16

India, Mumbai, 2008

Soy Maíz

Bandra, Mumbai, India, 2009

Cuidate del terrorismo político

El proyecto Public Messages: Drawing for Peace incluye una colección de mensajes visuales que invitan o incitan a la paz. Todos estos mensajes son plasmados dentro del espacio público, pues buscan llegar al habitante común de las ciudades (Nueva York, Paris, y cualquier otra urbe donde alguien decida unirse y tomar acción).

Más que perpetuar estos mensajes, la idea es que sean parte de una comunicación efímera, pasajera, y que por lo mismo, por esa flexibilidad temporal que caracteriza al arte en la calle, adquieren mayor relevancia y logran mayor impacto.

Comunicación anti dogmática que invita a la reflexión, cpara desarrollar una conciencia colectiva, en forma accidental y cotidiana, en torno a una de las dualidades con mayor peso sociocultural en la historia humana: Paz / Guerra.

“Cuídate del terrorismo poético... podría hacerte pensar”

Dibujando por la Paz con fundamentos en uno de los grandes axiomas del activismo artístico: el Terrorismo Poético ideado por Hakim Bey. Representa una invitación a tergiversar nuestro propio sistema biocreativo para “estirar” el modelo de creencias que nos rige, y con esto combatir la hegemonía y la monotonía, complementos alimenticios ideales para los grupos de poder.

Dibujando por la Paz te invita a dibujar por la Paz
Piensa un instante sobre la Paz
¿Qué imaginas? ¿Cómo se siente?
¿Es un sentimiento abstracto o un recuerdo de la infancia?
¿Es una canción de una noche veraniega, el vasto y sublime horizonte, los ojos de un amigo, el sueño de una humanidad compasiva, o un ave revoloteando alrededor de unas navajas? ¿Podría ser un dibujo?

Dibujando por la Paz quiere inspirar a individuos a expresar sus interpretaciones de lo que es la Paz a través de dibujos en el espacio público, en las calles.

Si te interesa contribuir a esta iniciativa, dibuja tu Paz en las calles, documéntalo, y envíalo con tus datos a la gente de Drawing for Peace: aarhughes@gmail.com

DrawingforPeace.org

Terrorismo Poético de Hakim Bey

http://arteycallejero.blogspot.com/2009/05/terrorismo-poetico-dibujando-por-la-paz.html

Mexico City: Growth at a limit?

Around the globe cities are being confronted with the need to turn their attention to their expansion beyond their administrative boundaries, and to the formation of vast metropolitan regions. The consequence of this metropolitanisation is that local authorities are being outgrown, bringing about the inefficiency in urban governance and planning. Mexico City began its metropolitanisation process in the 1950s and its sustained growth has made it into one of the world’s largest metropolitan regions. Today, the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is made up of the 16 boroughs of the Federal District, 58 municipalities of the State of Mexico, and one from the State of Hidalgo. Of the total population of over 18 million inhabitants, around 8.6 million live within the Federal District and 9.7million live in the State of Mexico.

For the last thirty years the governments of the State of Mexico and the Federal District have attempted to create coordinated measures to deal with the problem of metropolitanisation. The recognition of the need to create a comprehensive strategy for the metropolitan area by the different actors involved in the city is already a significant step forward. An example of such attempts was the establishment, in 1998, of the Executive Commission for Metropolitan Coordination. However, from the moment of its creation until its demise in 2000 the Commission held only three plenary meetings and adopted 30 agreements, which failed to integrate practical policies into a strategic metropolitan vision. A sign of political will and momentum is the reinstatement of the Commission in October 2005, led by the national Minister of the Interior, and the Governors of the State of Mexico and the Federal District.

The important advancements in democracy that are taking place in the country are adding to the complexity of the political setting of Mexico City and working as a further challenge to the governability of the city. The undoubtedly positive fact that the mayor of the Federal District is now directly elected, together with the expanded responsibilities given to its Executive and Legislative organs, have had the negative effect of making the relations between the State of Mexico and the Federal District increasingly complicated. An additional obstacle to the governability of the city is the fact that today the Federal District, the State of Mexico, and the Federal Government are led by the country’s three main opposing political parties. This complex political landscape adds salience to the argument that metropolitan governance cannot rely on a voluntaristic and contractual model as it has done in the past.

