Catártica: September '22

Septiembre 2022

Vol. 8

En portada: Guagnelli, Antonella (2022) Collage Digital de intervenciones a Las Meninas de Velázquez

Variations

4

AGC The half turn

6

Fernando Salas Fucking Parthenogenesis

8

Ernesto Ocaña To die or not to die

11

Rossanna Huerta Under the shadow of Condor Bruno Sánchez

13

20

What I Forgot About Me Victor Rivera

24

Xenophilia Ernesto Ocaña

28

A chromatic sound Marcos González “Foreman"

33

Eventually, all the fish will die M.I. Flores Nachón

37

No, no… Listen, listen Rossanna Huerta

En índice: Piezas de la muestra Madrid Meninas Gallery

VARIATIONS

A.G.C

When looking at the work of renowned artists such as Diego Velázquez (1599 - 1660), it is not strange that more than one person would want insight into the line of thought and inspiration that led the artist to create such work, wondering about his goals, techniques and even more interesting, his creative process. Therefore, when talking about one of the most visited paintings in the Prado Museum, Las Meninas (1656), probably the artist's most famous work, we can highlight the apparent simplicity of the portrayed scene, the naturality in which the 11 characters interact, and his strategic, but loose brushstrokes can be defined as anything but simple elements since the composition of the work lies in these elements along with the path towards illusionism, which was one of the goals of European painting in the modern age and which Velázquez succeeds in developing.

We could go on talking about the meaning of the painting, but clearly, despite all the information explaining its meaning or even inquiring about the characters, colors, and details that characterize it, the technical explanation and history do not seem to satisfy the curiosity of the various eyes that admire it, since its features, which even today continue to impress, such as the use of light and the focus on different planes of attention, rather than appeasing the curiosity, incite the public to try to become part of the work and be able to give their version, so it is not surprising that Las Meninas is one of the works with many variations, therefore we can observe and analyze it from different eyes, brushes, and bodies.

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The family portrait of King Philip IV (1605 - 1665) managed to become more than just a painting destined for the king's summer office in the Alcázar Royal Palace in Madrid, mainly because of the determination of Diago Velázquez to prove the value and importance of his work as a painter, showing the capacity of the image to communicate and giving himself a bit of prominence by adding his portrait while fervently practicing the profession. His ingenuity, creativity, and innovative way of presenting the portrait, as well as his amusing play on perspective, where it seems that the portrayed are observing the public, while the mirror at the back of the painting returns the image of King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria, who, with us, see the scene from the other end of the room, have encouraged artists to recreate and vary its meaning. From the first public exhibition of the work, and even slightly earlier, Las Meninas influenced the work of such figures as Francisco de Goya (1746 - 1828), who was the first person to reproduce the painting in an etching engraving (1785), to the extensive series of 44 paintings (Las Meninas, 1957) by Pablo Picasso (1881 1973), the sculptures of Manolo Valdés (1942) or the distorted version by Genieve Figgis (1972), which with a little attention can be found, along with various elements by five other artists, within the cover collage.

Velázquez, D., (1656), Las meninas, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Equipo Crónica, (1970), LAS MENINAS, acrylic on canvas, Fundación Juan March Rancinan G., (2009), After las meninas, photography Audouin, P., (1799), Las Meninas: the family of Philip IV in the foreground with the Infanta Margarita in the center, Velázquez standing painting on the left, the King and Queen reflected in the mirror in the background, engraving Figgis, G., (2016) Las Meninas After Velázquez, acrylic on canvas.

Matisse, S., (2001) Las Meninas from the series Back in 5 Minutes.

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THE HALF TURN

Fernando Salas

I failed once, I failed ten thousand times and I still raise my glass to the sky."

The man who almost met Michi Panero, Nacho Vegas

To understand failure as potency, as a possibility already lodged in an infinitely distant past, unattainable, incomprehensible even. Failure as a force, an anger, a rage, a powerlessness, a sadness, a delusion, a hope in the middle of a wasteland.

Loss is the utopian finding of the beginning and the end of a circle. The lost paradise, which we lose by our will. A future we imagine as prisoners imagine freedom, more in its potential than in its possibilities. The end seems a lie, refusing to believe in it, we talk about how absurd it would be. There is no reason for love to end, there is no reason for waking up one day and feeling unhappy, it makes no sense that it is still raining at this hour. And yet.

From afar, is the only catalyst for change, the only proof that, if there is another place, we were there once. The only evidence that we once loved are the wounds that remain, the holes, the left side of the bed where the other slept, finding oneself upset without knowing why.

Hurrying to dress the nakedness. Getting used to having to see to be seen later. Instead you.

The name is the beginning of everything. A moment ago it was a remote possibility and now it is. Now you are, now we are, now you are there. Someone dies when your name dies. Your nickname, as the one who loves you calls you. Something also dies in the one who uses a unique name and suddenly is left with nothing to name, the word in the air, the diminutive, a whisper that escapes from his lips, that rests in a sigh that is extinguished when the light is turned off.

Failure and loneliness are friends that seem like brothers. Whoever applauds failure rejoices in his own, whoever accompanies it wants to leave it in the past, whoever understands it knows that it is better to leave. Loneliness is the truest companion, and its absence is a consolation of a few hours. They are and it is and we are.

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There is a lot of bravery in the “new”. Not many can cope with it, they look for something to compare it with, a story where it is talked about, an acquaintance who has already lived it, relying on something more than their own faith, which has already been defrauded so many times. Other times there is no choice but enthusiasm, a false emotion. So few have passion, so much and so quickly we lose it; what was a refuge becomes just a shadow made of sticks in front of the sea.

