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

The Myth of the Petroglyph, or the Petrified Revolutionary

We are in Africa. We are on a journey to observe the causes of hunger in Africa. We visit farmers, we talk with them. We are in an area that is rural yet connected to a Metropolis nearby. It is called Juarez, and it is, in my mind, the future Juarez, Mexico, where people fight for justice, where noble people are prevailing against corruption.

I am there with my family, friends, former co-workers. We are meeting farmers, chefs. Amidst our visit, wind of a letter from arises. Young Tim Farrell mentions the letter, claiming “it’s pretty good, it may work.” I am curious and search out the letter; sitting in an idyllic pasture amongst the misty crags of a sierra where farmers receive assistance to grow their primary crops, I read the letter

It reads:

We seek out people who may be interested. We seek out the best of them. [Image of two men shouldering a tree, lifting]. We must raise money amongst ourselves—say $1000 dollars, and we give it to the chosen farmers. They use the money for the benefit of their crops, to farm unimpeded…

The money is not to be reported, its existence is to remain a secret between us and the chosen farmers. When the farmer succeeds (and he will succeed), we return next season and do it again. The success of the farmer puts him in a position to receive official aid, vast quantities of money. Our money serves him underground, but it’s for a worthy cause, namely to help his people.

I am reading the letter accompanied by imagery, as though the events had already been documented. As I read the letter I have a notion of the perfect farmer to begin the project.

The letter is hopeful, full of ambition, idealism.

The letter continues:

When the time comes, the country will be in a position for revolution.
Based on our efforts, we will be cultivating a revolutionary contingency of people, not only loyal to us because of the funding we will provide, but loyal to ideals, since the first man will be a man of ideals. When the time comes, children will be schooled in the ways of the revolutionary…

I stop reading the letter here. I look up and look at the rolling meadows, the mist setting on the mountain ranges. An image of a boy learning methods of farming that would replace current ones. An image of the words: hegemony replacing hegemony. This is the text the boy is reading, and I no longer want to read the letter.

What does it benefit us to have a revolution if the children are brainwashed from such an early age?

This is the myth of the petrified revolutionary:

The revolutionary was working to save his people. Money would arrive and he would put it in the cookie jar. Everyday he would put his hand in the cookie jar, to drop money off. Or so people thought. It came to the attention of the people that he may be taking money out as he puts the money in, or perhaps he was only pretending to put the money in, and removing his hand with the money intended for the people, or perhaps more. So they came to observe him, a man in a kitchen, allegedly putting his hand in the cookie jar for the benefit of his people. The revolutionary stuck his hand in the cookie jar, only to freeze there, his face looking out at the people he claimed to have been serving, a look on his face that told the people neither what they wanted nor what they feared.

And that is the myth of the petrified revolutionary.

As our visit continues, the makings of the letter become more widespread. A white woman whom everyone adores becomes a target of the letter-writers. She is sought after because she is a great chef and has a wonderful personality on top of that. She has carisma.

She is cooking something one day as she is accosted by two of the letter-writers. At first she politely rebukes their advances, but finally blurts out “I will not be your hero, I’m not even African!” As she is saying this, one hand is balancing a large pot while the other is stirring. An image of a man sticking his hands in a cookie jar, his hand stuck, his body frozen. The image comes to me because she is in exactly the same position. “Let me tell you a story,” she says, “of the petrified revolutionary.”

Huejuquilla and the Global Economy

A man comes to town from his ranch. He makes pottery and sells his work at the weekly market. Once or twice a year a Norteño couple comes down, a married couple, the woman with orders to fill Texas houses with his pottery. He makes good money off these orders alone. He talks about not having electricity a few years back, about his efforts to have electrical lines installed, as well as a road.

On one of our last days in Huejuquilla we meet a man who installs solar plates on homes outside of the electrical grids. These are largely for Huichol indians; he can’t quite install a system to power a refrigerator, but for a television, a computer, home appliances, it is possible. He talks about how much this benefits the people--Huicholes using the internet to connect to people in the US. I wonder how it’s possible to get internet where they live if there are no phone lines, much less fiber-optic cable.

The obvious benefits of solar electricity aside, there is a question here, a broader question. It's the question of progress--Is this it?—electricity, a telephone line, fiber-optic cable for the Huichol Indians? Not unlike the vision presented by Microsoft in their commercials, a diverse world, enacting their dreams, participating in the global economy, on their terms. Cut to a beautiful shot of a monk somewhere in China on a computer, a business transaction in the morning before getting down to the real work of being…spiritual. Is this the future, the indigenous people winning back autonomy by joining the global economy?