JdlC

Chapultepec’s Audiorama

Spoken Word Gallery is happy to announce its seventh exhibition: a live performance by Mexican artist Mercedes Nasta.

Without physical objects or the use of images, SWG presents a program of shows made entirely by spoken language. Neither simple performances nor straight lectures, each intervention is imagined as an exhibition in its own right; an exhibition where the actual ‘telling’ of each invited guest will become the artwork.

For SWG #7, Nasta presents The Sand Covering the Bronze Pyramid, an event constructed around a series of instructions that weave together words with the possibility of bodies’ movements. Tracing choreographic lines in both time and space, the performance seeks to unearth hidden configurations of the body through the sound and meaning of uttered words. 

Starting with a sound piece directing the attending guests through the first section of Chapultepec Park, the main part of the performance will develop inside the secluded space of the park’s Audiorama. There, complementing the artist’s voice, a group of four performers will physically embody a text comprising sections of Nasta's writings and fragments of poems written by various Mexican authors.

SWG #7 is generously supported by Fundación Jumex and Co,Ma.

Mercedes Nasta is a Mexican artist working with music and performance. She began his musical career as a vocalist for the electronic rock band Disco Ruido, with whom she composed the album Sistema Solar (2010), presented at festivals such as Vive Latino and Corona Capital. In 2016, she formed her audiovisual project inspired by the pre-Hispanic spirit. Their first album, Basalto, is an ode to the pyramids, Mexican modernism, and natural phenomena. Her most recent material, RAMA (2023), a collaboration with Rodrigo Blanco, is an album of electronic, progressive, tropical, and down-tempo influences. Nasta has performed in various venues and museums, such as the Tamayo Museum, the Rockefeller Center lobby, the OMR Gallery, Casa Maauad, the Trópico Festival, and Cine Tonalá, among others.

to do without so much mythology

A spoken show with works by Paul Becker, Luis Felipe Fabre, Holly Pester, Sarah Tripp and Bob Kil

Picture a live comedy show. A routine, as they call it.
A woman or a man walks the whole stage.
She or he reaches a mic on a mic stand and then…

CLICK TO LISTEN

Francesco Pedraglio / Tania Pérez Cördova
Museo Anahuacalli
Ciudad de México
February, 2020


Act 1. Saliva
Act 2. War
Act 3. Tools
Act 4. Alphabet
Act 5. Strike
Act 6. Fear
Act 7. Form

Act 1. Saliva
At the beginning of this story there is one substance within another, and that’s how it all starts. Gas into liquid, usually. Carbon dioxide, vapor and air… mostly air, actually. Air in lots of different traps. In agitated water, in soapy water, in glass, in thick fluorescein, etcetera. But before the beginning - before before, so to speak… at the beginning of life - large volumes of volcanic gases and little to no oxygen made things pretty complicated for us on this earth […]

Dan Fox
Foro Bellescene
Zempoala 90
Ciudad de México
December 2019
20 h


On this stage is a performer. You are either looking at his feet, or trying to resist the temptation to kick him in the head. He is talking about limbo. But he isn’t a performer, he’s a writer. Arguably, right now he’s performing, or ‘doing’ a reading, which is somewhere inbetween performing and lecturing. However, this reading isn’t just a reading, or talk, or performance. Someone named Juan De La Cosa – a ghostly presence existing in-between the imaginations of two other people – calls it an exhibition.


Sobre este escenario se encuentra un actor. Tú estás viendo sus pies, o intentando resistir la tentación de patearlo en la cabeza. Está hablando sobre el limbo. Pero no es un actor, es un escritor. Indiscutiblemente, en este momento está actuando, o “realizando” una lectura, algo que se encuentra en algún lugar entre la actuación y el dar una conferencia. Sin embargo, está lectura no es sólo una lectura, o una charla, o una representación. Alguien llamado Juan De La Cosa –una presencia fantasmática que existe en el entremedio de las imaginaciones de otras dos personas– lo llama una exposición.


