Real art or real irony?

Mr Brainwash posing during his opening.


U2 on broken vinyl.

Those are a couple of pieces that belong to the New York show that the artist by the name Mr Brainwash opened last weekend. He has an interesting story. I wrote about it on the LA Weekly.
It's up to you to decide if he is a genius or just a very clever fraud.


Tom Ford silkscreen.

PLEASE REPLY

Sometimes you get swallowed by real life and your virtual life suffers. To prove my point I am showing you a word cloud made with the content of a bunch of emails I didn't even had the time to read for more than a week. The one word that was calling me: Reply.

PHOTOGRAPHY, ARTS AND TERRORISM

This time in English



Five years ago a filmmaker called Jem Cohen (he worked, among others, with the recently deceased Vic Chesnutt and Elliott Smith -in the video-) was stopped for filming out of a train window between New York and Washington DC and had his film confiscated and turned over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI. He was questioned by the police and the film was never returned to him.

Today more than 2000 photographers who belong to the group 'I'm a photographer, not a terrorist' gathered in London in defense of street photography. Their manifesto says, among other things: "Photography is under attack. Across the country it that seems anyone with a camera is being targeted as a potential terrorist, whether amateur or professional, whether landscape, architectural or street photographer". They are based in the UK, but since the 9/11 attacks happened, this kind of harassment is being reported all over the western world, the so called 'free world'.


Carlos E. Ovalle, from the series of self-portraits made by the 'I'm a photographer not a terrorist' group. He says: 'In Chile they are also paranoid about this issue'.

Jem Cohen's beautiful work would have never existed if he had had to ask for a permit anytime he chose to record the outside world. After his film was confiscated he wrote a very interesting letter that was published by Filmmaker Magazine and, that, unfortunately, it didn't outdated at all. In fact, it's even more current now than it was when it was written five years ago. That scares me. You can read it all here, but I chose a few passages:

"I was filming the passing landscape as I've often done over the past 15 years. As a filmmaker who does most of my work in a documentary mode and often on the street, my role is to record the world as it is and as it unfolds. [....] I believe that it is the work and responsibility of artists to create such a record so that we can better understand, and future generations can know, how we lived, what we build, what changes, and what disappears. This has been the work of documentarians and artists including Mathew Brady, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, and so on. Street shooting is one of the cornerstones of photography itself, and it is facing serious new threats, some declared, many not".

"As a filmmaker, I am concerned about what this kind of clampdown means both to our livelihood and to the public, historical record. As a citizen, I am concerned about a climate in which a person can be pulled off of a train and have their property confiscated without warning or redress. I am also, frankly, concerned about terrorism, and genuine threats to our lives and cities. This leads me to ask if these are efficient, intelligent allotments of limited law enforcement resources and personnel. Does stopping us from photographing a bridge make us safer when anybody can search the internet and see countless photographs of the same bridge? Are all of those photographs to be somehow suppressed? Given that anyone can purchase a video recorder with a lens the size of a shirtbutton or any number of hidden camera devices, are the people openly taking pictures such an actual threat? What about all of those cell phones with cameras? As Ben Franklin said: "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Are we even gaining any safety?
Given that intimidation and the curtailing of our freedom are exactly what terrorists want, I wonder if these infringements of our civil liberties are not in fact a form of capitulation".

PD: Cohen, along with other filmmakers, fought against City Hall to get back the rights of New York photographers to shoot freely in the streets of the their city (you can read about their battle here). They won and since 2008 the NYPD can't stop photographers and filmmakers for doing their job any more (at least that's what the city says on paper).

PD> El festival Punto de Vista (5-13 de febrero, Pamplona) le dedica a Jem Cohen una retrospectiva.

RECORDANDO A LHASA

This time in Spanish

No suelo reproducir aquí los textos que publico en El Pais pero a éste le tengo cariño. Lo escribí en caliente, recién descubierta la muerte de Lhasa de Sela y recordando unos días de verano que compartí con ella.

