Wow, I’ve definitely not been as impressed with an event at school as I have been with this one. From start to finish it was a great occasion. First off, the marketing for the event was direct in the sense that it was adderssed to me at my home, rather than an e-mail bulletin…the card was well designed and asked for an RSVP, with a postage paid envelope, felt good about sending that one in…The best part was it was FREE with FOOD(two positive four letter words, and a great attraction for recent alums)!

The show itself, held in the historic Diego Rivera gallery, was really well lighted and very crisp. I have to say that the image that moved me the most was a portrait of Mark Rothko smoking a cigarette taken by Bill Heick, studendt from 1946-1949. Alumni from the first 10 years of the program were present at the opening to chat with students and members of the public. It was indeed a great forum to just get a chat in with someone who shares the same passion as you do, 60 years removed…
The lecture about Minor White and the affect he and Ansel Adams had on the program, and afterwards the floor was opened for anecdotes by the former students. Particualarly I found Imogen Cunningham story, of “kumquat jam exchange” to me the most satisfying…becasue it delved into lives of the artists and students beyond the walls of 800 Chestnut street.
The next morning, a similar event was staged, with the discussion being moderated by Jack Fulton, the present head of the photo department, and again the stories were fabulous. I’m imagining that they recorded the audio and are archiving it in the library. I highly recommend it, what a lovely time…the talk was then followed by an open lunch to the public where we had the opportunity to mingle with everyone who had just spoken, and talk about digital photography, camera gear, and just the personalities of the people who touched alum’s lives.
Overall, I’m very pleased to be a part of something like this, it brings honor the San Francisco Art Institute, and it re-invigorates bonds with alumni. Specifically this art school seems to be in constant flux, and it’s nice to see that through all it’s ups and downs, art is still being produced, and a verbal-historical-pictorial record is being handed down directly artist to artist.

Specifically regarding the year 1492 in the history of Spain and the Nuevo Mundo. What boggles my mind, particularly was that the empire was so vast, and that the country itself was quite small and not really that populous. My professor joked that the biggest exports were “conquistadores y misioneros”…and the downfall of the Empire? Gold…because the folks in Spain stopped producing goods, and there was a cultural drain from the expulsion of the Jews (financiers), and the Muslims (industrialists, and producers of Silk). What also struck me was the first king of unified Spain didn’t speak Castellian.

Sooo, I got a MOPED…granted it needs a bit of work, i.e. it doesn’t run yet, however my good buddy Nate is coming over to help me out on Tuesday…I think I can handle the wait till then. This is the same model from the MOPED ARMY sitea 1981 Puch Newport II (and now you can see the improvement to hypermodern.net, I’ve included indications for external links and wikipedia links…thanks to software guide in Germany for this awesome link indication plugin.

In other news, I went on a little walk to the park today because it was so beautiful (San Francisco summers are in September and October) and there were some kids breaking a pinata in Alta Plaza Park. So there’s a new photoset in the gallery (the blue icon at the top of the page that looks like a camera)…once again demonstrating the mix of cultural influence of Mexico in California. Oh and by the way, if you want to call Mexico cheap…T-Mobile has a great deal where you can pay 5 bucks a month and then get 5 cents/min…it’s maybe a bit more than a calling card, but hey, it’s mad-convenient.

So continuing the post about “Leyenda Negra” I met with a good friend of mine, Edwin at his house on Friday, and brought my friend Craig (the one with the glass).

Here’s what Mr. Clark had to say about Utopia…

“Utopia is a mental concept which to make real has to assume identity to be recognized, meaning to appear in mind as there the then moment would be Utopian and subject immediately to change, which results in the reality being non-Utopian as the result of action. One could say the introduction of time is Utopian, but the immediate moment passing destroys the Utopian essence of time. Time reveals all things in inspection to be flawed except ART. ART is then perserved. The real World is subject to criticism so it can progress. This progress is seen to be flawed in an endless process that essentially never reaches Utopia as an appearance or is NIHILISM. Utopia is the Modern Myth that governs the Enlightenment and Liberal thought. Utopia cannot appear, CANNOT REACH RECOGNITION IN BEING. This imaginary concept, known as Liberal thought, finds itself outside the ruling principle of understanding the time the persona is in as real time in perception beyond technical processes, which essentially do not express time but are continuous within fixed parameters of thought. Science, therefore, does not progress and is the Modern Illusion of progress. Science is the expression of the Illusion of progress. The conception of Utopia cannot be, therefore cannot ground the Human mind in reality as action. The conception of the moment offers progress.”

