked the beach. - A laugh. The kind that has brightened every day I've known you. Almost childish, almost mocking, without any malice. We both looked straight ahead again.

- I thought you loved the beach.

- I'm not close to ever do. - I confessed with a smile to go with yours that, if you know me as well as I know you do, you recognised without a problem in my voice, still looking straight ahead. You turned to look at me again, even when I dared not. I felt, in the warmth of your smile, how the sun took strength through that haze.

- You have a gesture like the one the Caguama makes when she gets angry... Without waiting for an answer, that smile you already had became impossibly wider between a couple of laughs that you tried to contain as you spoke. When she fights with me on the way home.

As I turned my face, your smile made me form one almost as bright as yours was, an unwitting and timely accomplice to those jokes that made you laugh until you ran out of air. Then you stood up. Knowing that I would most likely follow you, you went to the seashore - which now seemed impossibly far away - and let your bare feet meet the sand and the waves that had now come to life. I felt a little shiver run through me when I finally managed to reach you, and your gaze had become strangely shy.

Ilustración de Alessandro Gottardo

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-You look different. - As I looked at the water above my ankles, I felt a little hesitation on my lips. In a strange way you recognised it and, in doing so, continued the conversation. - I think age is starting to get to you.

When I could finally see you again, you looked confused. For a couple of seconds you seemed to fight the instinct to take a step back. I could see it in your eyes as you saw in mine the countless laughs we shared, the times I had cried in secret and the constant dilemmas I found myself in every time you turned me into your confidant. I think that was the only thing that kept you in your place when you saw that same face you thought you knew without a mistake, grow a couple of years older. The unruly hair that you saw a couple of minutes ago, and that you hardly lost sight of during what were your best years, had been tamed at last and had different shades. I sometimes think you stayed in that same place because of my smile, now warmer than the one I had at the beginning of this conversation. More sincere, more like the one that accompanied yours on every occasion.

You touched your face for a couple of seconds, without taking your eyes off me. And I could only shake my head, explaining to you with a look that it wouldn't be the same for you.

-It's you. - I smiled with a nostalgia that at those words. I felt wounded in every fibre of my being and nodded with a lump in my throat. - Who then?

-The only thing that will be left of me, if I ever find you. - You saw in the distance, near the sand and further and further from the sea, the face that had long shared gossip about teachers, the person you were talking to only minutes ago. For some reason you didn't recognise anything in her eyes. For some reason that familiar face was disconnected from you as it seemed to feel you, and yet not see you, approaching the waves.

It took you a while to understand. It was very sudden.

When you turned to look at me again, you did so with a smile, though I felt a little knot in your voice.

-You got older. - You said genuinely, as if you couldn't believe it. - It's a shame.

Before that deja vu of a woman caught up with us, I was able to give you a hug.

A hug that felt as strong coming from you as it did from me. One that allowed me, perhaps, to tell you a minimum of how much I’ve been needing you.

-It's a shame you didn't do it.

I always wanted to meet you.

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Uranga, Paulina, (2021) Géminis. [Fotografía].

NUDE IN THE MIRROR: An introspective text about my modesty and fear.

M.I. Flores Nachón And he said, Hearing your voice in the garden I was full of fear, because I was without clothing: and I kept myself from your eyes.

Genesis 3:10 One of the most difficult experiences I have to endure every morning is seeing myself in the mirror naked. Trying to avoid the scars, marks, cellulite, hairs, pimples, moles, blemishes, that I find everywhere. I have been planted with the idea that my body is not beautiful, that I have to modify it, train it, massage it, whiten it, tan it, lose weight, so that it can be completely liked by my partner.

It's terrible having to put up with the fact that it's not even to my complete liking.

The nude has been one of the most discussed elements in the history of artistic manifestation, from the Venus of Willendorf, to the nude artsy picture that perhaps you sent last night. Considering the existence of the subject from the first images, it is interesting to think about the change of perspective before it. While the numerous Venuses are prized and praised for their naked bodies, the origins of the hairy world are questioned, and the naturally voluptuous busts in photographs are vulgarized and eroticized by the eyes. I would like to curate my favorite nudes in the History of Art with a slight analysis, not of them, but of us.

Quisiera hacer una curaduría de mis desnudos favoritos en la Historia del Arte con un ligero análisis, no de ellos, pero de nosotros. ​And their eyes were open and they were conscious that they had no clothing and they made themselves coats of leaves stitched together.