It will always be easier to be outside than inside. There is more for you in the waiting than in the encounter, in the heat that we imagine of desire than in the fire that is to be consummated. More there is for you in the emptiness and its possibility, things can always change and soon they will, sooner than you think. But you have to be good at it: you have to believe.

You build it up for others to tear it to pieces. You put a stone where another stone has already been put, because ideas cannot be overlapped. It is built, it is raised, it is inaugurated, it is applauded, it is opened every day until it shatters. Until the thing that was raised, inaugurated, applauded and believed in is gone. The one who does not believe is shipwrecked and invites to be shipwrecked, to sail aimlessly, to look at the sun, the birds, to feel the wind, to forget the port, to throw the rudder overboard if everything is unity.

The one who believes returns to solid ground. Needs to feel the sand under his feet, to look at his bank account, to look at himself in the mirror, to know that he is still who he believes. It hurts a lot to lose, it hurts to lose oneself, to lose the other, to be thrown into the lost depths, it hurts that others can see what you lost but not you loss, that no one ever can or should or wants to be you, to look with your eyes, to love with your heart and to believe with your faith.

To understand life as a door that opens and closes, that the air whips, a door that is knocked not to open but to see if there is someone inside to open, to understand a door even as its absence, a non-door but, an imaginary but true limit. Only with the heart can one see well. The essential is invisible to the eyes.

Schmitz, Boris. (2014) Gazes. @borisschmitz

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FUCKING

PARTHENO GENESIS Ernesto Ocaña

Alberta is huge, greasy; slowly she crawls across the spongy floor. Her massive breasts, once the sole vice of man, appear now disgusting to anyone who’s not sightless. Her wide hips carry the sadness of more than one lifetime, her deformed crimson lips have kissed even Lucifer himself. Alberta is an old whore, for the same reason she is a cheap whore and cheap whores bend over backwards looking for their daily bread. Berta, my tenderly poisonous Berta — says old Alejandro — How much did you make today? And Berta, unable to speak and with her knees about to burst open, extends her fingers above her head. Only five Berta? Maybe it's time you retire, my depraved little old grandma.

Retired whores, says Caronte, are dead whores, they are the forgotten old women of the streets.

Berta leaves and retreats to her room with her little mute, offspring of inexperience. The wordless girl is very beautiful; small, tender, and lush that even her muffled screams release a sweet voice, a serene howling. His father died eons ago but perhaps he is still long-lived, perhaps he lies successful or poor and filthy because only his adultery is certain at this point.

One more of Berta’s clients or maybe her first pimp, nothing more and no one less. Berta tenderly embraces her mute progeny because her eyes recently laden with cataracts can’t see anything else with affection, but the young woman of ceaseless hoarseness ignores her.

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The mute is a young whore and young whores, especially when they are beautiful, are valuable and quite expensive. The mute has only been practicing this trade for two years, but she was born to be a harlot, she always has been, she carries in her flesh the breath of Rahab, the great whore of Babylon. That night, the cracked brick walls covered in cheap plaster infuse themselves with lewd condensation. It makes the wooden floor a spongy board as if it were made of cork.

The soft cork hides like a tender ally Berta's heavy footsteps and those of the silent woman who yearns to free herself from her mother's beating bust. Not even the night herself notices them leaving the precarious brothel.

Berta wanted to be something more than a dirty old hooker, the throatless inner girl held in her wretched bosom still keeps hope. But with her docile ignorance of any other context, she found refuge only as a matriarch in a different brothel, a kind of mother for the most recent Magdalenes.

My dear Alberta — says Álvaro with what seems genuine affection — You should have come years ago, that ancient lout never understood how to truly appreciate you — says Álvaro with recorded desire — You were always a woman of such class, a jewel trapped between gravel and street corners. Álvaro, — murmurs Berta with her endemic weariness — I have but one condition, grant this and I shall be yours, I'm not going to allow Helena to follow this path of shameless begging — That's how it will be Alberta, I hadn't thought otherwise — he says while possessed by Hephaestus he caresses those disgusting breasts.

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The voiceless woman pulls out her hair in her innocuous pink prison, without heels or garters, without crimson lipstick because it is a room for young girls who still possess innocence. She knows that the place where a creature sleeps must be the color of their soul.

She does not sleep, she does not speak, she thinks of the dark night when she cannot say "I love you" or shout, "I hate you" and that is why she has sex filled with anguish and turns her back on her mother. Alejandro loved her deeply, almost three times a week; he loved her with the sweet sincerity of someone who only desires one’s body. He was the one who gave her that old stuffed teddy bear. And it is that cuddly and felt cub her only family, her son, her brother, and even lover.

What is it that men see in the little mute that fills them with morbid adrenaline, with deathseeking ecstasy? — Tartarus wonders. As if at that moment they shift their hips in unison, Hades could take them with a smile on their face. Said a nun, herself full of irony, it's the misanthropy in her eyes; Christ save me, for I would take her too. The hushed one, carrying inside the soul of an old whore, walks on this new concrete floor, light and quiet as on cork, conferring on her feet the gift of her silence. And she enters Álvaro's room, where the infernal succubus who gave her disgusting life still sleeps. But this cute little creature is not a murderer, it is the teddy bear who smothers her mother in dreams at the same time that Helena suffers from pleasure that’s almost carnal, followed by sweet melancholy. Hecate and Persephone have welcomed the bear into their kingdom. In her enchantment and fury, the mute runs with her bear to her room and shatters the hot lightbulb between her gentle fist, the world instills with darkness, it looks now closer to her old abode. And God whispers as he ogles her breasts with omniscience — You may cry now my damned, little mute.

