news flash:

.................. HBO FILMS to begin filming in Gridley this October. ! According to C. Barajas an old friend since back in the El Campo days tells Luiseño this morning that his brother Jesse, Gridley High School Counselor and local soccer Coach was contacted from New York about the issue facing a lot of the soccer players in the leagues. Apparently the teams from Gridley, Orland and Yuba City have been doing very well for the last few years, yet no college scouts have come to visit or at least are reluctant to visit because of the fact that a high percentage of the players are undocumented.

More to follow.

Another documentary project being filmed around Gridleyland. HBO, exciting. !

Assimilation, Branding, Lynx

Since our inception, I haven't been able to "wrap my head around," or "put my finger" on one of our many "raisons d'etres" as an artist collective, until we recently put together an artist statement for EnFoco. We struggle to give context to many issues, and one of them is a term i learned way back in high school, when I spent a summer at UC Berkeley (at an Upward Bound Math/Science summer-session): assimilation.

Sometimes I question my own voice, my own relevance in this project. Shouldn't some "newly arrived" kid from Puebla be fighting for for our culture? Shouldn't he/she Belwether? At least he/she could do it in Spanish! Me, I have to revert to cliches of the English language!! (see quoted expressions above).

But in the end, I figure that Cultural Resistance has no formula. We stay true to ourselves, and the just fight continues.

Article in Today's NYTimes Magazine.

-Don Quezada



----------------
Now playing: tim hecker - shipyards of la ceiba
via FoxyTunes

Our Town

An interesting article from NYTimes Mag profiling the effects of anti-immigrant business policies in a small town.

latino house djs in outer-space

inspired by the music of casino versus japan, i accidentally click on tabs, open programs, try to ignore myspace, relentlessly log in to flickr, pointing and clicking....

the r. part of luiseño: i find my self inside a barn everyday, mixing music and sharing dreams with people of the west. construction of a new, dare i say second Luiseño Studio begins tonight. within days, our space continues to expand, this time with a mega sound system, five turntables, laptops and 2 million records.


my time is short in this green valley. driving back roads once again, long and drawn out sunsets filter into my afternoons, late at night i think about producing beats and finding more latinos in the mix. both are a struggle, yet a few breakthroughs are made.

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

"Will we be able to speak when it matters most?"
-dream

Luiseño: Cronicas de Comunidad

Adios Gridley, CA
Chapter 1:
Nuevo Ideal, Huejuquilla, MX
Belwether
Nueva York, Guadalajara

There is, on the on hand, the vision of a Central American man in the desert looking North, toward the green lights: his future. Sweat leaks from his arms and neck. He imagines crossing the border, the dream is in fast-forward: the work, the Church, the family, the racism, the confusion, the assimilation, the loss, the money, the lowriders, the white, the brown, the yellow, the success.

Years into this future, there is, on the other hand, his children, now looking South.

We are his children, his return, his venganza.

* * * * * * * * *

As the progeny of dreamers, we continue a mission, we pick up a legacy. We bear the responsibility to the dreams of our parents, the collective dream of a better life, that mythical land, perhaps of a Nuevo Aztlan.

Or, we can’t help but wonder, are we destined to become Nuevos Ricos?

* * * * * * * * * *

As children, we didn't get to many weddings, we stayed at home and listened to music, watched TV, ignored the future. The few weddings that we did go to were mostly close family--brothers, sisters, they were the best times. We love the extended family, the children always look smooth. Our friends don't really care.

Somewhere along the way, however, well beyond the Western phase of teenage ‘rebellion,’ we began to ask, "What are we doing here? Why are we here? We've got all this stuff, but at what cost?”

* * * * * * * * *

Our souls, fortunately or not, have been educated. We’re bilingual (especially if you count Espanglish). We read books in English that affect our lives. Corridos speak to us too. We are from El Campo, East San Jose, Mexican cities and towns in the USA. Our older brothers and sisters own homes in California and drive large cars. We reach out to our cousins down South, they enlighten us with stumbled conversation. We look at myspace and want iPhones; the slightly younger are excited by Harry Potter.