Genesis 3:7 The Origin of the World (1866) by Gustave Courbet could be considered one of the most scandalous paintings in history, it is part of the collection of works that I maintain as legendary. A vagina, an abdomen, and a breast. Yes, the woman in question has pubic hair, her face cannot be seen and the framing is extremely interesting for the time, in the second half of the 19th century the photography was in full swing and Courbet had already applied a painting with a focus of photography. Why do some find the image so unpleasant? I find it fascinating not only the image, since I am a fan of Courbet's realism,

Courbet, Gustave. (1866) El Origen del Mundo, [óleo sobre lienzo] Musée d'Orsay

but also because it is true. It is true that a woman's body looks like this, and even more true that undergoing waxing has been a luxury, a task or a decision, influenced by consumer society.

A consumption that is often illintentioned, towards the linking of the mature body with a child one.

Illintentioned such as the fact that perfection is found in the alteration of naturalization.

It is true that this has been the Origin of the World. At what point did we decide to alter the Origin of the world? My body stopped being my temple to become a product in the factory to be someone else's temple.

The Three Graces (c. 1636-39) by Pedro Pablo Rubens. The day I came across the first meme that said "I'm not ugly, it's that my body is from the Renaissance" I laughed because I agreed. The second time, I laughed because the body of the Renaissance work is nothing like mine and nothing like the photo they used in the meme - remember that Rubens' Three Graces are baroque, totally different from the three graces that appear in Botticelli's Spring (c. 1477-78) that are indeed Renaissance. The third time I saw it,

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Rubens, Pedro P. (1636) Las Tres Gracias, [óleo sobre lienzo]

I no longer laughed, because I long for the point where my body is not in relation to my beauty. I'm not ugly, and my body has nothing to do with that.

Pedro Pablo Rubens had a peculiarity, he painted female bodies, often naked, with soft skin and flesh. Seeing his Three Graces, I smile and reassure myself, because one of the works, cataloged as master, hung in museums with splendid gilt frames, wonderful lighting, has three bodies similar to mine.

The God Mars (c. 1640) by Diego Velázquez. I want to jump over the male body, because believe it or not, it was also portrayed nude in Art History.

The God Mars gives me a fresh air, thinking of the men who have undressed themselves in front of the mirror hating their bodies because his hands and abdomen were not half of what Michelangelo had represented in David (c. 1501-04) or that of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (c.1623-24). The God Mars sits on the edge of a bed, blankets tangled, his abdomen rolled up, and his arms tired. Mars is a man, in contrast to the 14-year-old who should be the David (s) mentioned above. God becomes man and becomes real. It becomes the body of my grandfather, my brother, my boyfriend or my dad.

Achievable, beautiful and real. It becomes what it is.

Velázquez, D. (1640) Dios Marte, [óleo sobre lienzo]

Finally, I return to another male example, much closer to us. The Most Beautiful Part of the Body of Man (1986) by Duane Michals. A photograph, which, makes me mention again The Origin of the World, assumes the focus of an area close to the male genitalia. Michals intervenes the photo with the caption:

I think it must be there Where the torso sits on and on the hips Those twin curves outlining Feminine in grace, girdling the trunk Guiding the gaze down Towards its intersection the pleasure point The beauty of the subject's body in photography lies in the lines that converge in pleasure. In the roll of drums towards climax, the suspense and the desire, wanting to get there but not yet. Beauty lays in something that we all have, that we all experience, and that we all long for.

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Michals, Duane (1986) La parte más bella de un Hombre, [Fotografía]

My body is. My body reaches. My body works. My fear of seeing myself in the mirror is attributed to the mass of altered images, to the search of perfection with the wrong eyes, to the focus on non-existent, unreal, unattainable bodies.

My body is the origin of my world, my scars go in museums with golden frames, my belly rolls go along with the deities and my beauty falls on my desire, my pleasure, my longing. My body is...

And the man and his wife were without clothing, and they had no sense of shame.

Genesis 2:25

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Uranga, Paulina, (2020) Arjé. [Fotografía].