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Inspired by Electra's Myth

To die or not to die that is the question Rossana Huerta The painting is dead! The artist is dead! Art is not art!

I can't help but laugh at these comments, I'm sorry. Apparently painting and art will die at the hands of artificial intelligence. The image made by Jason Allen called “Space Opera Theater” has won the prize of the Annual Colorado State Competition and the public is extremely offended that he used an artificial intelligence program to create the image we see .

Is it because it is considered an insult to artists who dedicate hours and hours to making their work?

Or is it the fear of changing to the new media that technology offers us?

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At first glance, and considering the circumstances, it is a captivating image that takes us into a fictional world. However, the amount of detail that can be seen on the edges of the portal is so intricate that I don't think a novice hand could have achieved it without outside help. Was it a mistake to use a tool/device such as artificial intelligence? In my opinion, the answer would be “no, it was not a mistake”. The NY Times interviewed the artist and at no time did he hide the means by which the piece was made, the judges could observe and determine if his entry was valid. And no, he didn't take the award away from someone with a "real painting" since it entered the digital art category (Roose, 2022).

Let's be honest, the tool you used (Midjourney) could be classified in the same group as Photoshop, Illustrator or even Canvas, tools that many artists use for all kinds of pieces. At the end of the day, the machine doesn't generate any images unless the user follows certain steps, so it seems to me like using a more sophisticated brush. In addition, it is not the first time that we observe this type of comments. Let's go back to the creation of the photographic camera, critics pointed to the complete death of art, we will no longer need painters since we will have users of photography —in this case I refuse to use the word photographer because the camera was still considered a scientific apparatus, not an artistic one. Conservative critics don't like anything, if a painting is hyper-realistic they call it excessive, if it's non-mimetic they call it hamparte, and if it's made with digital tools, it's not art. And surely they will ask me: So what is art? It is everything and nothing at the same time. We will never be able to define the art that is created today with the same criteria that were used 20 years ago, much less with those of 200 years ago. The beauty of art is that we give each of us our own definition based on our subjectivity.

Now if we look at it from the point of view of New Media Art, Allen has become not only an artist but a programmer and a writer. Not only has he designed a series of instructions to follow so that the software could capture the image he had planned, but he has managed to unite two arts, letters and plastic arts. The way Midjourney works is by entering words so that the artificial intelligence generates the image based on the information provided. It is one more step towards transmediality, Allen has commented that he had to make several attempts to make the image produced be as we see it. Several attempts of different texts, that is, to enter the world of letters that can best describe his vision. Prose, verse, haiku, any of these will have a new space in this trend.

There will be people who will continue to be obsessed with the "purity" of art, and we will have no way of changing their opinion. What we can do is question what we understand about art, at the end of the day it is like a game that human beings have used for thousands of years for different reasons.

The discussion is absurd, painting has not died and will not die as long as there is still a public that observes it. Let us leave our prejudices and conceptions about the fine arts where they should be, in the 19th century, in the here and now they are of no use to us.

Roose, K. (2022) An AI Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy. NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html

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UNDER THE

SHADOW

OF THE CONDOR Bruno Sánchez

B

efore exploring the metaphor of the title, it would be useful to know its literalness. The Condor; better known as <<vulture>>, it is a scavenger bird, that is, it feeds on the meat of its prey, generally still alive. The main one that characterizes its popular disdain, unlike other carrion birds such as the eagle (historically represented as a national symbol) or the raven (used as literary inspiration), is the crude reason for the attack on its prey, which is not surprising given the nature of his needs,

but if he stands out in bad zeal for his impudent inclemency when attacking. In a flock they ambush their prey; Generally newborns, some futilely confront the mother to neglect her calf, who is the one who suffers the attack as such, being pierced multiple times by ravenous beaks, tearing out her living flesh until long after she dies. They are not tame like eagles or hawks, nor adaptable to foreign environments like ravens, they are organized and intelligent like their peers, but they use their skills with greedy savages, waiting for the bloody opportunity to satisfy themselves and without more.

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CONDOR PLAN It was appropriate that the plan US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger devised and coordinated in cooperation with the intelligence services (official and unofficial) of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in order to persecute and “ eradicate" any individual, group or symbol associated with the left, affiliated or not to the USSR, to everything that appeared to have red tints of socialism and communism...or rather, in reality, everyone and that affected by means of a greater political and economic independence not unanimously aligned with US economic interests, even as vain and inconsequential as said “consequences” would have been for Americans.

Although the discreet political interference of the United States in Latin America long precedes the creation of the plan itself, it formalized, already in an indiscreet way, the present characteristic US interventionism as a state policy with purely and merely economic interests to satiate itself. same and nothing else. Wrongly, but just as conveniently, he claims responsibility for the coup d'état in Chile on September 11, 1973, which, with British fighter planes and CIA personnel on the spot, stormed major cities with US-trained military and paramilitary forces. USA, to then bomb the presidential palace where the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, a socialist, died and allowed the imposition of the authoritarian military dictator Augusto Pinochet,

The purpose of the plan was to destabilize and even decimate all democratic identity in Latin America, imposing, through coups and economic isolation, military dictatorships bordering on fascism, which carried out state terrorism, leaving countless dead, disappeared and exiled. Submitting these disrupted countries as living experiments of the first germinating ideas of neoliberalism in exchange for benefiting from the excessive privatization of basic needs as services of merit and thus facilitating the appropriation and exploitation of natural resources in the region for their uncontrolled production for, almost exclusively, the North American market, that that plan to dismember almost an entire continent alive was called "Plan Condor".

from the extreme right, as the most wellknown and emblematic event of the Condor plan, although in reality the The plan was officially implemented in 1975, two years after the coup. However, Chile's modus operandi was used in a similar way in the other countries where it was exercised, so it was in that context, witnessing first-hand the current impotence of the population before a power foreign in every aspect to that of the majority. and with an uncertain and undermined future looming in the region, this painting emerged.