We notice that some Latinos—the happy box-checkers—just want to be around that monstrous, corporate-consumer culture we call “whiteness.” Other Latinos, however, do not want to enter that world: the rockeros, the skaters, the punks, and we can never forget the gang-bangers, who were once neighbors, and are now warriors against assimilation. Just like the O.G.’s before them, and the Pachucos before them.

Are we allowed to add a category? Forgive us, but the Latino Artist also falls into the latter category, the one with the gangsters, in solidarity in the battle against assimilation. Years later, we hope, there will be a corrido about the People of the Left, who just wanted to share, and who had to fight a war in order to share.

But what does this battle ‘against assimilation’ mean? And aren’t the Mexican skater-rockeros re-enacting a decidedly American creation of culture (albeit with, some would say, much better style)? Aren’t artists also sell-outs? How do we figure it all out? Where is our core?

Luiseño tries to get at the culture jam of Latino experience, attitudes, modes of existence/survival. Luiseño tries to grasp the effects of globalization; one trajectory will certainly lead us to more work within Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, the rest of Latino America—the world? Luiseño is community-based media creation: youth media, community documentation, community work. Luiseño's primary mode of exhibition is the internet: it means deciding what photos are family, friends or public. As artists, we try to explain that we are just as fragile as the cannery worker, the delivery boy. What can he/she be thinking? We have to ask because we think we can feel it.

Pemex Explosions in Mexico

Gas pipeline explosions today in Mexico. Revolutionaries fighting Pemex. Heavy.

Western Folklife Center

At some point, we WILL visit the Western Folklife Center.

Raza Cósmica

from....

I Am Joaquin
by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales

Yo soy Joaquín,
perdido en un mundo de confusión:

I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion,
caught up in the whirl of a gringo society,
confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes,
suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society.
My fathers have lost the economic battle
and won the struggle of cultural survival.
And now! I must choose between the paradox of
victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger,
or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul and a full stomach.
Yes, I have come a long way to nowhere,
unwillingly dragged by that monstrous, technical,
industrial giant called Progress and Anglo success....

Media Against the Chinatown Express

A Chinatown bus flips, injuring 34 people on September 5, 2006. An article on the safety of the Chinatown bus lines is subsequently published later that month in the Washington Post. On May 20 of this year, an NYC bound bus crashed, killing two people and injuring 32.

The Washington Post talks about the language barrier. Are drivers competent, the article asks, do they speak English well enough to read signs and help out in an emergency.

Let's imagine a scenario:
A Fung-Wah bus driver tips over a bus. He is relatively unhurt—he is able to call for help, knowing that he may have injured people on his bus. But let's assume that he doesn't know much English, that he speaks Cantonese everyday. Does a person who doesn't know English in the US stand by his bus and wait for people who "understand" to make all the phone calls, the attempts for help? Is he devoid of awareness--there has been an accident, people are hurt--is he devoid of compassion?

The article seems to fall on the side of saying that the man with no understanding of English is incompetent and also does not have the ability--the humanity?--to seek out help.

blogtime hiatus.

Website redesign.

Hi. Luiseño is now back after a nice sabatical from blogging. However, back-dated posts will begin poping up here and there.

Maxim

At the gym in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

A flyer has been put announcing their masseuse is moving to the "Riviera Maya." Someone has hand written a correction, scrawling in pencil, "Mayan Riviera." Book a session with her now before she’s gone! says the flyer.

Below there’s a picture of a fit woman on the beach looking out onto the sea, her back to us. She's not wearing a top; she is ostensibly the masseuse leaving the gym. Another woman, more dressed, plumper, ostensibly Mexican, brushes the sand off her lower body.

Maxim promotes people who pay to have their asses wiped

r£uñîºn

Working With the Pearson Foundation, who do i represent?

Have been working with the Pearson Foundation since returning to NY.