To me the most important part is the last statement about the conception of the moment. Specifically I find it cripling to fathom the potential for annihilation in the world today, and that, to me, is why political art (when it’s only a political statement) fails.

Political art is easy when it’s a knee-jerk reaction to go against whatever it’s protesting. Would it be fair to say that the great majority of general artwork is political in its creation? I really like the article on Paul Chan in Art Forum in the summer issue…

“Collective social power needs the language of politics, which means, among other things, that people need to consolidate identities, to provide answers…to make things happen. Whereas my art is nothing if not the dispersion of power…And so, in a way, the political project and the art project are sometimes in opposition.”

Scott Rothkopf, the interviewer, is also clear to point out…”Surely we could draw a line between his video installations and his on-the-ground involvement with certain activist groups…The point, then, is not so much to delimit the aesthetic and the political but rather to relish the productve possibilities of their mutual contimination.”

Mr. Rothkopf really hits it out of the park there with the sweet-sassy-mo-lassy pop of an art critic on his “A-game”. So when is it ok to have that “art as life” intent…that’s something for the next post.

Sunny day, originally uploaded by hypermodern - Pete Ippel.

With a great book, at Alta Plaza.

Congratulations to Fiid and Suz…a beautiful bouncing baby boy!

lotus carbon bike, originally uploaded by hypermodern - Pete Ippel.

Down town by Sutter and Kearny

So I stopped by to see the new hardware, and they only had the Nanos around…pretty nice feel of the cold metal rather than that glossy plastic from the old ones.  Specifically I’m interested in the new 80 gig one seems like it could be a mobile portfolio, as if I kept it around all the time, I would be able to show my work wherever I am regardless of internet connection, or if I brought my laptop.

I have to say that post-collegiate learning is really amazing…now granted, I’m still ‘in college’ because of my night classes over at CCSF, but I have to say that motivation is really flowing…

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about today…

1. International cell phone calling for 5 cents a minute; I signed up today with T-Mobile to pay a small premium (like 4 bucks a month or something) and then I get 5 cent minutes…now I know you can get cheaper rates with tarjetas de telefono, but the convenience is worth the extra few bucks a month…so I called my Abuelita (who lives in Guadalajara, Mexico) today and we chatted for about 40 mins. Now here’s the best part…I could understand and speak it was just like a game, I mean I really am feeling like I’m getting to KNOW Spanish. It’s super exciting, it’s like gaining a huge access to a culture that really interests me specificaly in regards to the “remix”…more on that later…

2. “Leyenda Negra” or “Black Legend” in English it’s the perception that somehow Spain is more malicious in what they did historically than say France, England, or the United States…the separation, at least to me, is that elimination is different than combination, whether it’s forced or not. Simply put, when Manifest Destiny happend, we (or at least our elected officials) put the Native Americans into government sanctioned areas or reservations. In South Africa, there was government sanctioned Apartheid, the results of which you can see below…

.

When the Spanish arrived, soldiers were predominently the ones who traveled (as when virtually any army goes to conquer, they leave the majority of the women and children at home) so the 200 or so that landed were the ones changing that culture at that very instant. I’m reminded of quantum mechanics here, because of the similarity to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which in my interpretation states basically that the moment one investigates a system, the state of that system changes instantly. (Now here’s where it gets super interesting) In terms of the history books that I have been exposed to in the USA, pretty much everything that the folks from Spain did was horrible, they brought dissease, raped, pillaged, and just looked for gold, destroying everything in their paths. Now, here’s the new info from Abuelita…

Right before the Spainish arrived, in North America, specifically in regards to Mexico, the Aztec people lived on an island and for whatever reason the fish started to die, and large numbers of people died of hunger. Unacceptable to the leaders of the tribe, they moved on, looking for a sign, as the legend goes, an eagle on a cactus with a serpent in its talons.

