10: Seasons

Most winters I go to Mexico for a month or so. First to Mexico City for art week and then on to Oaxaca city and the coast. I’ve come to love this seasonal migration. I left New York because of the winters and since moving to Northern California I’ve realized that the anxiety and depression that followed me through my youth was mostly environmental.

I grew up in an NYC that seemed disappointed about the end of something exciting. Over the last fifteen years those disappointments were internalized and developed alongside a conceptual framework about the reasons why. My regular trips became less regular and then not regular at all. I think largely it's because it's more fun and less expensive to go to Mexico City. There’s a feeling of something in the stages of ascension. I realize I say this with the privilege of someone from the global north looking for a particular kind of version of the good life. Mainly the time to do meaningful things, like sitting in the plaza quietly or having conversations with people; taking in the beauty, birdsong and laughter.

From beneath a tree lined street in Roma, after eating at paratha folded over Oaxacan cheese, I tuck into a small press artist book from Casa Bosques. It’s from a British artist published by a small press in the Netherlands and comprised of one side of the correspondence with an interlocutor and risographed impressions of fallen eyelashes. Mondialité I think to myself as a street sweeper walks by.

This is to say a version of my good life is rehearsed on a stage built by structural violence, for several weeks a year in Mexico. Zona Maco is the main fair that I do my best to avoid and then Material and Salon Acme are the other ones. Material seems oriented towards a hipper demographic, intent on distinguishing themselves as alternative while using similar devices and siphoning some of the attentional reserves dammed up by Zona Maco. They usually have some entertaining, if strained, performances and parties throughout. Salon Acme feels more homegrown and takes place in a grand dilapidating structure that is worth the trip itself. The thriving, greater ecology of Mexico’s art scene is on full display with an overwhelming range of cultural institutions, galleries, and artist spaces. Kurimanzutto is a favorite and represents an international cohort of artists I admire, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Adrián Villar Rojas. Terremoto magazine, who also operates a small exhibition space, appears deeply invested in participating in the global art conversation and addressing its ubiquitous themes. Ubering between events at the MASA house and an opening at a design museum I met an artist participating in a show called Pabellón de Escalas. 

The show was organized by a collective called Guadalajara 90210, made up of Marco Rountree Cruz and Alma Saladin. I went to a many-story building, under construction with an open roof and proceeded to climb up construction ladders to see a 100 artist show that was only promoted by word of mouth. Alma and Marco showed me around and we spent the night talking and eating. Often when describing how cool Mexico City is right now, I end up recounting that evening. They’ve since become friends and we visit every trip. I’m sad I won’t be there this year and my guts hurt thinking about the kefir at Boulenc and the early morning dance groups in the plaza in Oaxaca.

I went back to California instead of Mexico this winter. It was so good to be with family. I took a bunch of footage with Agnes. Goldsmiths loaned me a Black Magic and we woke up before the sun came out and took the vespa to the bluffs to film. Fidel ran beside us.

Outside the peoples store, in the plaza, it’s the way Jesse says you can’t own the land. Chloe, who just finished making and cleaning up after the free food programs evening meal, calls out I love you dad. Oscar is inside with Diana and Anwen. Diana says I miss when you would play music when we were closing. Every night was a dance party. Oscar and I have been sharing music over text. When I first moved to town and Anwen was a young girl, she came up to me during a gathering in the park downtown and invited me to see the nudibranchs, leading me to the mouth of the lagoon where small translucent creatures with bright streaks of neon running through them collected in the shallow pools. I was so honored she had invited me. Like how I’m so honored Oscar cares about my taste in music. I had just seen Ilka in the library and we ordered a few more copies of a book we made of her photographs. I think a healthy food coop, a plaza and a library is the bare minimum for a decent life. The food coop is a model for work that feels much better than then the other ones that are popular today. The shifts are 5 hours and most people work 2 or 3 a week. There’s no boss and the elders guide the younger, with openness, patience and good humor. It has its own ways and aesthetics born of the diverse personalities within. I might describe it as an aesthetics of compromise. Every holiday season Peter decorates it with objects, mostly from the freebox in the plaza outside. The other collective members make small adjustments, often to comedic effect. This year someone changed the dogmen of the apocalypse to the dogma of calypso.