The greatest challenge posed to metropolitan governability and the main reason for urgent coordination is the shared use of services and infrastructure across administrative boundaries, which puts an unequal burden on the two governing entities. The infrastructure necessary for the metropolis to function well is, in practice, shared by the inhabitants of the Federal District and the State of Mexico. A significant number of people traverse the administrative boundaries which divide the two entities on a daily basis, thus adding to the pressure on the infrastructure in both political districts. The costs of this are absorbed separately by the two districts; investment and strategic planning of these infrastructures is not done in a coordinated fashion, although in practice they constitute a unified network

One of the biggest problems the metropolitan area of Mexico City is currently facing is the water crisis. For over three decades the Federal District has turned to the State of Mexico for the provision of water. The distribution of this resource, however, has been notably uneven both across the metropolitan region and within the Federal District itself. At present, the metropolitan region as a whole is facing a serious crisis as to how to cope with rising demand, when most of the nearby resources are drying out. Already today, disadvantaged areas are experiencing severe shortages, meaning that water is becoming an important factor for social and political confrontation.

The total population of the metropolitan area is almost equally divided between the Federal District and the State of Mexico. However, urban growth is now almost exclusive to the State of Mexico and the trend for the future is that population growth in the Federal District will stabilise, whereas that of the State of Mexico will steadily rise. Until today, this phenomenon has not been dealt with in a unified way by the bodies that constitute the metropolitan area, but rather localised policies have exacerbated this trend. An example of this is how the Federal District’s policy to densify the central boroughs, and to constrain growth beyond this area, has promoted the massive urbanisation of the State of Mexico. This not only means an increasing burden with regard to public investment, provision of services and infrastructure, but also that the population with lower incomes is concentrating in the State of Mexico, adding further complexity to the existing patterns of social inequality and segregation.

The Metropolitan Area of Mexico City continues to offer the highest levels of quality of life, and yet poverty and marginality are still lower here than in other areas of the country. It is the region that contributes most to the existing high levels of inequality. The historical divide within the Federal District between the affluent west and south and the poor north and east is being intensified by rising inequality and segregation between the Federal District and the municipalities of the State of Mexico that make up the metropolitan region.

Author: Iliana Ortega-Alcazar

http://www.urban-age.net/03_conferences/conf_mexicoCity.html

Gentrify this!!!

El pasado fin de semana se llevó a cabo en Londres el “Can Festival”, en el cual gente como Banksy, Jeff Aerosol y otros mavericks callejeros, se juntaron para regenerar, a través del arte urbano, un túnel abandonado de la estación de Waterloo.

Se pudieron ver enormes filas de asistentes para presenciar este evento al que algunos consideran "el evento más espectacular de arte callejero en un túnel de Waterloo". A la entrada de esta cavidad urbana se leía un cartel publicitario con la leyenda "Gentrify This", retando a la iniciativa privada y las autoridades a intentar recuperar el espacio a través de la destrucción y reubicación de la gente local, un proceso ya reconocido por su estupidez perceptiva de parte de las autoridades y por su absoluta falta de eficacia real.

Somos hombres de maíz.

El maíz es un elemento primordial en nuestra alimentación, y parte fundamental del axis mundi cultural y cosmogónico en México. Su domesticación genética, llevada a cabo a lo largo de miles de años por nuestros grupos ancestrales, corre riesgo de ser neutralizada con la entrada del maíz transgénico a nuestro país.
Une tu voz y tu intención para defenderlo.

Corn is a primordial element in our alimentation, and a fundamental part of the axis of the cultural and cosmic world in Mexico. Its genetic domestication, carried on through thousands of years by our ancesters, runs the risk of being neutralized with the entrance of transgenic corn into our country.
Speak out and defend it.

Hakim Bey,Taz

Poetic Terrorism

WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.

Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.

Go naked for a sign.

Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.

Grafitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public momuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...

The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails.

PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.

An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.

Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.

Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz1.html#labelPoeticTerrorism

Para explorar...

Terrestrial and virtual research into new ways of making and listening to music.
http://www.musicforbodies.net/

This site is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.
http://www.woostercollective.com/

Radical fiction from Italy since the 20th century. Slightly more than expected from a band of novelists. Designed, upkept and constantly revamped by the authors of Q and 54.
http://www.wumingfoundation.com/