Alif :: The World Game & Hip Hop

On the road in an unfamiliar corner of the world, how do you walk into a raucous crowd yelling a language of which you don't understand a word, and make an immediate lasting and friendly impression? The World Game. Whether playing with barefeet kids on remote tropical beaches; kicking a fluorescent Finish ball in the snow; juggling a ball at a Lombok bus stop or being invited to join a tournament in remote Indonesia - I can only speak of positive experiences. Even playing table soccer with non-athletes or discussing politics with Mexican punks selling "Football Is The Opiate Of The Masses" stickers.

Same goes for music, today in the shape of the hip hop. Like football, hip hop is a diverse and wholistic culture. If you look at what you see on television alone, you have no idea. The girls pictured above are Alif from Senegal. Check out the rest of their label Out Here Records.

More to come...

La Cervecita :: a little not-politically-correct story

If you would like an insight into stereotypical Latin American male-female politics, I’ve translated this little not-politically-correct story, just emailed to me by a self-confessed notorious womanizing Mexican friend of mine:

La Cervecita
A couple that married only two weeks ago had the following conversation, because the husband, although feeling happy, already felt like going out on the town, so he said this to his wife:
“My beautiful, I’ve gotta go.”
“Where are you going, darling?” (With the expression of a newlywed).
“To the bar honey, for a little beer.”
The wife puts her hands on her hips and says to him:
“Would like a little beer, my love?” And she opens the door to the fridge to show him 25 brands of beer from 12 countries: Mexican, German, Dutch, Japanese etc
The husband doesn’t know what to do but the first response that pops into his mind is:
“Ay, my divine treasure, but in the bar, you know, the chilled jugs...!”
Before finishing his sentence, his wife interrupts:
“Would you like a frozen jug my love?”
From the freezer she takes out a jug, chilled, frozen, white, so white that it’s almost cracking with cold. The surprised husband says:
“Yes my baby, but in the bar they serve unbelievably good snacks with the drinks, I’ll be right back, ok?”
“Would you like some snacks, my love?”
She opens the oven and the fridge again and pulls out fifteen dishes of different snacks: olives, empanadas, fries, tacos, peanuts, popcorn, cheeses, pate, caviar, cold meats, etc.
“But honey, at the bar, you know, the filthy language, tough words, blokes talking, and all of that…”
“Would like some tough words, my love? Then take the fucking beer, in this jug full of shit and eat the bloody snacks, but you’re not leaving this place you son of a bitch!”


La Cervecita
Una pareja que tan solo llevaba dos semanas de casados sostiene él siguiente dialogo, porque el marido, aunque sé sentía feliz, ya andaba con ganas de irse de parranda, así que le dice a su mujer:
“Mi vida, ahorita vengo".
“Adónde vas, cariño?" (Expresión de recién casados).
“Al bar mi cielito, a tomarme una cervecita".
La mujer se lleva la mano a la cintura y le dice:
“Quiere cervecita, mi amorcito?" Y en eso abre la puerta de la nevera y le enseña 25 marcas de cerveza de 12 países diferentes: mexicanas, alemanas, holandesas, japonesas, etc.
El marido no sabe que hacer y se le ocurre decirle:
“Ay, mi gorda divina, pero en el bar, tu sabes, la jarra helada...!"
No terminaba de decir esto, cuando la esposa interrumpe diciéndole:
“Quiere jarra congelada mi amorcito?"
Saca del congelador una jarra helada,congelada, blanca, tan blanca que hasta temblaba de frió. El marido sorprendido dice:
"Si bebita mía, pero en el bar sirven unas Botanas riquísimas, vuelvo enseguida, Si?"
“Quiere Botanas, mi amorcito?"
Abre el horno y la nevera y saca quince platos diferentes de Botanas: aceitunas, empanadas, papas fritas, tacos, cacahuates, palomitas,quesos, paté, caviar, carnes frías, etc.
“Pero caramelito, en el bar, tu sabes, las maldiciones, las palabrotas y todo aquello..."
“Quiere palabrotas, mi amorcito? Entonces: ¡Te tomas la puta cerveza, en esa jarra de mierda y te comes esas malparidas Botanas, pero de aquí no sales, hijueputa!”

An Obituary :: Chrottästei

Photo: A road near Toad Rock damaged by the heaviest summer rains in recent history of the Swiss Alps (courtesy Korporation Unterägeri)

The Stumbling Block Is Gone

Some say, it will last another thousand years. Others believe with the next big rains, a giant of a hundred tonnes will roll and destroy us all. Since the dawn of humanity, the villagers have shared divided opinions.

