Moving

Moving was the highlight of the past months. I could not stand living in a decaying neighborhood with drug dealers, thieves and very bizarre people around me. I wated to get the full American experience: I got it, now ENOUGH... I needed to get out of there. It is still a bizarre place where I am, but at least I can see peacocks every morning when I go to work. I am also not worried about having friends over, their cars will definitely be safe...

Tania Bruguera - Performance

Estoy en shock. Que doble moral!!! Cuando es en la privacidad de una casa, en los baños del congreso, en la pista de baile de una discoteca, ahi si no importa si meten coca, pero cuando se contextualiza como uno de los agentes del conflicto colombiano ( en donde un paramilitar, una guerrillera y la coca tienen igual peso) se vuelve un problema moral.

Cada una de las personas que consumio la cocaina demostro que tambien es parte del conflicto, al mismo tiempo que los agentes "de carne y hueso" con las armas.

Es por eso que se tiene que entender en el contexto del arte. El performance agrega capas de percepcion que no son susceptibles de ser verbalizadas, tienen que ser "sentidas" durante el proceso.

En el momento en que se empieza a escribir y a descontextualizar cada uno de los componentes del proyecto, el performance deja de ser performance y se convierte en literatura, un genero totalmente distinto.

Que horror la hipocresia del pais... Por eso me duele tanto cuando uno sale a rumbear y ve a todo el mundo "empericado" y llamando a los dealers, sin darse cuenta que con esas acciones estan participando directamente en la guerra. Esto es lo que estudie en mi proyecto "Cabaret", como sin darnos cuenta somos actores pasivos del conflicto. Echenle un ojo en mi sitio web. Por eso siempre he sido partidario de la legalizacion de la droga en el pais, se le quita la tercera pata a una mesa de tres patas, y se trata el problema como un problema de salud publica no de seguridad publica.

Electronics Alive 5

I love what is going on at Electronics Alive. We had Cynthia Lawson, Anthony Lamolinara, David Grad, Bruce Wands and Chrsitina Hung giving AMAZING lectures on diverse topics such as Digital Tools and Branding , Biological Art, Commercial 3D Animation... It has been amazing.

If you are in Tampa, it is a MUST, come to the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery 310 N Boulevard, Tampa, FL, 33606 before March 24th and enjoy. This only happens once every 2 years ( we wish t would be every semester... :-) )

Jaque Mate

My mom called me on thursday, around 4 in the afternoon. She sounded very happy: my brother had just told her that Ingrid had been liberated. Even though I was in the middle of my last class, I answered the phone, and interrupted the critique to look for the news on every single Colombian web site. Well, sure enough, they were all down, I guess every single Colombian was trying to see the news online. I have to admit I was happy, and the grades for the final projects were certainly affected by my mood :-) 

I'm glad none of my dreams came true. I found out that when you talk about your dreams they never happen. So get ready, I will keep on blogging about them!

Colombia has never won an international competition like the football world cup or Gold medals in some big sports in the Olympics, or never won an Oscar for a Colombian film, or anything like that. We won Miss Universe in 1958 and that's it... The news of the liberation of the 15 hostages on July the 3rd  must feel just like winning an international award. We gave it ourselves as Colombians.

Let everybody say what they want: it was a government  setup for Uribe's third reelection, they payed 20 million dollars for the kidnappees... whatever... the result is what really matters, the 15 hostages are FREE, some of them after 10 years of being in concentration camps... and the FARC are in the lowest moment of their shameful history. Uribe won, the FARC lost.

Just like Betty Davis said when Joan Crawford died: "You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good... The FARC are dead. GOOD."

INGRID

I dreamt last night that Ingrid died in the jungle, and the FARC were hiding her death. Even though she is in a humid and warm weather, she died of pneumonia (????) or something in her lungs... And then I could see everybody in the world blaming Uribe, making him responsible of her death... 

