BLOG
Aesthetic Mimicry. On Speak of the Devil by Beto Hernandez
In a few years, I hope, a sociologist-critic will realise that the current transculturalisation between the Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon worlds, which will serve as a paradigm to understand the time we are living, has been most clearly and firmly expressed in the work by Beto Hernández, rather than in the places where critics have been insistently looking. Despite this, a few critics have had a look at Love & Rockets, the exceptional magazine with which the Hernández brothers made their name. However, very few have ventured beyond the comfortable territory of easy classifications, particularly with regard to the clear differences displayed by the work of each of the brothers in their early days. Those who felt closer to the visual arts preferred Jaime’s work, which was much more suited to its time, as well as being more experimental, despite its narrative absurdity. Those who approached comic books from the perspective of narrative were likely to prefer the work by Beto (Gilbert), which was clearly inspired by Latin American literary narrators, and was much more conservative in terms of its graphics.
Read more...PES. Hits Frame by Frame
Why do we think that everything that is new is bound to destroy the old? It seems that computer graphics will kill pencils and paper (as we know, “video killed the radio star”), when, in fact, the many technical options available (regardless of whether they are cutting edge or obsolete) can help rethink the ethical and aesthetic meaning which underlies the choices regarding the ways of doing something. Because of this, those who today embrace stop motion animation (traditional animation using objects, produced frame by frame) deserve to be seen differently from their illustrious mentors.
Read more...We’ll See Each Other at ARCO (As If It Could Be Any Other Way)
Despite what they say, the ARCO week-long art fair still makes Spain’s capital the big attraction for art professionals and everyone in the country who prides himself on being an art enthusiast. Agreed, it’s just a fair but it has always been something more than that, at least in Spain.
Read more...Confusion is Art: Sonic Youth in Madrid
Photo: Martí Perarnau
The opening of the exhibition SONIC YOUTH etc: Sensational Fix could not have displayed more coherence with the band’s mythology. In the foyer of the first floor of the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (CA2M), based in Móstoles (Madrid), a pendulum-like electric guitar swung, slightly precariously, over the heads of the visitors. The members of the band, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, along with the Flamenco singer Enrique Morente –who claimed not to know what was going to happen in the impromptu concert until just before he arrived– turned this “welcome performance” into a stimulating and innovative fusion of rock, flamenco and classical music, the latter being represented only by a cello bow, which did not survive its wild encounter with the electric jolts of Ranaldo’s guitar.
Read more...Submerged Narrative. On Locuela, by Carlos Labbé
As can be confirmed by anyone who reads them, Carlos Labbé’s novels are unusual narratives which seem to be constructed around the confusion and feverish discourse of people undergoing extreme situations, presented from the limits of good sense and alienation. It is usual for a perfunctory reading of any of the three, published as “conventional” books until now –long although very interesting, where he spoke about his experiments in the medium of the internet -, namely: Libro de plumas (Ediciones B, Chile, 2004), Navidad y Matanza (Periférica, 2007) and the recently published Locuela (Periférica, 2009), to produce the idea of a twisted, crazy narration, more centred around the text, from tectus (fabric), than on the framework of the story that serves as an excuse for the novel; Labbé’s narrative, ultimately, consciously breaks with the conventional idea we have of a narration. In other words, he is perfectly aware of the fact that the surface of the narrative, the discourse, is what makes up its existence and in itself gives it entity. Putting it another way so that we may understand it better: a novel is not the story it tells, but the discourse that the author generates around that story.
Read more...
