Son[i]a #230
Jota Izquierdo
Valencian artist Jota Izquierdo travelled to Mexico in 2004 to pursue his interest in electronic art, expanded cinema, and experimental music. But everyday life in Mexico City absorbed those influences and pushed him in the direction of a very different practice, part-documentary and part-installation, that allowed him to explore, understand, and disseminate the complex web of underground, informal, alternative, and pirate economies that permeate the whole of Mexican society.
In particular, he focused on the life and work of the street hawkers or “vagoneros” in Mexico City Metro as one of the many survival strategies of the city’s poor: a mix of ingenuity, appropriationism and cunning, mingled together in the emblematic barrio of Tepito and its outdoor markets or “tianguis”. Izquierdo creates documentary, collaborative works against the backdrop of a brutal clash between classes, “changing the angle of view, because that changes everything.” The aim is to recontextualise and recognise a subculture that is rooted in both tradition and unpredictable mutation, reviled by the governing classes and also integrated into the country’s streets and everyday life.
SON[I]A talks to Jota Izquierdo about “Capitalismo Amarillo”, the informal economy, underground entrepreneurship, exoticization, and pirate ingenuity and reproducibility, all to the rhythm of cumbia.
Vagina Dentata Organ. Part I
A monographic on the work and historical context of Vagina Dentata Organ, featuring interviews with Marc Valls, Pau Riba, Paco Alvarado, Xavier Cot, Eliseu Huertas i Cos and Marc Viaplana.
(…what military music is to music)
This project by Asier Mendizabal runs through hymns, marches, choirs and "charanga", revealing unexpected results and relationships.