One class is taught by a mousy caucasian girl with glasses, soft-spoken. In the class are two boys making a narrative revolving around their coming to the United States from the Caribbean. I recorded one boy’s voiceover, from Antigua which he pronounces An-Ti-Ga. His narrative revolves around the events shortly before his plane leaves. His partner, also from the West Indies, also has a narrative revolving around the day he came to the US. They have the most interesting stories, though it's so hard for them to express themsleves.

The rest of the students are writing personal narratives revolving around what they like to do, what music they like, what clothes they wear. Some students write about their neighborhoods—“we represent Bedstuy to the fullest, even though we moved to Canarsie, so it’s just straight Brooklyn we represent." Many of them are Jamaican or from Caribbean islands in general.

As if universal, the need to represent who you are, where you come from, prevails in the projects we are making.

flinting w/ sufjan

the factory

Please God, forgive us for not posting to this blog for two months. we promise we have been very busy tending to your flock....

as you can tell, Mexico took over our senses, although we had internet access throughout our, the overall power of the culture gave us little time to collectively look away just for one second to relay the subtle changes in light, the great food, los primos y primas.... tios and tias,. so this piece of internet history will remain silent forever. maybe.

the news is as follows:

* Luiseño Films has mutated into the Luiseño Artists Colllective, the focus remains the same, we just wanted to bring light to any other artists that we meet who share our vision of community expression.

*The Luiseño Artists Collective is now comprised of members from the following communities: Gridley, CA; New York, NY; Huejuquilla el Alto, JAL, MX; Guadalajara, JAL, MX; Zacatecas, ZAC, MX; San Jose, CA; Chico, CA; Oroville, CA; and Biggs, CA.

* The Luiseño Artists Collective, held its first exhibition in the North Valley. December 31st, 2006.

*Luiseño will be working in NYC for the next few months teaching video and filmmaking skills to public school students through the city.

*A film festival is in the works for community radio KZFR in chico, the theme will be building community via the independent media.

*Two mural projects are in the works for the Gridley California community, the first is already underway and has being initiated by Youth First of Gridley, the second will be proposed by the Luiseño Artists Collective in the next few months.

*Music.

* General Happiness.

Reflections/Thoughts of Beginnings

Toward future engagements, the day after our “inaugural exhibition” to the Gridley community.

I fiddle with normal things on my computer—the nytimes, Zapatista updates, music, my writing (this very document). I glimpse the photographs from yesterday. Another day documented, the beginning of an engagement with the community.

I think about yesterday’s events, I think about all the people we saw.

I slept from 7pm to 10:30 in the morning! Slept right through the New Year’s countdown.

Youth Group students took pictures of themselves lying on the ground like roadkill, good pictures.

My mom made posole.

First Gridley Exhibition

THE LUISEÑO ARTIST COLLECTIVE
Presents

Chapter 1:
NUEVO IDEAL

Photography, Video, y Radio
of
Gridley, CA, New York, NY USA Huejuquilla, Guadalajara JAL. MX

May 1st, 2006-December 31st, 2006

Born in Gridley, CA, the Luiseño Artist Collective is dedicated to supporting the arts in the communities it serves.

Nuevo Ideal marks Luiseño’s first engagement with the Gridley community. In this inaugural exhibition, artists featured are the Sacred Heart Youth Group, Shannon Bowers, Ricardo Ramirez and Tony Gannon, all of whom are Gridley locals.

Photos and video result from months of documentation in the Gridley area and during visits to New York City, Huejuquilla, Jal. MX, and Guadalajara, Jal. MX. The Luiseño Artist Collective is always seeking contributors from these regions and beyond.

The Luiseño Artist Collective will continue to seek out local voices deserving recognition. In fact, Luiseño hopes that this is the first of many regular exhibitions within the community.

Luiseño is presently seeking donors who support building community through art.

Please contact Luiseño at:
contact@luisenofilms.com
www.luisenofilms.com