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It was those girls and me or nothing we were the dream that dreams or nothing it was the poem without rhythm it was to pretend we were going to school and escape at the ring and tour the Parque España or it was nothing we were their love and apart mine that is it was not our love but their love and then mine plus mine maybe mine mine didn't matter but it was love

REINVENCIÓN REINVENCIÓN I got it one afternoon shoved in my room cursing the sky for having two hearts and thinking that I did not have one I understood it bellowing while in the living room my parents watched TV and laughed

DEL DEL

and I understood it luckily and I did not die nor did anyone die those girls died laughing and they kissed and we kissed and we complain that nobody was going to understand and we don't laugh so much anymore

AMOR AMOR

and we undress and we look at each other and we look at each other once and again and we touch and paint ourselves and we shut up and fell asleep and we love the parents of one of those girls found out her dad beat her she told her never again that city, that school

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And he didn't even mention us it was his revenge that and take her away and take pieces of us and take our numbers but it's not the same anymore love from afar and we both stayed but it was not the same the first day alone we take off our clothes as a ritual and we fucked and smoked and we talk like memory machines like flesh and bone sustained by nostalgia as a neuron in its immense loneliness (and what else were we going to do) from when Marcela who was in another class came to me with the gossip that "my girlfriend" was cheating on me and I discovered that Marcela liked me and I told her to forget about it and we kiss behind the courts and nothing else happened or when they were together at the beggining of the year and they walked through the zócalo holding hands and all that was going to last as long as love lasts (I mean nothing, in the end a sigh, how long it takes to rain on a hot day, in being born from a cocoon a butterfly, in shutting up a crying child, to become your friend someone who speaks with the truth) or when we stayed up late around Bellas Artes in those botaneros just the three of us, we thought and this and the other and this and that appeared and after a while we were a choir down the street

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and by the subway those who were leaving and by house of whoever was staying by whose house their parents were not or they weren't suckers we talked for hours and I don't know when we started crying first me then her and then we made love again before dawn we made love as farewell and I knew because it felt the same at the first time we did not see each other again and nobody thought it weird it was them and me or nothing that is, in the end, we were nothing.

Fernando Salas

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PAULINA PAULINA URANGA URANGA @paulinauranga

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Post-structuralist by nature, feminist by conviction, Paulina Uranga is photographer, artist and writer from Xalapa. She has studies in Music, Performing Arts, Marketing and is currently a student at the Faculty of Plastic Arts at the Universidad Veracruzana. Synchronous of art and fashion, she shows through elegantly resonant aesthetics her truth and the truths of others. Specialized in portraiture, Paulina is characterized by presenting us the beauty of reality, a mimesis capable of giving away the charms of nature and dazzling us by the result of her filtering through reason. With more than 10 years of experience, she boasts a style in which the strong weight of aesthetics is retaken within photography.

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ABOUT ABOUT HER HER WORK WORK A victim of abuse during her childhood, the artist, faced with an inaccessibility of memory, as well as a prevailing need to hide the identity of the abuser, presents in the series "Dirty Games" a set of anthropomorphic beings whose hidden faces disturb with each of the punctures that they reflect these predators. The photographs intervened with burnt crayon, allude to the most childish thing that the naivety of the girl can represent. The colors melt, melt and spill just like the memories that seem to have burned but did not turn to dust, on the contrary, they became stains and vestiges of innocence that little by little was lost with the passing of the years.

Considered only from the plastic point of view, the masks appear as children's accessories that help the girl to become familiar with images or concepts that if exposed directly would result in more than one emotional scar.

In the tattooed body, or on "The World of the Scar" we appreciate the bodies as a battlefield, the appropriation of it, the reaffirmation of identity and heritage, the body in the world of the scar, the skin as a canvas: all that Is a tattoo.

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NOT NOT EVERYTHING EVERYTHING

IS IS PICASSO PICASSO

Rossanna Huerta Les femmes d'Alger (Version 'O'), Pablo Picasso - Foto:

As an art historian, I get to feel quite frustrated with the choice of artists that people use to talk about art, they are always the same: Van Gogh, Kahlo, Picasso, and Da Vinci.

However, not all art is about them, we must stop being afraid of art and start expanding our known horizons. This is what this new section is for, a new space to find artists that you may have heard of but never dared to check them out.

Starting with Picasso ... Not all cubism is by Picasso, ignoring the various problems that he has as a person (That doesn’t mean that we accept them, we are only focusing on his artistic production), there are many more artists with whom you can fall in love if you like or are interested in cubism. For example, Jean Metzinger.