That's exactly what is going to happen if we keep on playing the FARC's game. They want the government to release the captured killers, kidnappers, murderers, drug dealers that are in jail - including Sonia and Simon in the US - in order to release the people they kidnapped years ago. The FARC are arguing that the prisoners in Colombian jails are in worse situations than the people they have in the jungle! HA! 

If there are no FARC prisoners then they can be treated as an independent political group and they can be officially sponsored by their friends in neighboring countries... This is so twisted... But what else can you expect from such an evil group. They live in a different era with such a radical view of the world that they can only fight to preserve and make their point of view prevail. In Landmark talk, they are so immersed in their rackets and inauthenticities that they will fight until the end to prove they are right. Of course people will argue that this could also be the case of the Colombian government, but here is the difference, the government is following a set of rules, a constitution, and it is supposed to fight and preserve the integrity of these laws and the people who follow these laws. We cannot compare both attitudes, one is immersed in the illegality and the other one is immersed in a democratic environment.

I already chose my side, and believe me, it is NOT the FARC.

The s**t hit the fan!

I am still worried. It has been well documented that Chavez has recently bought a lot of very sophisticated war tools. He is ready to attack anyone, and all that he needs is an excuse. According to the FARC the next president of the US will be Barak Obama, and they are convinced he will not support the Plan Colombia and the TLC ( free trade agreement) which means - according to their view - the country will be weakened at multiple levels and ready to be defeated in case of war. ( Oh Hillary, where art thou??? :-) )

Is history repeating itself? Are we facing the same situation when Churchill was warning the world about Hitler and everybody said the Germans would never do anything?

Sometimes as a normal citizen you can feel totally powerless. This is one of those moments where I feel so small and feeble that I am just afraid. I see the comments of the French regretting the death of Raul Reyes, knowing that all they care about is Ingrid: once she is free they will totally forget about the rest of the kidnapees. I see the presidents of Peru, Bolivia, Argentina (and she was supposed to be Fabulous...) supporting Correa in his allegations about the supposed invasion of the Colombian armed forces to his territory but never condemning the presence of illegal foreign guerrillas in Ecuador. Are Colombians just blind and we do not see what the rest of the world sees??? NOOO... we have been suffering in our own flesh what those foreigners perceive through foreign history books, news and theorists. It is so easy to perceive the conflict from the comfort of the living room, romanticizing a 45 year old guerrilla that has isolated itself from any progress in the modern world, and would do anything to win a war based on anachronistic ideals ( so they can keep on drinking Buchanan ... )

It is these kind of distorted messages that make any one disagreeing with the communist guerrillas or ideologies a paramilitary by default. The conflict has been turned into such a manichaean scheme that there is no room in between... I have never nor will ever be a supporter of anyone who uses guns to impose their beliefs, and even less when these are not traditional guns such as gas pipes, chainsaws or poisonous snakes.

Now that I am staying a couple of weeks in Colombia, I am experiencing all the anger and frustration of a country that is betrayed by its neighbors. We Colombians see the operation against the FARC as a blow they will hardly recover. But why was Chavez so angry about Raul Reyes's death? Why did he make such a fuss about it? Why did he do a minute of silence for this criminal and never did anything for other dead Venezuelans? Did he know that all the information that compromises his government with the guerrillas was going to float to the surface? Why is Correa saying that it is impossible that computers can survive bombs?? (Mr. Correa, it is not the computer that survives, it is the Hard Drive... and believe me, those can be pretty sturdy).

I think we needed the s**t to hit the fan to finally see the true colors of our "friends" and their politics of deception. Con amigos asi, para que enemigos...

Mico Mandante

Pues si, estoy preocupado con la falta de claridad de Chavez. Ahi hay gato encerrado. Hacerle un minuto de silencio a Reyes es como hacerle un minuto de silencio a Osama Bin Laden. Creo que estamos pasando por un momento historico bien grande, pero a a vesz asustador. Quien sabe que mas informacion va a salir de los computadores capturados. Ojala alguien en Venezuela tenga cordura... Las pataletas de niño rabioso no se pueden dar a nivel diplomatico.