“It really does look like a toad,” a Father says to himself, although aware he has an audience. “It used to be a test of a boy’s courage to jump off it. An initiation into a gang,” he continues, now directly to his eldest son. “It really does look like a toad,” says the Father.

It is a stone, sitting in the forest. On the hillside, a few hundred metres from the village. Engulfed by trees. Covered in moss. Rooted in the soil. Boys crouched on their hands and knees to glimpse the gnomes living underneath. The first leaps of faith - by generations of boys – were taken off the rock into the foliage below.

Village elders walked with their grandchildren to the rock, and stopped in front of it: “See that toad there? This is where we used to test our courage.” The stone has always been there. No one put it there. It was just there. Prominently perched for passersby to ponder, for boys to plunge. Courage tested, imagination flexed. Until now, nobody had ever asked: “Who put it there?” or “Why?”

“It really does look like a toad,” the Father tells his eldest again, whilst rummaging for a pair of scissors. “I have to keep this photo. This is historic,” he proclaims, before cutting out this first and last photo (and article) of a rock that had never before interested the media. A fact the article nonchalantly admits: “This block of rock has been under observation since the end of August of this year.” The rest of the newspaper filled with success and failure, lands in the bin. “This has to be pegged to the wall. This rock is memory,” exclaims the Father, exasperated.

The rock’s age is apparently of no relevance in its own obituary. Age is imperative: just ask James Dean. The age of dear relations, like the rain, is also nowhere mentioned. It’s approximate girth and weight are what is recorded: “With its size of almost 40 cubic metres, it weighed about 100 tonnes.” The danger it poses, is what has blasted it to stardom and the executioners overnight.

“A bulldozer broke the rock into bits, and deposited them at the Hole-In-The-Bucket,” the Father is reading from the article to his perplexed firstborn. So the Father explains: “The Hole-In-The-Bucket is a spot nearby in the forest.” The son chuckles. “All the forest has names. Like the Little Paradise. I used to know all the names, of every path, every feature.”

“The Stumbling Block Is Gone,” announces the newspaper headline, and concludes with the sober sentence: “As such, Toad Rock will live on in the memory of the local villagers.”

Hermano! Brother! I've found you in Tijuana

What the fuck is he doing there? Well, his name is "Radiante" and he talks of a Tijuana that we take everywhere; a fragmented city, confronting and diverse in its haceres y quehaceres; a place alive that moves and touches us. Man don't listen to my dodgy translation. Radiante grabs the concept of a border as a field of action, a platform for networking projects and the opportunity to recreate/subvert/deconstruct its multiple languages and processes...

Radiante Says:

Radiante apuesta por instalar bases para el debate de las ideas, fomentar el análisis de la vida cotidiana y la sociedad de la información.
Radiante aborda la necesidad de tocar temas que corresponden a un momento determinado (éste, el que viene, el que ya ocurrió).
Radiante habla de una Tijuana que llevamos a todas partes; una city fragmentada, confrontada y diversa en sus haceres y quehaceres; un sitio vivo que se mueve y nos conmueve.
Radiante toma el asunto de la frontera como un campo de acción, plataforma para proyectos en red y la oportunidad de intentar recrear/subvertir/deconstruir sus múltiples lenguajes y procesos.
Radiante no reconoce dogmas. Tampoco raíces.
Radiante es un cóctel molotov directo a la barricada de apatía.
Radiante es producto de la heterodoxia.
Radiante apuesta por la circularidad de la información.
Radiante es un desliz intergeneracional.
Radiante es una estampida creativa.
Radiante es mutante por naturaleza.
Radiante es algo más que un adjetivo luminoso.
Radiante es un proyecto de comunicación.
Radiante eres, radiante somos.

Ya está Radiante 01 en .pdf (disponible para su free download)http://s56.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3JUKU3ZI46WIW1ZHW9DXU11LI6

painting little robots on a private beach :: Goodguysneverwin Toy Co.