Metzinger (1883-1956) is an artist born in Nantes, France who dedicated himself to the study and theorization of Cubism.

Not all of his work is dedicated to that style, we can appreciate in its beginnings a taste for pointillism or Seurattype divisionism and for a very fauvé color palette. However, he is an artist who stands out, in my opinion, for being a cubist who really explores the multidimensionality of the planes without breaking the shape of the object/subject that he is painting. Let's just look at his painting Au Vélodrome (1912) where you can see futuristic tints --like the taste for movement and the color palette- and cubist tints --due to the use of geometric and multiple perspectives--.

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“Cubist elements also include the printed paper collage, the incorporation of a granular surface, and the use of transparent planes to define the space. Although these tints are somewhat clumsily handled and the influence of Impressionism persists, particularly in the use of colored dots to represent the crowd in the background, this work represents Metzinger's attempt to embrace a new pictorial language. " (Flint, 2018)

Metzinger is one of the theorists of cubism who allows us to understand the basic principles of movement, both through his paintings and his writings, in my opinion, he may be the perfect artist to begin to understand the idea of ​ cubism --something that, I feel I, who could not do Picasso-- (Flint, 2018).

It is understandable that art can be a bit closed to the non-connoisseur but through this new section I hope you can get closer and give yourself the opportunity to meet artists who are not within your imagination.

Au Véldorome 1912 Oil and Collage on canvas 130.4 x 97.1 cm Peggy Guggenheim Collection

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Nature morte (Compotier et cruche décorée de cerfs) 1911 Oil on canvas 93.5 x 66.5 cm

La Femme au Cheval 1911-12 oil on canvas 162 × 130.5 cm The National Gallery of Denmark

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Danseuse au café 1912 Oil on canvas 160.02 x 128.59 x 8.89 cm Albright-Knox Art Gallery Collection, Buffalo, New York

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BRIEF BRIEF CURRICULUM CURRICULUM SEMBLANCE SEMBLANCE Victor Rivera He was almost at the door when he remembered to remove the folder from file cabinet number sixty-five. That object, which more than a relic had become the reliable proof that he had had a life, contained among other things the job application of the year in which he had been hired, in addition to the letter of recommendation from a former teacher of the faculty and an envelope signed with the name of his latest youth girlfriend. Without turning on the light, he entered the shelves and approached the filing cabinet that kept his memories.

The deafening noise of the hinges opening, rusted from lack of maintenance, plunged him for a moment into a terrifying atmosphere, as if that squeak had been a prediction of what he would understand moments after opening the folder. He turned on the light and sat staring back at what had been his desk for more than four decades.

First it was the envelope that caught his attention. She read it silently for a few minutes until her mind brought it back. What was the last and true great love of her doing at that moment? She would probably have already married, she would be on vacation and retired, a normal situation for people her age; she even she would have grandchildren who, on second thought, could have been hers as well. Or maybe she would have died from having caught a fever. Yes, that must be it. After all, there was a time when everyone began to die, and she, recognizing the fragility of the human body, surely she had resigned herself to being reduced to a number within a statistic. Of her teacher, on the other hand, she had everything quite clear. She had died in a car accident on the Mexico-Querétaro highway, on the way to a presentation where she would present a book on eroticism in modernist poetry.

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She would remember him to this day because she always regretted not telling him that she would come to see him. Somehow, the thought that her absence had been directly related to the unexpected and tragic death of her mentor was something she couldn't forgive herself. The truth is that neither he nor in the faculty she felt comfortable with the idea of ​reading it aloud, nor did she like to be identified by reading anything similar. It was such a passionate poetry that for some reason he could not allow himself to enjoy it in public, he felt disgusted with the idea of ​adjective his bodily sensations, and he felt ashamed of himself. For years, traveling on public transport, he got used to hiding the books he read behind the morning newspaper, leaving political satire cartoons ahead. Those were the only moments in which he felt really observed, he looked at himself and recognized himself in the reflection of the Metrobús window and his own existence was revealed in front of his eyes.

Many of the times, after that, he memorized his features and contemplated, with hopeless guilt, the traces of time on his face.

