"Jesus Camp"

In case you missed it, this documental film (84 minutes) was defeated by "An inconvenient truth" in the Oscar Awards 2006. Despite of this, it is a technically perfect film, with excellent photography, edition and music, and a masterpiece documental film. It is also a scary survey which presents the other face of fundamentalism: not the fanatism of a madrassa in the mountains of Afganistan, but the fundamentalism of christian evangelicals in the hearth of USA, who even worship George Bush... The two ends of the rope meeting each other.

Watching "Jesus Camp" is learning a very inconvenient and uncomfortable truth!

Beach: Willy Brandt, Jack Nicholson

La galaxie anticapitaliste

La semaine pasée j'ai acheté à Paris la magazine "Philosophie". Elle présente un dossier sûr le capitalisme et aussi, naturalement, une petite carte de la galaxie anticapitaliste. Voilá!

"Le capitalisme est multiforme, sa critique aussi. Malgré la diversité de leurs approches, ses détracteurs convergent en un petit nombre de familles qui se recoupent parfois : l'angle d'attaque peut être social, moral, anthropologique ou écologique" -- Par Jeanne Burgart Goutal

La critique morale

Les moralistes: Michael Walzer (référence: Rousseau)
Les penseurs de la décence: Guillaume Le Blanc (référence: George Orwell)

Entre la critique morale et la critique sociale

Les chrétiens de gauche: théologie de la libération

La critique sociale

Les marxistes orthodoxes: Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd
Les ultradémocrates: Étienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière
Les néomarxistes altermondialistes: Toni Negri, Michel Hardt, Yann Moulier Boutang, Immanuel Wallerstein, Philippe Corcuff

Entre la critique sociale et la critique anthropologique

Les noveaux freudo-marxistes: Bernard Stiegler, Slavoj Zizek (référence: Marcuse)

La critique anthropologique

Les philosophes historiens du capitalism: Christian Laval, Jean-Claude Michéa (référence: Polanyi)
Les existentialistes: Christian Arnsperger (référence: Sartre)
Les ethnologues: Marshal Sahlins (référence: Marcel Mouss)

Entre la critique anthropologique et la critique écologique

Les écologistes existentialistes: Ivan Illich, André Gorz

La critique écologique

Les partisans de la décroissance: Serge Latouche (réference: Hans Jonas)
Les catastrophistes: Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Paul Virilo

Viva la vida: Frida, Coldplay

1954xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx2008

Repetido.

"Musée haut, musée bas"

This film, based on a theater piece, is a great comedy, for people who like French humour! Don't miss it.

Museum guards who lived terrified by beauty. A woman freaked because of temporal exhibitions of great artists. People of the countryside crazy about impressionists.

Michael Ribes deconstructs myths and snobism about museums in a very funny way. Don't miss it.

Esculturas de chatarra

José Luis Linares ha hecho una serie de esculturas de chatarra en Monterrey y su área metropolitana. La mayoría están en San Pedro Garza García. Se pueden contar:

* A la entrada de las oficinas de la Parroquia de Guadalupe: san Francisco de Asís, la Virgen de Guadalupe y san Pedro.
* A la entrada de la colonia "Valle de San Ángel": una réplica del Ángel de la Independencia del Paseo de la Reforma, en la Ciudad de México.
* A la entrada de la Plaza de Toros San Felipe: un rejoneador toreando.
* A la entrada del municipio por la avenida Santa Bárbara: san Pedro, que da la bienvenida al visitante.
* A la entrada de las oficinas de Tránsito del municipio: un Don Quijote y Sancho Panza.
* A la salida del municipio, bajo la Loma Larga, sobre la avenida Morones Prieto: un nacimiento casi tamaño natural con más de una docena de figuras: la Sagrada Familia, los animales del pesebre, los Reyes Magos montados y un ángel.

También es de notarse la escultura de santa Catalina de Alejandría, patrona del municipio de Santa Catarina, y por cierto, patrona de los filósofos. Pero no me consta que también ésta sea de Linares. Súmense unas esculturas de animales a la entrada del zoológico "La Pastora".

Sé que el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Morelia guarda otras esculturas suyas, también en chatarra, pero no las conozco.