Hace como dos meses me soñe que Venezuela atacaba a Colombia, especificamente Cucuta, Riohacha, Barranquilla y Santa Marta ( curiosamente no se veia nada en Cartagena, creo que Chavez no es tan idiota de atacar una ciudad patrimonio mundial... espero) y Ortega aprovechaba para invadir a San Andres. Lo que no vi fue el tercer agente, Correa en Ecuador. Pero la cosa les salia muy mal, y terminaba Miraflores bombardeado por aviones españoles y los caraqueños celebrando la caida de Chavez... fue un sueño intenso. Ojala se quede solo en eso, un sueño ( excepto la parte de los caraqueños celebrando, que no solamente serian ellos los unicos en el mundo)

So you think you can dance

Ok... here you are going to notice how much I like TV.

Tonight was the finale of "So you think you can dance". I saw every single episode of this show. I was hooked from the very beginning. I had my doubts, thinking it was going to be the same mediocrity of American Idol ( of course, thanks to Melinda and Sparks, its level was amazing...) seeing the people they were displaying during the auditions... but boy oh boy... dancing is another planet... Anyone can sing. Not everyone can dance! The level of the people in there was AMAZING... I cannot believe that the antithesis of good TV = FOX Network was showing experimental contemporary dance on prime time. A country like the US that has seen its culture of entertainment grow on the history of dance ( Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers Dance on air) is going to its roots... and OMG... what amazing roots! But more than the level, the respect all of the dancers had for each other was impressive, and the fact they invited people who did not make it to Las Vegas but had an amazing style is incredible.

Cat Deeley is gorgeous, she was certainly part of the success of the season. And Mia Michaels... OMG... See I do not care if it is not Pina Bausch or Maggy Marin or Carlotta Ikeda in one of their amazing 2 hour performances, but the fact that they are able to showcase in the traditional commercial TV format, with not very popular tunes something that reaches the level of elite crowds for everyone to see is really revolutionary. Call me kitsch, call me not sacred, call me sacrilege, but the fact a 15 year old teenager in the middle of Wyoming was able to be exposed to something s/he would have never been able to experience in person is amazing. It is not commercial per se. It is not accepted as mainstream, but I really wonder how could this show break the ice... It was great, and yes, I voted three times for Sabra last night, even though Danny and Neil are first class, amazing... I had a great time, a memorable experience this summer.

SIGGRAPH SAN DIEGO

I'm posting from my cell phone so no pics yet! ok, I'm in san diego. AMAZING TIME! I have been eating mexican food! delicious! what an interesting culture. I have alwaysbeen attracted to cities that connect with other cultures, and definitely I could not ask for anything more. Tijuana just 20 miles away makes thid city so interedting. Lots of spnish everywhere but also asians! love it! the hotel - double tree club - too expensive and too little for its price, and you have to pay to access the internet! how uncivilized!... but who cares! the food! the mountains, and very very friendly people. I saw Noel's friend Raul and his partner John last night, wonderful time. I should be seeing them soon again.

I set everything up at the gallery in the convention center. darn, I had to fight against the stupid PC. I keep forgetting that in the other world mice have 2 buttons. I had to deactivate the RIGHT button in the script... argh..... but anyway WORLD looks great. it is an honor to be able to be here. I could not see all the other pieces because they were still working on them but there are some very interesting works... I should blog about them soon... today is the opening, and the best part is I am going to see my wonderful friend Rob Rothfarb. I asked him to be with me all the time!

pics and video soon.. I hope.

Nashville - San Diego

I'm in Nashville, Tennessee waiting for my conneting flight to go to San Diego. Siggraph 07. just like last year I'm going to be like a kid in a toy store... I guess we are all geeks. of course, I slept three hours last night and I'm pooped... but happy! besides that Mike gave me a diamond earring! yay! I should post more... I will have plenty of time waiting in the airport...