With the generous support of / Con el apoyo de:
PAC (Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo

Marie Lund
Bureau des Réalités
Bruxelles
September 2018


through the door

row of low houses

speaking quietly

the sun above open with no roof

green dark green 

upper body visible

but nothing to me as i look at the computer

slowly one step at a time

warm 

humid damp

vegetation dense

as outside

plateau

humid

overgrown

2 people walk through the door at the same time

[…]

(Extract from a live transcript of Marie Lund’s exhibition by Eleanor Ivory Weber)

Lucy Pawlak
Museo Jumex
Ciudad de México
April 2017


1. Habrá 10 puntos.
2. Cada punto formando un nuevo presente.
3. El mundo se reorganizará alrededor de cada nuevo presente.
4. El Presante presionando sobre nosotros,
5. Algo caído,
6. Derramado,
7. Olvidado,
8. Deshecho… no puedo mirarte directo al ojo… Bueno, los accidentes suceden…
9. POW! WHAM! KERR-THWAK!
10. Y de pronto un destello repentino de luces negras mientras la cabeza voltea y retrocede y un cerebro impacta contra la parte trasera de un cráneo.

Reset


1. There will be 10 points.
2. Each point forming a new present.
3. The world will re-arrange itself around each new present.
4. The Pressance pressing on us,
5. Something dropped,
6. Spilled,
7. Forgotten,
8. Undone... Can’t look you in the eye... Well, accidents happen...
9. POW! WHAM! KERR-THWAK! 
10. And all at once a sudden flash of black lights as a head turns and snaps back and a brain hits the back of a skull.

Reset

Mario Bellatin
josegarcia mx, Salón Acme
Ciudad de México
Febrero 2017


Bellatin es una persona de un solo brazo, es decir nació de esa manera. Sin embargo, en la época en la que transcurrió su infancia —quizá por los rezagos del imaginario de la posguerra— era común la idea de utilizar prótesis para todo aquel que presentara características físicas ajenas a la mayoría. Es por eso que Bellatin se vio obligado a utilizar desde muy niño un aparato de este orden, sin necesitarlo realmente. Con el pasar de los años aquello motivó que desarrollara una profunda dependencia con el artefacto: una necesidad de tipo psicológico. Aquella situación se alargó hasta su edad adulta, cuando aparecieron las prótesis cibernéticas, las cuales empezó a utilizar poniendo más de una vez en riesgo su vida. Activadas por señales procedentes del cerebro, estas prótesis desarrollaban muchas veces respuestas distintas a las solicitadas: por ejemplo, se aferraban de manera tenaz al volante de un auto en pleno movimiento, o tomaban la otra mano con el fin de quebrar sus huesos. Además, Bellatin advirtió en ese tiempo una serie de desórdenes neurológicos motivados seguramente por la interferencia de esos aparatos, cuya operación a partir de impulsos eléctricos repercutía quizá en el normal funcionamiento del cerebro. Cuando tomó la decisión de deshacerse de aquella prótesis para siempre, decidió arrojarla al río Ganges cuando discurre frente a la ciudad mística de Benarés.


Bellatin is a person with a single arm, which means he was born that way. However, at the time of his childhood —perhaps due to post-war imaginary traces— the use of prosthetics was common for all who had different features than the rest of the people. For this reason and with no real need for it, Bellatin was forced to use a prosthetic arm since he was very young. As years passed, this motivated a deep dependency with the object: it was a psychological need rather than a physical one. This situation extended until his adult life, when cybernetic prosthetics appeared and he started using them putting his life at risk more than once. Activated by brain signals, this prosthetic arms frequently developed unsolicited responses: for example, they would strongly grab the steering wheel of a moving car or hold the other hand with the intention of breaking its bones. Moreover,Bellatin noticed a series of neurological disorders that could have been attributed to the interference of these gadgets, which, operated by electrical impulses, surely had an effect in brain function. When he took the decision to get rid of that prosthetic arm for good, he threw it away in the Ganges river where, as part of a millenary ritual, numerous dead bodies pass.