Once upon a time I played a bit-part in a student film. Dressed as a fantastic warrior. Here is the latest news from the Indonesian artist that co-instigated that experience:

I finally built my castle and am now gearing my latest project : GOODGUYSNEVERWIN Toy Co. Please check out my latest model designs at http://ciptathewolf.multiply.com/


The month of Ramadan (the season of fasting) is now over and the hubbub that is Jakarta continues...spent much of the time on Pulau Macan painting little robots on a private beach…even had fireworks and only one of them shot straight into the stomach of our poor Italian chef Massimo, exploding a meter away from his head, showering us all in what you can imagine to be lots and lots and lots of tiny granules of burning gunpowder. Very exciting.

My latest action-horror flick will hit the Indo cinemas at the end of the year if the Executives don't request yet ANOTHER revision from the special effects department...all those explosions cost a bomb... haha get it, explosions - cost...a...bomb...oh nevermind...and the motorcylce is STILL being built.

Eating Roots Until Forgotten

Some selfish @(#&(@!)()*$ flogged this black jacket of Rastafarian colours at the launch of Über_Lingua's Sydney club. If you see someone with it they are most probably the only Oz owners of it. Good luck to him/her. I got it at Mexico's El Chopo 'punk' markets and will look for another next time there. How nostalgic I feel about the loss of that jacket...as well as a break in weekly Sydney gigs.

When in Melbourne, head to a place called St Jeromes for Über_Lingua vibes of multilingual mayhem. You can meet and hear people like Curse Ov Dialect, bP and Isnod. Here are some relevant words I once jotted down in between selecting tunes:

Humus – human;
earth, ground -
of man.
So-called reason is Latin farmed:
eating roots until forgotten,
languages hunted and gathered.

The most fertile soils
of lush native jungle floors succumb to easily,
washed away without conscience;
heaped compost, brown – black! – treasure;
even the skin of famous red soils pierced to push
nutrition towards the heavens.

Grab enough air to eat;
priceless, tasteless.

White are the dead shells, ground by water;
our colourless, omnipotent lifeblood.

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear

Genghis Khan founded the biggest empire the world has ever seen. Genghis was of "Barbarian" hordes of the steppes; he hated cities and razed them to the ground. The militaristic empire didn’t expand on building anything but on ruins, souls: invisible cities.

Marco Polo came from the powerful city state of Venice, controlling a global empire whose cultural legacy inspires to this day. The city father’s previous home had been razed to the ground by "Barbarian" tribes of the north, and they built Venice on 118 islands joined by 400 bridges. Since being built, the commercial empire has inevitably been sinking into the sea.

Marco Polo visited Genghis’ grandson Kublai Khan, who listened to him and made the Venetian an advisor of his court. In the last few decades, the ocean has been rising.

Kublai asks Marco, “When you return to the West, will you repeat to your people the same tales you tell me?”
“I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons I the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”

That is the voice I listen to: the ear. Cities, cities, cities: the noise of buskers, graffiti, slang spitting in the face of injustice fill my ears. Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities carefully constructs an image to slash it up, slams poles into the ground to let the foundations sink:

I do not wish your eyes to catch a distorted image, so I must draw your attention to an intrinsic quality of this unjust city germinating secretly inside the secret just city: and this is the possible awakening – as if in an excited opening of windows – of a later love for justice, not yet subjected to rules, capable of reassembling a city still more just than it was before it became the vessel of injustice. But if you peer deeper into this new germ of justice you can discern a tiny spot that is spreading like the mounting tendency to impose what is just through what is unjust, and perhaps this is the germ of an immense metropolis….

Mark Vallen :: My Nature Is Hunger

"One of my latest oil paintings has been published as the cover art for My Nature Is Hunger, the newest book of poetry from award-winning Chicano author, Luis J. Rodríguez...I talked with the author prior to creating the preliminary sketches for my artwork, and he told me that the poems in his book were about the numerous types of 'hunger' people live through - the hunger for justice, fulfillment, love, dignity - and always the hunger for a better life".

That explanation is from the blog of Mark Vallen, an artist influenced by life & Goya and Daumier, German Expressionists and the Mexican Muralists. Punk publications, Central American refugees, Nixon, and the Black Panthers were his earliest subjects and outlets.

Anger and passion all mixed-up, I found these words of naïve compassion in one of my notebooks (and published them in VIVA LA RAZA sparkles when the sun hits):

I am in love,
que taaaanto amor traigo adentro,
but on the outside, híjole,
just think about it:
Are hunters only the hungry?
Are fighters attackers or the attacked?
An intellectual needs to be constantly questioning:
how can a revolutionary drop the revolver to remain evolving?
Never standing still to build a house.
Never getting comfortable to drop the weapons.
Never eating enough to stop the hunger,
staying awake until collapsing into sleep:
hasta que caigas del sueno
para seguir, con el sueno de que te despierte la libertad.
Do you go hungry before becoming a hunter?
Do you wait to be attacked to fight?
Hunger attacks every day...