The other was his curricular profile, the one he presented the day he was hired. He had graduated as the first of his generation and within a year he had already been recommended by his teacher for a part-time teacher exam. He remembered the plans to marry and the family he had in his native Michoacán, before most of him died. His life was so different that he couldn't help but feel rage and desolation, nostalgia not for the life he had, but for the one he could have lived had he acted differently. This was perhaps the main reason why he had kept those opaque words for so many years. He took the crumpled sheets and began to read carefully: "Excellent command of the English and French languages, impeccable writing and spelling, ability to gather information from different sources, experience as a librarian, ability to synthesize, ease of schedule, certification of this and that, [...]".

It was a fact that the portrait was outstanding, especially for the time. He had far more tools than any other applicant and could have applied for any other job if he wanted to. But he did not, nor did he accept the offer of his teacher, he never wished beyond what he had already achieved and when everything disappeared, only he remained, lost in thought, locked in a body that gradually stopped obeying him, condemning him to an office which he clung to with his nails, a department that year after year became a little more unnecessary and was relegated to the vagaries of technology, while its usefulness remained anchored to the days without light, hence the candles, which so many years they were on the shelves, they were not put up with a purely decorative function. However, even his co-workers stopped visiting him and after the third decade he no longer knew almost anyone in the building. He was forced to seclude himself within those four walls, not to speak to anyone and to listen to his thoughts in silence.

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His only contact with the world was that little stretch on the way home, one that no longer even meant anything to him, because he had managed to put together for a second-hand car in his early years, one that he never wanted to change. He always placed him outside the complex, so he could no longer even observe anyone, or read the poetry in the transport quietly, nor could he converse with a stranger in the rain who was, like him, waiting for the ten o'clock truck. the night. They would talk, who knows what, probably the Olympic Games, the Oscar-nominated films, or the Super Bowl in turn; in short, everything that people who were not like him would talk about. At the end of the day, he repeatedly asked himself, why had he studied so much if there was no longer anyone with whom to share ideas? What was the use of mastering two languages ​if he no longer had someone to talk to? He, too, did not intend to go to any other country.

He thought about all that until the moment his gaze fell on the photo of the resume. Suddenly, she felt a spasm in her arm at the sound of the clock that marked the time of departure and put the sheets back in the folder. He got up and took a flannel with which he prepared to clean the desk, even knowing that tomorrow he would dust again and that there would no longer be anyone who could clean it. He also knew how to recognize his smallness when he took a last look at that fixed point in space and time, and on the way home he had the feeling that all the goodbyes in the world always correspond to each other: first there is the illusion, a small hope that everything that has been fought for has been worth it and that it has not been time wasted; then comes the bifurcation, that stage to which the conjugation of the past imperfect belongs, small frames that are reproduced like a film that torment with a life that will never exist: finally resignation, accepting the loss of what is loved and with each step knowing ourselves more and more vulnerable, disoriented in the new world to which we have been spit.

But there is one last step that is not talked about because no one has yet given it a name, the one that comes after turning off the lights and closing all the doors. If he had been responsible for naming it, he would have had to do with emptiness, with silence, a scene where the embarrassment of the body would reveal the distance between the person and what he has lost. Likewise, it would be the stage of homecoming, comparable to the ineffable pain that all the actors have felt when they descend from the stage and their costumes are nothing more than disguises. In other words, the landing between the floors where everything has already happened and there is nothing left but to keep up; It had to be that secluded corner of the story where our own experience no longer belongs to us, the stage of la petite mort.

When he got home he felt a chill that ran down his spine and he thought of all the times his mother scolded him for not walking straight. Now it was hard not to stoop, it could even be said that it was unnatural. He tossed his car keys and folder on the kitchen table and went straight to heat the water in a well.

However, the violent act of leaving the objects had caused the sheet of his portrait to detach and oscillate like a feather until it hit the ground.

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When he turned around he noticed the sheet and bent to pick it up, then he looked at it as he had done before in the middle of the darkness and he folded it in half so that only his photo was visible, he immediately went to the bathroom and He stood in front of the mirror reloading the photo on it.

The horror of not recognizing his own face in front of him made him stay stunned without saying anything, while his breathing progressively increased, his heart felt as if it were going to shoot out of his mouth. To whom did the thin, upturned nose in the photograph belong? Hers had grown old, wide, and flattened. The one in the photo had drooping eyelids, however, they did not seem to overshadow the brilliance of his youth, the beauty of the pearl hidden within a mollusk, now it was imprinted on the mirror of time, a beauty that he no longer possessed. Instead his gaze, the one he did recognize, seemed to him that of an old stray dog, the kind that always live sad, that of someone else who had succumbed to boredom and had settled for carrying a tired sight that no longer allowed him. reading, he had a permanently furrowed brow, shoulders slumped that denoted the weight of the years. His body, in short, had become an obsolete machine, a disposable tool.