One other important piece of this story is that at the same time, just before the Spanish arrived, the Toltec people had scads of culture…poets, architects, music, dance, and according to the Abuela, even more than the Maya..(very similar to the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula who in 1492, lost their final strong-hold in Granada to the Castillian army from the north.The result of that battle was a people ignorant and supersticious were left of remnants of what existed before…thereby combining the moorish residuals with their own belief systems and culture)

Again, in regard to Mexico, the Aztec people brought their own supersticions and religions and warfare to what is now the Districto Federal or Mexico City (the world’s most populated urban area, I think). A New world equivilent to the “Dark Ages”. So the Aztecs conquered the Toltecs and used them in their sacrifices and they wanted to offer palpatating hearts to the gods…a heart will only beat for 6 seconds after it’s removed, and using obsidian knives, the Aztecs were able to execute this task (pun intended) with the utmost urgency…so needless to say the Toltec people were anxious to change their situation, and actually HELPED OUT the Spanish in order to get their way of life back without fear…little did they know that disease and other factors would reduce the population of all native peoples indescriminately…again Abuela quoted 20 million people down to about 3 million due to Smallpox alone. (I learned a new vocab word here, viruela en Espanol).

Montezuma also made a few errors (again depending on who you read or hear),

• He thought that that the horses and man were one being
• He gave away women as gifts (perhaps the birth of machismo)
• He thought they were vikings (because of light hair and eyes) or related to Catzequatl
• The most important of all, he gave them gifts of GOLD…which made them greedy…they should have just stuck with chocolate and flowers (which are a girls best friend…oh wait, that’s diamonds…and we’re back to African repression by the English *read De Beers*)

When I asked my abuela if the gold and disease didn’t happen would the Spanish still have dominated the culture, and I was suprised that she said yes. She mentioned that they would just keep bringing more and more soldiers over…my thoughts on this are:

• Over history it’s very rare that warriors lose when fighting a *DEFENSIVE* battle that costs a lot of money for the attacking country.
• If they can achieve stalemate, the attackers will withdraw…i.e. the Revolutionary War in the US, Vietnam, and presently Iraq…

So Back to the remix idea, here’s the path I see…
1. Rome defeats Iberia, brings Catholicism and integrates it with pagan traditions in the new land, and people breed, new culture with aspects of both.
2. Castillia kicks out the Moors after 8 centuries in 1492 integrates with Morish archecture (mission style) and music (Flamico) and other traditions. People breed, new culture with aspects of both.
3. Spain goes to “New Spain” brings everyting from before plus integrates with Native culture, specificly ideas of mother earth (Virgin of Guadalupe), and and the woman as an object (Malinche and Machismo)
4. Mexico moves north the first time, is met with cowboys soldiers etc. US steals the land fair and square, becasue of Manifest Destiny says we can, and we derserve it…just like we got Manhattan for some brightly colored beads…Minimal integration happens (as the US takes the stand that intermixing is bad, and it’s much better to only be white *evidence slavery and reservations for Indians*)
5. Which takes us to the present. Culturally Mexico has never forgiven the United States for taking their land, (California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico) and has been trying to re-integrate ever since. The biggest development so far is the proposed installation of the Minute Men on the southern border, (which seems like a short-sited spending of funds when we have a “war on terror” going on)…And as I posted yesterday, there’s so much art that draws on this identity in question…

One other thing to ponder…is the economic impact of this legislation, if there are no more migrant workers, all the people who are advocating for the border protection will have to pay more for house cleaning, field workers, janitors, etc. Plus the costs of soldier’s salries, more fences, legal costs…wouldn’t it make more sense to open the borders for trade both culturally and economically (which I thought we tried to do with NAFTA)?

On a more profound note…how can people be illegal, what is the nature of the entitlement to live in the United States?

]]> http://hypermodern.net/archives/leyenda-negra-and-the-cultural-remix-vs-state-sanctioned-separation/feed/ http://hypermodern.net/archives/recent-developments/ http://hypermodern.net/archives/recent-developments/#comments Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:02:17 +0000 hypermodern http://hypermodern.net/archives/recent-developments/ 1. Geotagging photos: I’ve started using WWMX on the PC and highly recommend it…it makes tagging photos with coordinates as easy as drag and drop. 2. How do you answer the question of when a blog changes to be a “website” I’m interested what constitutes each… 3. I can hardly feel my left pinky and half my [...]]]>

1. Geotagging photos: I’ve started using WWMX on the PC and highly recommend it…it makes tagging photos with coordinates as easy as drag and drop.
2. How do you answer the question of when a blog changes to be a “website” I’m interested what constitutes each…
3. I can hardly feel my left pinky and half my ring-finger, I have a case of “cubital tunnel syndrome” and it’s from pressure on the elbow and hand…and I know I got it from shooting photos with a long zoom, and then sitting at a computer and resting on my elbows…

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