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OSWALDO GUAYASAMÍN One of the most important names when referring to the voice of indigenism, class struggle and interventionism in Latin America during the 20th century, politically intimate struggles that were expressed in the art world as he was part of the guild; part of the system, although mutually uncomfortable due to their active protest and popular participation in mobilizations of the proletarian left; at a time when those movements still had a pulse. This, along with several renowned intellectuals of the guild such as the poet Pablo Neruda, the composer Víctor Jara, the musician Ángel Parra and the painters Rufino Tamayo and José Clemente Orozco who was his mentor.

Lágrimas de Sangre, de Oswaldo Guayasamín, 1973.

He was the 1st of ten children of the marriage between his indigenous Kichwa father and his mestizo mother, he grew up in the urban rurality of the city of Quito, Ecuador, in 1919. As a child, he discovered his artistic interest by drawing caricatures of his friends and teachers and by painting landscapes on any canvas available to him in order to sell them in the main square of the city. He manages to enter the Quito School of Fine Arts to study painting and architecture. Along with his studies, the "four-day war" took place, a civil uprising between the liberal government and the opposition conservative side, a confrontation that caused thousands of deaths in the capital, including his best friend in front of him, resulting in his first great work “The dead children”.

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Los niños muertos, de Oswaldo Guayasamín, 1941.

IN 1942 At the age of 23, he held his first exhibition in Quito, which caused great scandal due to its marked character of social denunciation. The criticism of the moment denounced it as a confrontation with the dogmas taught by the School of Fine Arts at such a level that it could have restricted his career, however, it was because of that first fateful exhibition that he was discovered by who would be his sponsor for years, Nelson.

Rockefeller. With this support, he traveled to the United States to later live in Mexico as Clemente Orozco's assistant.

This is how Guayasamín managed to concretize the critical intentions embodied in his works as a discourse that combined the strength of the indigenous theme, of the proletarian movements and the realities of injustices that would increasingly worsen along with his work. This paralleled his interpretation of the modernist avant-gardes of the turn of the century, especially cubism and expressionism.

Pablo Neruda and Oswaldo Guayasamín met in 1943, in Mexico, through Diego Rivera. Every time Guayasamín went to Chile, he visited Neruda, and vice versa. In one of his exhibitions, in 1970, after Allende's electoral victory, Neruda read the speech "Entrance to Guayasamín", presenting it at the end saying: “I present, and it is a great honor for me, this germinal and essential painter, sure that his universe can be sustained, even if it threatens us like a cosmic collapse. Let's think before entering his painting, because it will not be easy for us to go back…”.

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Pablo Neruda recibiendo el Premio Nobel de Literatura, 1971.

Pablo Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 for "a poetry that, with the action of an elemental force, gives life to the destiny and dreams of a continent." In 1973, days after the coup, Neruda died suddenly, presumably poisoned by agents of the dictatorship. The very night of his death, the army entered his house on the Black Island and burned all his books. Ángel Parra was arrested in the following days, but managed to be released a year later, he lived in exile in France continuing with his recording work.

Víctor Jara was tortured and shot by the army in the first weeks of the dictatorship.

The examples of his contemporaries above are all Chilean with an intention, his most famous painting “Tears of blood”; created in his artistic period appropriately called "The era of fury", it was not only created as an outburst of frustration after the coup, but also as a mourning process for Allende, Neruda and Jara, three of his great friends who They died a few days after the coup and because of the "ideological correctness" that the new regime imposed.

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Retrato de Neruda, 1962.

IT WAS DURING THE "ERA OF FURY" That Guayasamín dedicated his work to portraits of a social nature, usually illustrating the weight of poverty, injustice, authoritarianism and racism on the destruction of the individual. The works of that era could be interpreted as illustrations of protest showing the reality that the view of political responsibility fails to observe or decides to ignore. It emphasized those themes prioritizing the hands as a representation of the proletariat, the innocent or simply hysteria or anonymous desperation, placing the alleged gestures in the foreground as if the subject were asking, begging or protesting at the moment the viewer is present, begging for mercy.

Just as remarkable as the context is the painting itself. The philosopher Cicero said that the face is an image of the mind with the eyes as an interpreter and despite the fact that the subject in the work covers most of his face, it is his eyes that express what cannot be conjugated, the gaze of impotence, unlike the other works of this same era, "Lágrimas de sangre" stands out because it is the only one that is not asking, begging or protesting, it is a reaction that there is nothing I can do but look, observe unable; perhaps to the September sky, while his decisions not yet made and his destiny not yet written, lost all validity for the one who never gave him a look, that's what he looks at, his fearful defeat. Fear is the essence of the work, from the crooked fingers in disbelief leading up to the staring stunned eyes and the black background, without any clarity of what is coming.