What happened next became known through the media. One of his neighbors noticed the smoke coming from his house, the only one in the middle of so many apartments that had resisted time. However, it was too late, everything was burned. What was most striking was that none of the neighbors knew the name of the person who lived there, they even denied having ever seen him, as if the fire had been the work of a spirit. There was talk for a few days about that event, however there was no one to point out, there was no name, and no one to remember and, after the fire, there was no silence either.

"Twilight zone" nervous man in a four dollar room.

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GOLDEN GOLDEN

SCARS SCARS 43

María Borja My name Maria, creator of Golden Scars, I have experienced two great accidents, both marked me in severe ways, both took away things in me and changed the person I was without prior notice. At the age of nine, a glass door fell on me it cost me 120 stitches that went from my left eye to my toe on my right foot. Later, at eleven, I lost my left hand in a tragic water skiing accident.

I believe that if after all this, I am still standing here, it is because I still have a lot to do and to say.

My accidents were once my worst enemies, today they are my greatest teachers. My scars were one day what bothered me the most about myself, today they are what I want to show the most and put in focus. I have learned many things, for example: Life takes away, but it also provides proportionally.

This project is the space that I needed so much and did not know until I created it.

It is the love that I have always tried to give to other people, put in the same place. People who hurt me, who loved me, who I miss, who I don't, who I remember every other Thursday and who I think about every day.

It's me, But it is also a piece of all the incredible beings that have touched me.

This space arises from the need to reclaim and resignify scars and body marks.

To give space to our "defects", which are nothing more than the opposite.

Through photographic series and collaborations with emerging artists from different disciplines we want to tell stories. Because we faithfully believe that every scar has something fascinating to say

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We start from the idea that sooner or later we are all going to break down, in some way or another. These cracks should not embarrass us, because it is through them that we rebuild ourselves and it is through these gaps that light enters.

I invite you to love and embrace yourself in your wholeness.

@ cicatricesdeoro

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If love isn't sweat and sheets, I don't know what it is. If it is not the smell or the presumption of innocence every time I meet you in avenues and crossings and bars, and if it is not that or the fatigue of your eyelids at dawn when sleep almost overcomes you but you do not want to stop, and the guy who already knows us and looks at us with the same malice, and at you with the same lust and at me with the same envy as the first time, and if that isn't love then I don't know what it is. I came looking for places that I only saw in dreams and it took me so long to find them that I had to rent a room on the roof and learn to smoke. I came not to be, somewhere else, with other people. And yet I am alone most of the time, I am alone and I look at the sky, looking for stars that I can only imagine. I am alone and it hurts to be alone and to have just this notebook, just this papersheet, just this document that I come and open on any internet at six pesos an hour, and sometimes I pay eighteen pesos to Rebeca or Italia or Mariana or whatever the girl who attends the business is called.

I pay eighteen pesos and leave letters drunk, from the same fucking twenty-seven letters, extra extra, NASA discovered four more letters, look what I do with the four more letters of it. Twenty-seven letters but I don't know the last time I used the Q or the X and how few times I used the Z to say quiz to say zig zag to say zuchinni to invent ridiculous names for the girl who attends the internet, and sometimes it comes to fool with her a bastard in any high school uniform, and she laughs at his silly jokes

L LE ET TO OM M

Fernando Salas

and then I type furiously and suddenly I play dumb and something disconnects and she has to come, I know what she smells like but let’s describe a smell, like saying how black the night is, how many people there are in this shitty city. The smell of her and at first her shyness and mine of hers but now she tells me by my name and I have no doubts, she knows that I am not an idiot, I just pretend. But there are days that I pay six pesos that could have been three but I did not want to give up after half an hour and anyway I did not write anything decent, I almost erased the document, I almost left that notebook abandoned anywhere, in any wagon, because what’s the use of blood when it’s dry.