Credo de Nuevo León

"Creo en ti, Nuevo León, porque la fertilidad que falta en tu suelo, la tienes en el espíritu; y el oro y plata que fueron negados a tus montañas, los llevas en el corazón. Creo en ti, porque substituyes las deficiencias de una naturaleza pobre, con la acción tenaz que genera industrias florecientes. Creo en tu perseverancia épica que hace brotar manantiales de las rocas, y construye sobre el pedestal de la aridez, el monumento glorioso de la abundancia. Creo en tu inagotable espíritu de aventura, que jamás se estanca en rutinas; en tu inspiración que clarea todos los caminos; en tu recio carácter que no se empolva; en tu pensamiento que vive en constante renovación; en tu fe cristiana que convierte los desiertos en vergeles y los ocasos en auroras; en tu optimismo juvenil que hace realizables todas las quimeras; en tus virtudes de bronce que nunca se dejan adormecer por el opio de la vanidad; y en tu orgullo de acero que te impulsa a caminar siempre hacia adelante. Creo en tu pasado, que es un paradigma de pulcritud; en tu presente que es una lección de eficacia constructora; pero sobre todo, Nuevo León, creo en tu porvenir radiante, porque tus pupilas siempre alertas, y tus nervios en tensión creciente, no descansan un segundo en la santa tarea de ensanchar los horizontes y extender las perspecticas de la patria".

Nemesio García Naranjo (1883-1963)

"¡Sí se puede!" aka "Yes, we can!"

Two Latinos (César Chávez and Dolores Huerta), quite famous because of their activism and movements close to Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, among others, came up in 1972 with the slogan "¡Sí se puede!".

In 1974, the coach of the Phillies of Philadelphia used it for the first time, translating it to another context. Years later, in another baseball match, some parents from Monterrey, who had traveled to USA to support their children, incorporated the "porra" to the Mexican constellation. And since the 90's it has been used in sport competitions, political campaigns, and many other contexts.

Lately (first in 2004, and later again in 2008), Barack Obama used, and still uses, the slogan "Yes, we can!".

So, you can get it as part of the Reconquista made by Latinos, as a premonition that in a (close) future one Latino will be President of USA, or as a sign that optimism is flooding Washington. However you take it, I really hate malinchistas yelling "Yes we can!" instead of "¡Sí se puede!". It is as ridiculous as to read "Mr. Quixote Of La Mancha"...

Chacun son cinéma

Last night I watched "Chacun son cinéma". Just a few short films are available on YouTube. Unfortunately not those which I liked the most, but here you have two good pieces, by Lars von Trier and Wim Wenders.

Bartleby, Swann, Coronel

Some days ago, I saw a woman talking on a public phone (which is kind of strange nowadays), and a couple of meters away from her was an older woman sitting on a bench waiting for somebody. I love pictures of people talking and waiting. So that would be a perfect shoot. I took out my camera, and when I was focusing, a couple who was passing by just stopped in front of me and started kissing.

Click! Click!

There you have the image, which is kind of a summary of our lives. Voilá!

Communication. Love. Waiting.

I was thinking about my favorite books about these topics, and perhaps they are:

"Bartleby, The Scrivener", "Du côté de chez Swann", and " El coronel no tiene quien le escriba".

"The Higher Pantheism", by Alfred Tennyson

THE SUN, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains—
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He? tho’ He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?
Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel ‘I am I’?
Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom,
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom.
Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet—
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,
For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.
Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool;
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision—were it not He?

Foto: Juan Rulfo

"What the hell is water?"

In yesterday's post, Memo recommends to read a speech by the late David Foster Wallace. I copy-paste the first paragraph:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

DFW explains: "The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about".

But because I went to the exhibition of María Izquierdo two days ago, and I was checking the awesome Robin Rice Gallery last night, my associations were very different: the Naturaleza muerta con huachinangos, by María Izquierdo, and the work of Bill Phelps (a relative of Michael Phelps?).

"Secreto", por José Agustín Goytisolo

Antes yo no sabía
por qué debemos todos
-día tras día-

seguir siempre adelante
hasta como se dice
que el cuerpo aguante.

Ahora lo sé.
Si te vienes conmigo
te lo diré.

Manuel Álvarez Bravo: St. Agatha, St. Lucy

Some days ago I saw this photo by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, whom I might call "The Mexican Cartier-Bresson". In this picture there is an obvious parallelism within the breasts and the eyes.

I thought of St. Lucy, a martyr whose eyes were taken out. Indeed Álvarez Bravo was thinking less of St. Lucy and more of St. Agatha, another martyr whose breasts were cut off (depicted by Zurbarán). That is another reason why he wanted to capture the breasts as well.

Coincidentally both martyrs "met", since Lucy had a vision of Agatha talking to her and healing her mother. Lucy is in charge of the eyes' diseases and Agatha of breasts' diseases. But not only that: Italians back on her feast a breast-shaped speciality called minne di vergine (recipe).

(The eyes are somehow also present in the other picture of Álvarez Bravo, "La buena fama durmiendo": who sleeps has their eyes closed, but in this photo there are some "abrojos", which comes from the words "abre" + "ojos", so that you don't get hurted with these cactus. But that is another anti-surrealist story...)

Ecología sampetrina

Se hospeda estos días en mi casa R, una gringa que escribe su tesis sobre la política ecológica de San Pedro Garza García que porque --dice-- es el municipio del país más avanzado en dicho rubro. Después de mostrarle La Huasteca, vamos al Barrio Antiguo: un merlot chileno en el Café Infinito y luego unos tacos sonorenses en el Quinto Sol.