The nuances used, cold and monochromatically dark with straight lines that highlight the gestures of desperation, contribute to this atmosphere. The exposure of the emotional rawness of those faces is Guayasamín's way of demonstrating how man has been thrown into madness or pain due to an increasingly dehumanized society.

Mural a la Patria, Oswaldo Guayasamín, 1988.

The condor operation ceased to be a state secret a long time ago, but that means that it cannot continue to be carried out, much less continue to experience its consequences. The uchrony of Latin America is uncertain, with or without US interference, but despite the fact that, in a hypothetical case, if the Latin American socialist experiment had followed its planned path and failed, the only consolation then would be to know that its fate was in the hands of the crowds in our streets and not in the hands of a small group at a desk so many countries away.

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One of the last works of Oswaldo Guayasamín was to make the great multi-historical and cultural mural in the renewed Ecuadorian congress, where he did not overlook the opportunity and historical convenience, to evoke a last remembrance to the constant spectators of each session.

The operation as such and the US interference in the region is public knowledge and popular culture, despite going unnoticed, or rather avoided, by the mainstream Hollywood industry. It is for this reason, and with necessary reason, that it is up to Latin Americans to place the main emphasis on direct and abstract memory, not of an event, but of a series of decisions beyond the will and needs of the popular majority. in order to balance a war of ego destined to culminate "triumphant" but at a great cost that, in the long term, the consequences of their actions will end up consuming the one who caused the causes, like the urovoros eating itself until the end of its own paradox.

Agente de la CIA, 1988.

Presidential Palace Chile

The US's imposed dependence on Latin America is reciprocal, but not completely symmetrical. Returning a little to ornithology, the condor, after his life of dictating death in his own judgment, his ends up presumably "committing suicide" then; Like humans, they are animals that depend on socialization. It could be an anticlimactic and unfair ending, but the poetic resolution of this is presented by understanding the action that defeats such a predator: the condor ends its own life when it is too old to continue hunting or is abandoned in total solitude.

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WHAT I FORGOT ABOUT ME Victor Rivera

Alec John Such, one of the founding members of Bon Jovi, recently passed away. When I found out, I was on public transportation, exhausted and bewildered. The truth is that I did not give it much importance. After all, he had a lot to think about, and besides, since 1994 he had been replaced by Hugh McDonald. In addition to this, there is a misconception in the musical field that bass players are the vulnerable part of a band; perhaps the least mediatic and recognizable part of a song.

Something that, of course, has been proved wrong by bands like Iron Maiden, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the Beatles themselves, not to mention songs like 'Under pressure' by Queen and David Bowie.

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At some point, the car stopped at the Niños Héroes station, and the case gradually began to be related to everything. And it is that he had been part of what was my favorite band for a long time, and anyone can imagine the relevance of this. I suddenly felt nostalgic remembering the first time I saw a live video of the band. I had heard some songs on the radio and I would have seen the video for 'Bad Medicine' for sure on VH1, but I never watched anything like that. It was a 1985 concert, where the band played songs from their first and second albums, like 'Tokyo road', 'Only lonely', 'In and out of love', 'Get ready', but without a doubt nothing and nobody prepared for 'Runaway'.

Really, when you listen to those records after almost 40 years, you may not feel anything. The first song will be, if anything, very good, but by the fourth you will want to stop listening. And it's not that they're bad songs, but it's also the moment that is capable of defining moments in your life.

That was my moment, seeing Richie Sambora, performing 'Dry county', being the only guitarist in the band, at a time when “making noise” was the most important thing. When I was 16 I knew some of his riffs, and I even downloaded tablature and sheet music creation programs hoping to be able to understand music theory with glam metal : the intervals, the progressions, the harmonies, everything else, without ever having even taken classes. .

I especially remember the pleasure it gave me to hear the distortion on the guitars, the overdrive that also brought me closer to bands like Def Leppard, Warrant, Poison, Whitesnake, Van Halen and many others. However, it was the pianist, David Bryan, who unknowingly taught me how to play the piano. I took a few classes during those years, but my immaturity kept me from appreciating them. Later, when I was close to 18, I fell in love with the rock and roll that 'Wild in the streets' professed., I began to watch videos, tutorials, and pay for private lessons sporadically. I also listened a lot to what others said and then replied back.

I took the same line that I use to get to work and for a few months it was enough for me to learn simple progressions of songs like 'Always' and 'Bed of roses'. But I still didn't reach my goal. At university I felt strange, because while everyone discussed again and again about the great adventure of Gilgamesh, the Argonauts, the abduction of Europe, the conquests of El Cid and chivalric novels, my mind increasingly translated everything into music, in figures, chords and resolutions. Suddenly, not only was popular music much more accessible, so-called "classical music" also became more interesting.

I put my collection of Bon Jovi records in the drawer under my bed, and my desk began to be decked out with sheet music by Scarlatti and Bach. Little by little I entered Mozart, Haydn and when, according to me, I had already understood him, I made the transition to Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt. Thus, in a disrespectful way, I began to learn everything, the way I understood it, without a teacher, without scores, without technique. Of course, my memory worked at an accelerated rate.

When I had already practiced forturned 2 years old as a pianist, I took music theory classes for a few months, but still without a teacher to practice and without my own piano. Shortly after, I took the exam to enter the Faculty of Music at UNAM. The test was divided into two parts: theoretical and practical.

Some of my friends who had taken the first test, who had been studying even longer than I had, did not pass. Since I did pass it, I thought I was kind of gifted: without a teacher, without prior knowledge, and an extra merit: doing it young and in such a short time.