THE POINT OF THIS STORY IS: Mark Vallen's paintings will be on display at, Both Sides of the Border: Latin American and Chicano Art - a major exhibition of over forty artists from throughout Latin America and the Southwest of the U.S. The show runs from Nov. 19th until Dec. 30th, 2005. For more information, including previews of the art, a full schedule of exhibit related events, and directions to the gallery check out the website.

What to do with those whom society cannot accommodate?

'Globalization' oil painting by Mark Vallen

What is my book No Subtitles about? Asking questions? Like, what is a Cholo? The latest Mexican dictionary doesn’t list the word, and I’ll leave it for you to find out. Read my book when it's out bro. It will also contain the work of a man sticky like water, head down and fist up! Here is one of his answers I got by email (with plenty political references&wierd spellins I won't explain here either):

"Aye moi, hookn up with ya never came about. I’m still in DF battln, grubby and agro. Feeling a lot better than i did a week ago. Hitched. Had to lug this heshin bag a books along the fukn highway, onto truks, vans and whatever would pick us up. The bag ended up with indigenous prisoners incarcerated after the EPR attacks. We stayed with women, children, and some men who have been released, in a space that was given to them by the government, after politicians and their wifes got sick of the 4 year protest camp in the zocalo, where the women and children lived in boxes. Heaps of these loxichas have gone missing, been brutally slaughtered, tourcherd and all the rest that goes along with being an indigenous revolutionary south of the border. Besides learning bout the sitch and doen some soli work, i made 200 pesos in 3 days from tourists with some tale i wove, bout being robbed in Guatemala, and trying to get home. Yeah thats right, i ate like a king and feasted on the regions amazing chocolate and mezcal every day. Oh yeah and robbed 3 new books from some gringo store, one called Always Running (bout cholo coming of age, I recommend this book) Latinos in the USA…".

So I also got into this book written by a guy in LA called Luis J. Rodriguez: "It never stopped, this running. We were constant prey, and the hunters soon became big blurs: the police, the gangs, the junkies, the dudes on Garvey Boulevard who took our money, all smudged into one. Sometimes there were teachers who jumped on us Mexicans as if we were born with a hideous stain. We were always afraid. Always Running."

That is how Rodriguez begins his book, compelled to write it to speak to his son falling into "gangs" (like he had in his own youth). Why run? And how (and why) stop? The book has plenty good questions. Oh, and a glossary that defines Cholo: "A low life".

Toss me a coin, My headphone trussed love

BUSKERS. I lived in a city called Sydney four years, and I left it frequently. I developed a ritual where every time I returned I had to give a busker - any busker - in the tunnel, a generous donation. Other people visit their favourite god, donate to charities. Buskers are often around places where travellers arrive, at least in Australia and Western Europe. In Latin America, the so-called "Third World" busking is a serious occupation: on buses, intersections, metro. But still I can somehow associate it with being on the move. Medieval artists travelled to seek work: performers, sculptors, musicians. I've busked only once (so far), as an adult anyway. A story to save for later.

Now a friend in Sydney called Amy, has just sent me an email about buskers in that tunnel: "Here's what i just wrote cause i felt dumb about giving some coins to a musician in the tunnel without listening to what he was even playing!"

so:

Toss me a coin,
Gold, silver or faded
My headphone trussed love

Dreamy girl, my dream
Walk with sure timed steps
Trodden to music only you hear

I’ll play you a tune
Throned in my tunnel;
An amphitheatre of sound
with audience capacity infinite

Flick me a coin, dear
And I’ll pipe so divinely
Twiddle my bow or trill my flute

How we’ll dance together
My love, that those walking right
will be so entranced that they’ll turn left

Such musical quality
My hands and head possess
Created with desire for you
But plugged in you’ll hear me not

So just toss me a coin
And keep on walking
I’ll keep on playing

Imágenes de la Filosofia Iberoamerica :: Luis Villoro

El filósofo y la fotografia. In 2002 I met a guy for whom a camera may as well be a third eye, an extension of his body. No se llamaba Juan Villoro, pero Germán Romero Martinez. You can see Germán’s photography featured in my projects, and I hope to keep including his insidious work: of both philosopher & photographer. Que estas esperando, vete a Michoacán a ver sus imágenes, y escuchar Luis Villoro. Rumours of a Latin American Film Festival in Sydney will become reality in 2006, and ojalá you will see some of these images on exhibition there...