Hablamos mucho de ecología. Casualmente yo había leído hacía unos días que México es el país con mayor diversidad de reptiles en el mundo. Además, es el segundo país del mundo con mayor variedad de mamíferos y el cuarto en variedad de anfibios y de flora. Lo que hace que México sea el cuarto país con la diversidad de especies más amplia. Y, por otro lado, es el segundo país con mayor diversidad de climas y ecosistemas: desde los glaciares de alta montaña del Iztaccíhuatl hasta las dunas de los desiertos, pasando por cañones, junglas, selvas y un etcétera cuantioso.

De esto platicábamos, y también de algunas plantas originarias de México. Cuando oigo que R medio quiere decir algo, medio grita, veo con el rabillo del ojo que algo se mueve hacia mí, veo que es un gato y trac trac, lo pisé con la llanta derecha, botó contra el pavimento, rebotó contra el chasís, y ya no lo vi salir por la izquierda.

R grita, solloza, dice que nunca antes había matado un animal. Ni por accidente. Le digo "tranquilamente" que si estuviéramos en Alemania podríamos detenernos y llamar a una ambulancia veterinaria, pero que en San Pedro eso es (aún) imposible, y que por ser un sábado a las 11 de la noche no hay nada que hacer.

Le sugiero que con esta historia comience su tesis.

Días de Monterrey, días de Coca-Cola

"La buena fama durmiendo"

I have no energies to read blogs, newspapers or magazines.

I have no energies to write on my blog.

But as soon as I get my energies back, I'll be rocking again.

Talk to you later! Mach's gut!

Unicycle

I gave to my Doktorvater the new version of my Dissertation, went to Paris for a congress, where I met interesting people, traveled a little bit, and finally came home in Mexico. I bought a unicycle and gave it to L, as a gift, and we made our first trials to drive it. This is my first experience, and it's cool.

This is the best video I found about the art of riding unicycles. It's a mix of ballet, ice skating and dance.

Beckham, "Hummer"

What's the difference between Beckham and "The Hummer"?

Right! They know how to survive the financial crisis. They both avoid Wall Street bullshit, and prefer to invest on gold.
Beckham listens to his favourite music on his golden iPod, while "The Hummer" kills with his Versace (sic) golden handgun.

"Muto", by Blu

Today is the last day of the Short Film Festival in Berlin, and F invited me to watch some Italian productions. There were very good ones, but the most impressive was a "real animation" (I don't know how to call it) by Blu. They are painting walls all around the world, and they completely changed my conception of that new interest I discovered this year grafitti. Take a look of "Muto" (7:26), a project which took place in Buenos Aires last year, and which has been viewed online more than 5 million times already. It's worth.

Pancho Villa, Bush-puppet

I was looking for the pic of a famous writer, whose name just escaped from my brain, who reminded me of this one of Pancho Villa, when I found another one (many indeed) of US-American soldiers sitting on Saddam Hussein's throne.

It's good that Bush is gone!

Philip Merlan dixit II

"Generally, it is true, we are inclined to think of the transition from polytheism to monotheism as being at the same time a transition from crude anthropomorphism to a purer notion of God. A middle stage, a de-anthropomorphisized polytheism, appears as a logical construction rather than a living reality. But it seems that Aristotle (and, perhaps, Plato, too) represents just this intermediary stage. It was the anthropomorphism or anthropopathism of the popular religion by which they were repelled, not its plurality of gods".

"Aristotle's Unmoved Movers" in Traditio (1946), p.28

Philip Merlan dixit

"It has been repeated so often how great an artist Plato was when compared with Aristotle that I beg leave to call to mind that even as a myth the Timaeus is often ugly or almost ridiculous. Suffice it to mention the little pegs used by the gods in order to keep man together".

"Aristotle's Unmoved Movers" in Traditio (1946), p.9.

"Lo extraordinario", por Robinson Quintero

Aquí no sucede nada extraordinario
Las rosas crecen
los muertos descansan
los niños lanzan guijarros al cielo
algunos hombres llevan regalos a sus casas

Muy a menudo no acontece nada
fuera de lo usual
Los amigos salen de fiesta
la gente se casa
unos ríen otros lloran
los ausentes escriben

Parece que todo ocurriera sin contratiempos
por estos lados
Los árboles mudan de hojas
la lluvia ensimisma
el sol sale puntual aún entre la niebla

Y los necios furiosos de hastío
empecinados comentan:
aquí no pasa nada extraordinario
hace tiempo no sucede nada extraordinario

Foto: Archivo Casasola

En la víspera del día de muertos

Guuzbourg asked some weeks ago which song would one pick for their own funeral. I had never thought about it. I sent him a couple of mails.

And now I read that I won the contest with this post!