However, when I took the road test, everything changed. 12-year-olds wore the same pieces as me, but they interpreted them perfectly. They could play at sight, and I could barely follow readings of basic exercises. Of course I didn't stay, and I didn't try again either. I knew then where it really was located.

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It took me a short time to recover, but I abandoned the study routines of more than 8 hours. Without a clear motivation to continue playing, I began to create my own songs and, stranded in what the new generations call “the crisis of the twenties”; life put the music of Fito Páez in front of me. I identified with him a lot: a musician prisoner of his time, who is not technically gifted, but who has a different mind, with ideas that sometimes go beyond him. That's also why I made Argentine rock music to a certain extent my own. When that happened, I didn't know how it was, I realized that I landed in the world very late. He was no longer as young as others, he was no longer as smart as others. But what was lost along the way is not the only thing I want to talk about. I became brave, and my love for music has also surpassed me. My motivation to learn music had been Bon Jovi, but I kept going.

What I can say is that now I can listen to his music, and I imagine playing it in front of my audience, who are the people who are sitting in the car and waiting for me to continue moving forward. I feel that music has defined my life, in the same way that a subway car moves: sometimes the movement is abrupt and sometimes the path is short, but there are those, the very few, where everything goes slowly, and I stop to think, and to enjoy those memories, and it advances one station only to stop at the next, until the end of the road. Enjoying each of these walks is hard, everyday life is not pleasant for anyone, even music can lose its impetus and joy, but what each song gave to each moment of my life is what I treasure today, those "moments ” where Alec was more than just the ex-Bon Jovi bassist, he was something he had forgotten about me.

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XENOPHILIA Indulgent Alterity Ernesto Ocaña

Is it possible to feel nostalgic for things you don't know and places you've never been?

Recognize what does not live in memories and evoke unknown faces in the soul? Can you miss the impenetrable and recondite or yearn for the loves we lost because we never met them in the first place? Once, a long time ago, I had a philosophy professor who claimed it was possible, and sought to capture it through photography, intending to capture the ethos of déjà-vu through his camera in order to force it into people's leering gaze.

The truth is that we always seek to relate to the unknown, but instead of seeking to know it to become intimate with it, we idealize it to possess it. Ancient Rome, upon invading and destroying the Greek world, became so infatuated that its culture disappeared within its obsession and its identity transformed into imitation. There is a rumor that surfs the internet that assures that the faces we see in dreams are always traces of those we’ve seen in the waking world, and that it is impossible to invent faces while sleeping. It's not something that we can actually check with current technology, it will probably never be possible.

However, according to our current understanding of neurological behavior, it is most likely that like most things we consider human, faces in dreams are just mixtures of the elements that have already taken refuge in our minds.

That's what we do with extraterrestrial life, they can be like in E.T. (1982) or in Lilo & Stitch 2002) mysterious friends of fantastic biology, they can give life to social anxieties like the post-terrorist invaders of Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005) or Michael Bay's psychopathic Transformers (2007), or they can inhabit the mechanical space between the erotic and violent like the Xenomorphs designed by HR Giger for Alien (1979). We assign human nature to aliens, spirits and demons, entities that most likely do not exist, at the same time we tend to replace the humanity of cultures and people who very definitely already have one of their own with other more fickle existences.

The mystery of the foreign and the unknown is synonymous with its multiple possibilities.

Alien life takes so many forms in our culture and imagination that possible bacterial life on Jupiter's moons seems dull by comparison. The revelación of a mystery always disappoints our expectations, and for this reason we close ourselves before the majestic possibilities of reality, we prefer our complacent version of things. But like the faces that inhabit our dreams, the foreign in our mind takes the chimerical form of already known desires. The unknown, as long as it remains as such, is usually indulgent with our vices, desires and whims.

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I don't think I can feel nostalgia for the unknown or the foreign, unless I reinterpret it through fetish. Orientalism is the term that encompasses all the stereotypes of the Eastern world as a counterpart to the supposed values of the West, it represents cultural escapism through the objectification of a distant otherness. Our global culture is riddled with Orientalism and nowhere is this clearer than on film, Mulan (1998), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Isle of Dogs (218), The Mummy (1999 ), or Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) are examples of the artistic diversity of the stereotype. The orientalist interpretation of the foreign does not allow intimacy, only objectification and therefore it’s impossible to feel nostalgia for the unknown as long as it does not cease to be unknown.

Orientalism like alien life is full of possibilities and all of them are at least slightly dehumanizing. Aladdin (1992) perfectly exemplifies the aesthetics of Arab orientalism, the palaces of impossible proportions surrounded by abject poverty, the opulence highlighted by a misery that only serves to contextualize luxury on a clearer note. An Orientalist reading describes without analyzing, it is also never rigid, it adapts according to its needs. Eastern women can be seductive creatures with silent mouths, naked stomachs and extremities, modesty liberating and free of decorum; they can also be submissive, infantilized, ignorant and ignored beings, in need of salvation. The same duality is present in India and Japan, in the Philippines, in Cairo, in Hong Kong and in Seoul. They are places at once exotic and alienating, magnificent and oppressive, disgusting and humble, apparently real and undeniably imagined.

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Xenophilia is an impossibility, we cannot truly love what we do not know, that we have not accepted and that has not touched our intimacy. The objectification of what is foreign does not necessarily come from malice or manipulation but usually from possibly intentional ignorance. The gentile orientalism of Wes Anderson in Darjeeling Limited (2007) is, for example, innocent rather than perverse.