And I go back to writing and seeing her. Literature and women, and there are people who don't find fucking happiness. Twelve pesos, today was a good day, today I wrote. What I do apart to this is not important, it is like reading the instructions for something that is already assembled. And finally one day I invite her out. We are going to have beer and then tequila and then our hands how romantic, and then we kiss and then we kiss in my room and then we kiss without clothes and then Ramiro comes and I accompany her to her house. A rooftop room for two idiots. I could have a career but no. I don't know if I decided it or life decided it for me. I could be something else but I am what I chose. I accompany her to her house and I finally know her name. What does her name matter.

And the next day I'm there, writing a story about an idiot who falls in love with a girl and the other guy comes to sit with her. And she flirts back and I never seen that before but they kiss. And I keep writing of love and I write a poem and I write to Mom. Yes mom everything is fine, she’s paying her debts, dad is fine, as always, nothing new about dad. And what do you think mom. I'm about to tell her but better not. That I am happy mom. I say goodbye and then she comes and she tells me that they are about to close. She stops and tells me that they are about to close. She stands up and comes and talks to me by my name and she looks me in the eyes and tells me that they are about to close.

I don't with her about the other bastard and we go straight to a motel. And we pay to the idiot-face at the reception desk and he gives us room six, and you say it's the perfect number and I tell you it's three and you say no because six are the bullets you have left.

And I know what you are talking about and I don't say more, but I think you’re talking about six orgasms, that the most you have had are six orgasms and I want to go further, six orgasms, I want to take you away and keep you up there so any other idiot comes and you forget about me so easily.

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Six orgasms. You put on music from your phone and a song makes me think that no one that I love so much has died yet, that sometimes nostalgia sucks when you can go and hug people but sometimes someone dies and then the nostalgia is no longer shit but a refuge but a house but a chewing gum but a river of tears. And I look into your eyes and they are precious, and they are not mine and that is better. You, the music and the world. Six orgasms I still think while I kiss you we take off our clothes, and I still think while I throw you on the bed and I kiss your sines and your cosines and your tangents and below, and below, and deeper. And then I count. Un elefante se columpiaba sobre la tela de una araña, como veía que resistía fue a llamar a otro elefante. Dos elefantes. Tres elefantes.

Cuatro elefantes. Five elephants and then you attract me to you, on top of you, inside of you. Over you. Beneath you. Behind you, next to you. How many of these are there. And I'm tired and I don't want more and I think that you neither because we are not machines, we are not machines. I don't want this, take it. And I lie next to you, crossed with you, it is a truce. Outside these four walls there is nothing else. If we put the TV on, the cable signal and its three hundred channels are there for us. If we put the news, the television station and the studio and the presenter live off this love. They exist because we exist, because we are Adam and Eve, because silence was invented in this creaking bed.

Guston, Phillip, (1977) Pareja en la cama

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DEAR DEAR AUTHOR, AUTHOR,

If you are interested in publishing with us, take into account the following: 1. All texts and artworks must be sent to the Catártica official email 2. Every text received will be checked by the Catártica team.

3. If the editor considers it, changes will be made on the text, always respecting the authors original voice.

4. If you consider translating your own text into Spanish you can do so, our translators will check the process.

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Magazine Director María Inés Flores Nachón @notae_stethicallypleasing maines_flores@live.com Cover Desing Antonella Guagnelli Cuspinera @antonella_gc antonella.guagnelli@gmail.com Editor Fernanda Loutfe Orozco @ferorozco ferlorozco@hotmail.com Editorial design Junuen Caballero Soto @junuencaballero junuen.caballero@gmail.com

Arts 101 María Inés Flores Nachón @notae_stethicallypleasing maines_flores@live.com Crónicas de Marte Luis Fernando Salas Ramírez @fersalasrz luis.salasrz@udlap.mx Catalogarte Rossanna Huerta Romero @rosehro rossanna.huertaro@udlap.mx

Noche, Derroche, Nochera Alejandro Domínguez Nieto @hermann_cheesse alejandro.dominguezno@gmail.com Rincón de los poemas Sandra S. Smithers sandysmthrs smithersgr@gmail.com Ambulantes: Interviews Diana Carolina Gomez Ortiz @dcgo98 diana.gomezoz@udlap.mx Translators Ana Delia Castillo González @anna_2121 Claudine Gabriela Aguilar Encinas @gabe.docx Glosario Catártica Emma Patricia Zamudio Salas @emma.zamudio.92 emma.zamudioss@udlap.mx Spotify Diana Carolina Gomez Ortiz @dcgo98 diana.gomezoz@udlap.mx