Evasion :: travelogue of thievery and trespassing

"We fell in love in the wreckage, shouted out songs in the uproar, danced joyfully in the heaviest shackles they could forge; we smuggled our stories through the gauntlets of silence, starvation, and subjugation, to bring them back to life again and again as bombs and beating hearts; we built castles in the sky from the ruins of hell on earth".

Yeah, that sounds very much like something I would write after a typical, everyday weekend. But in fact I'm quoting the introduction of the US-based CrimethInc. Worker's Collective. I found myself on that website after having read their book Evasion:

"A 288 page novel-like narrative, Evasion is one person's travelogue of thievery and trespassing across the country, evading not only arrest, but also the 40-hour workweek and hopeless boredom of modern life. The journey documents a literal and metaphorical reclamation of an individual's life and the spaces surrounding them—scamming, squatting, dumpstering, train hopping and shoplifting a life worth living and a world worth the fighting for."

Some fifteen months ago I toyed with the idea of publishing an anthology entitled The Anti-Travel Files. It is yet to happen, containing some of my own stories as well as anonymous and known contributors - from harassment at Israeli checkpoints to strip-searches by Japanese customs; spending the day with English homeless to hijacking Mexico City buses. Interesting stuff not PC, and not found in the average travel-book section. Inevitably this anthology will be published though, perhaps as the second ChaleChole title?

Evasion partly motivated me to do this blog, before I've got the cash to publish The Anti-Travel Files, and this morning I just found a bookmark with some of my notes in Evasion with these ideas for a blog:

How much do I shape culture as opposed to being shaped by it? Is submitting to instinctual compulsive behaviour more influential than a well thought-through structuralist approach? Which poetry is most real? Do seeds of destruction or the ashes of construction bear richer fruit? Is freedom destructive? Why don't you trust to listen to the talk of a trumpet or the whisper of wind as much as words on a page? Have you ever felt good AFTER eating Maccas? [An idea for some writers with cans at selected establishments?]

Mexico: an industrial junk-food product called "Hip Hop"

Marinela has just released an industrial junk-food product called "Hip Hop" on the Mexican market. "The wrong and misinformed representation of a culture is synonymous with backwardness and a lack of self-respect," Quilombo: Arte en Resistencia informs us.

Mexico City's top lyricist BocaFloja (click on his name to hear his latest album MP3s) emailed me this info about wrong product whose brand name I don't want to mention again. You can't help wondering if it was indeed a marketing strategy to cause some controversy with the most outspoken members of society (and target market? YOUTH). Oh what a cynical world I live in.

But the message remains: Denounce disrespect! Rip it up!

Do you write about Other Worlds?

Contribute to Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies.

The theme is Other Worlds; based on a conference about alternative modes of viewing activism in a global context. But ni modo, the cultural section does not have to be tied to the special thematic. The deadline would be first week of December 2005, for the January issue.

I contributed to the previous issues with Going For The Centre Of The World and Full On Riot:

"hey moses full on riot in lawson st the station’s on fire! been going since 4. molotov and more. full on," reads an SMS message received on the backseat of a Tasmanian bus. What follows is a journey through the landscape of a Gunavidji, whose brothers have all gone to the land of the dead; metallic scraping in the glass cases of the Hobart Museum; a Palestinian woman giving up on her people; land-snails exposing cultural inaccuracies; photographing Australia’s war zone; entering the St Peter’s Basilica of Rome with bulldozers - all in the name of preparing to interview prominent Israeli writer Etgar Keret...

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is the ultimate travel book.

Every time he returns from his travels, Kublai Khan asks Marco Polo to tell him about the magnificent cities he has visited. Polo is talking about one city (his home city of Venice), but Kublai sees invisible cities: nothing but everything.

When Kublai is in dark mood, Marco Polo tells him: “This is the aim of my explorations: examining the traces of happiness still to be glimpsed, I gauge its short supply. If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.”

When Kublai is in fits of euphoria, Marco Polo tells him: “When you know at last the residue for unhappiness for which no precious stone can compensate, you will be able to calculate the exact number of carats toward which that final diamond must strive.”