Danny Boyle learned with Slumdog Millionaire (2008) that social critique is easier when you don't even know the society you seek to criticize. We speak of a courteous, gallant and even heroic xenophobia, of a prejudice that makes an exception when it can get something in return.

It is such a human trait that perhaps it’s inevitable, we fall in love with the unknown because we can reinvent such a thing at our whim. This is how tourists who visit Cancun

and do not leave their hotel fall in love with Mexico, this is how social media falls in love with the humility and kindness of Keanu Reeves, this is how awkward teenagers fall in love with Korean bands or Japanese subcultures, this is how we fall in love of that neighbor that we see sometimes in the gym and that, in order not cause breakheart to ourselves, we plan never to meet for the first time.

Just like faces in dreams, I cannot form new ideas, only reinterpret the ones I already have, the only way to experience what is foreign to me is by coming into contact with it. A year or two after presenting his first photography exhibition on the nostalgia of the unknown, that professor went on to live in Japan as he had always wanted, with a Murakami book under his arm, a mind full of hope, and delirium in his heart.

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Marcos González “Foreman"

"To paint you need to use everything you have inside and throw it away from you. Any idea about your capacity, speed, depth, is pure foolishness. What matters is to surprise yourself with an emotion and find yourself on another planet..."

Gilberto Aceves Navarro

hMost of the time writing about one's own work is difficult, given the ease with which we begin to ramble about our daily chores. It happens that a single idea jumps to one other, suddenly you want to go back to the beginning and then follow the line of another one... the same thing happens when painting, that stain that was just painted over was apparently very good, however, it unbalances the composition and since it was covered with another stain. Maybe it should not have been covered because that is where the painting was. A lot of my process is like that, back and forth. I start by imagining something, then drawing, then gluing paper together... Will it be worth doing it on a larger scale? Will it be pure acrylic... with oil... and also with aerosol? Straight to oil? Let's get back to our paper.

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My work since I finished studying visual arts at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) has been purely pictorial. I began my exploration of the discursive scope of figurative painting starting from urban landscapes and chromatic scenarios, since in those pieces I denounced through the characters, the fiction of the modern and digital era, the slow progress towards that idyllic future full of welfare. One that nevertheless, still does not arrive for most of society, as well as the uniformity of individuals from capitalism. Later these landscapes were reduced to mere material and abstract compositions of small format, in which the accumulation of paint on the support generated a personal reflection on the pictorial discipline as an exercise of memory and knowledge, as well as a metaphor about the personal construct that originates from the accumulation of experience the same way painting is shaped by the accumulation of gestures about support. After that process of exploration between "figurative" and "abstract" painting, my process has become a back and forth combining both languages, quoting songs that play while I am either smearing paintings or drawing, using photographs taken from my archive in which are portrayed old buildings, demolished and covered with graffiti, this is because I am interested in that nature of abandonment in the city, that which stands out before the polished, the chromed and already accepted is what really catches my attention.

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During the last years I have worked from and through cumbia, because as a child on Saturdays I listened to the sonidero in the distance, from eight or nine at night until about one in the morning. I did not know that people went to the sonideros to dance, I only heard greetings and good cumbia music. At some point I had the opportunity to see one of those live shows and I remember the excitement brought to me by the color of the lights and the rhythmic dancing, the movement of the light show. How could I hang onto those colors? That was my question as a child. Suddenly when I began to paint, I discovered that there were colors similar to those lights in acrylic pots. From my memory I began to explore the neon colors, the undertaking took me several years. It ended with a couple of series of paintings, of medium and large format in which I deposited what I had learned in those years, chromatic rhythms, neon atmospheres that wandered within the space of the painting, compositions that danced within the painting, I titled them "The sound of cumbia".

Currently my work is in the process of reformulation. I just recently displayed a series of drawings entitled "Much art, little fun". It was not in a gallery but in a skateboard store. Sometimes you have to take a break and create distance from what you do and see what else can emerge, what new paths can be taken and above all, try not to lose the curiosity and the spark that produced all those years of work. There are always ideas, there are always art pieces in my head that want to come out. Which ones will come out? Which ones won't? Will they be paintings, animations or installations?

@foreman_one marcos.fore@gmail.com

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M.I. Flores Nachón

EVENTUALLY, all the fish will die Artificial Intelligence and the road that leads to the death of art

Flores, María (2022) Eventualmente, los peces van a morir. [Obra digital realizada a partir de Dall-E. Programa de IA]

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One could already count with the fingers of one hand the number of times I have devoted articles to the discussion of what is art and still, the conversation is far from over. Recently the sphere took a turn with the heated confrontation that arose from the work Théâtre D'opera Spatial (2022) by Jason Allen. Winner of first place at the Colorado State Fair in the digital art category, the work received an unmeasurable amount of negative comments for being described as an Artificial Intelligence production.

"We are watching the death of art unfold before our eyes" Direct quote from users on Twitter.

Allen, Jason (2022) Théâtre D’opera Spatial [ Obra digital realizada a partir de Midjourney. Programa de IA]

Artistic production has been separated from other traditionally visual fields and is facing what conservative scholars call The Death of Art. From Hegelian understanding, art has been presented in stages. The first is the Symbolic, with manifestations directly linked to a cultic and ritual religious sense. A second stage, known as Classic, is understood from an anthropomorphic turn that centers the entire image from and through the man. The third stage is known as the Romantic, in which man faces his own finitude. The human being understands his death and becomes aware of his ephemeral stay.

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Kosuth, Joseph (1965) Una y Tres sillas

Holzner, Jenny (1990) Men don't protect us anymore

The art detaches itself from the image. The image is nothing more than an envelope of rational content, linked to the spirit of the time and the world's thought system. Without recognizing the above, art is not understood and its appreciation and pleasure is decimated. Art becomes not something to see, but something to understand and the balancing of both sides. With the twists, turns, and changes in the stages of artistic production, it is considered that the manifestation that had resembled the concept is no longer art.

Examples like One and Three Chairs (1965) by Joseph Kosuth, the late Hermann Nitsch pioneer of Viennese Actionism, and Jenny Holzner with Men Don't Protect Us Anymore (1990), demonstrate that art goes beyond an image, defying even the canons of beauty, and managing to compose art from the formulation of sentences, concepts. However, we have been shown that understanding is not always compatible with taste.

Nitsch, Hermann. Performance

Jason Allen, the producer of Théâtre D'opera Spatial, defends his image as art. And without falling into etymological repetitions, art is technique. I join Allen's defense, and even more so with his argument of the more than 80 hours, 900 images, and alterations he sought to reach the final result. The work was the result of the union of concepts, phrases, sentences, variations, and editions in PhotoShop made from the inspired mind of Allen in conjunction with an Artificial Intelligence image generator program.

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There is talk of a lack of creativity on behalf of Allen who has declared himself a non-artist, however, I find fault with the argument after stopping to think about the time it takes to just sit down to write a congruent sentence.Much more taking into account how complicated it is to make this congruent sentence aesthetically pleasing and getting it to match the image that I had in mind.

It would be necessary to define art in order to be able to judge if it has died or if it is something else that has come to an end.

Art, as Professor Laurence LeBouhellec always said, escapes its definition. If our definition of art is limited to a narrative history painting of a war scene, why would we deny the works of Hermann Nitsch? If we analyze the content and the way of thinking, there is no difference between the two. Another great example would be, Jenny Holzer, in essence, produces not something alien to The Rape (1868) by Edgar Degas. Art has adjusted to the spirit of the time and the world's thought system. Part of this transformation of the image has to do with technology, causing an artistic and technological rethinking that escapes style.

People talk about a Death of Art when they really should talk about a Death of Art History because it is not artistic production that has ceased, but rather the way of classifying art that has become obsolete due to the fact that the art object has now got rid of its visible envelope, and is covered with more conceptual content.

Finally, I want to close with a hopeful comment and an ironic one; Let us remember that for every end, there is a beginning.

From the Death of Art there is a rebirth and this is nothing more and nothing less than the definition of the work itself. The producer is the one who decides whether or not his work is artistic production. On the other hand, it seems that Jason Allen's work is fascinating, from its production process to its culmination and its aesthetic veil. It is a beautiful piece to appreciate, even from my screen. We complain about ugly art, we complain about beautiful art. In short, nothing pleases us.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Alfredo Brotón Muñoz.Lessons on Aesthetics. Akal, 2007.

Danto, Arthur C, and Elena Neerman Rodríguez.After The End Of Art.

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Degas, Edgar (1868) La Violación [Óleo sobre tela]

No, no…

listen, listen Rossanna Huerta Romero

No, no... seriously, listen to this album: Shuffle Drones. It's one of those albums that can make you travel through time, inspire you or bring out the tears you've had stuck in your eyes for the last couple of weeks.

It is a 13 song album that is easily just 13 minutes or even 13,000 minutes of different combinations between each of the songs.

This is because each song is designed to fit with the beginning of the next song to make it seem like the 2nd song is still part of the first song, thus creating what seems to be an endless loop.

It's not classical music, it's not white sound, the best I could describe it is as ambient orchestra with no end and no beginning. Use in order to disrupt your listening habits and imagine a thousand new worlds.

Enjoy.

Album available on Spotify and Youtube.

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Instructions for authors @catarticarevista catarticarevista@outlook.com catarticarevista@gmail.com

If you are interested in participating in the magazine, you should take into account the following guidelines: All manuscripts or works must be sent to the official Catártica mail, with their corresponding translation into English or Spanish.

All papers received will be submitted for review by the members of Catártica for their selection and publication.

If the editor deems it pertinent, he may make changes and corrections in the writing and style of the manuscripts.

The file must follow the following format: Microsoft Word Arial font Font size in twelve points The upper and lower margins should be 2.5 centimeters and the left and right must be 3 centimeters.

The line spacing should be 1.5 The images and illustrations must be cited in APA format and in addition to sending them in the file, attach them in JPG, PNG or PDF format.

Magazine Director María Inés Flores Nachón @notae_stethicallypleasing maines_flores@live.com Vice-director and Cover design Antonella Guagnelli Cuspinera @antonella_gc antonella.guagnelli@gmail.com Head Editor Fernanda Loutfe Orozco @ferorozco ferlorozco@hotmail.com Editorial Design Junuen Caballero Soto @junuencaballero junuen.caballero@gmail.com Sara Valeria Puch Ramos @vaaalsssp valeriapramos2106@gmail.com Social Media Antonella Guagnelli Cuspinera @antonella_gc antonella.guagnelli@gmail.com Diana Carolina Gomez Ortiz @dcgo98 diana.gomezoz@udlap.mx Emma Patricia Zamudio Salas @emma.zamudio.92 emma.zamudioss@udlap.mx Artists and writers Antonella Guagnelli Bruno Sánchez Ernesto Ocaña María Inés Flores Marcos González “Foreman" Victor Rivera Rossanna Huerta