In Memoriam
Sus inquietantes ojos rasgados la situaban en algún lugar indefinido de la geografía terrestre. Quizás no fuera del todo humana, porque a veces su sonrisa de hada triste podía llegar a romperte el corazón, como sus canciones más melancólicas. Oficialmente era canadiense, porque las leyes nos obligan a ser de algún sitio pero en realidad ella no quería ser de ninguna parte, porque Lhasa de Sela había crecido en un autobús, viajando entre México y Estados Unidos, jugando al teatro y a la música con su familia numerosa y su nomadismo de infancia se impregnó en su adn. Le gustaba hablar español cuando estaba en Nueva York e inglés cuando andaba por México y en Italia, donde yo la conocí, se reía a carcajadas tratando de hacerse entender con una mezcla de francés y español. Lhasa ‘me adoptó’ en Nápoles. Ella viajaba con un amigo común y toda su ‘troupe’ y ninguno hablaba italiano así que, casi por casualidad, me convertí en una especie de guía turística durante un par de días.

Había hipnotizado a la ciudad con su música la noche en que nos presentaron. Siempre ocurría, sus conciertos creaban un inquietante silencio, reverencial, y el que dio en Nápoles, durante aquel asfixiante verano del 2005, fue particularmente intenso porque tocar al aire libre en una ciudad italiana “tiene algo mágico”, decía ella. Todo era felicidad entre bastidores hasta que tuvimos que darle esquinazo a un fan, que la perseguía desde el inicio de su gira europea. Ella se agobió tanto que decidió irse a la cama. Le abrumaban los elogios y por eso le gustaba viajar, mezclarse con gente que no la conociera. En Montreal, la ciudad donde residía, era una estrella. En Nápoles, una ‘guiri’ más que sin embargo, no pudo huir de la tenacidad de un groupie obsesivo. Al día siguiente, las playas de Procida le hicieron olvidar el mal rato. Y los perros vagabundos que pueblan la isla. Se paraba a acariciarles y a hablarles constantemente. Parecía tener un canal de comunicación directo con ellos, al que yo apenas tuve acceso, porque Lhasa no se abría con facilidad a los desconocidos, aunque tuviera la capacidad de conquistarte en cuestión de minutos. En persona, o con su música.

Meses antes yo había tenido la suerte de escuchar una versión inédita que compuso del tema ‘Aatini Al-Nay’, de la estrella libanesa Fairuz. Era un tema bello y tristísimo que algún productor avispado algún día rescatará. Entre sus muchas patrias también estaba Líbano y la música era su forma de indagar en sus múltiples orígenes.

La ví un par de veces más. La última fue en Montreal. Me la encontré por la calle. Hablamos un rato y me atreví a proponerle que colaborara conmigo, que hiciera la banda sonora de un documental en el que yo estaba trabajando. Le interesó mucho el tema, leucemia. Poco después supe que ella misma había comenzado a luchar “como Gengis Khan”, en palabras de un amigo cercano, contra un cáncer de pecho. Paradojas crueles del destino. La enfermedad, que iba a ser la excusa para unirnos, impidió que volviéramos a encontrarnos.

A mí me gusta recordarla así, con la energía de este vídeo.

GOODBYE LHASA

I loved her music, and I loved her. I spent three days with Lhasa de Sela in Naples four years ago. She was a very special human being, like her music: velvet sounds for troubled souls but also sweet and charming tunes to keep our hearts warm. Now she's gone. She was only 37. It's not fair to die so young. Cancer, again, that awful plague! She died last Friday in Montreal. More information here.

This is one of her most beautiful videos, directed by my friend Ralph Dfouni, who took me with her on tour and allowed me to know better a singer whose exquisite music will keep her memory alive.

MISSING LA - I DON'T LIVE IN LA #4

This time in Spanish and English

2010. El número me suena a ciencia ficción. Pero ha llegado. Happy New Year!!! Voy a inaugurar el año bloguero con uno de los videos de la serie I don´t live in LA @Getty#09. Tengo mucho material filmado y lo quiero ir sacando poco a poco. Además, para qué engañarnos, echo de menos esa extraña ciudad sin ciudad, donde sólo algunos barrios parecen tener vida humana, donde la gente sueña constantemente con reinventarse, donde los cielos no caben en los ojos y donde el cambio horario crea la ficción imposible de que todo ocurrió ayer. Eso sí, pasear por las calles de Madrid, atiborradas de gente en pleno ataque de consumismo navideño se ha convertido en un inesperado placer. Después de dos meses teniendo que subirme a un coche para poder rodearme de gente que pasea sin más, tener a miles de madrileños ruidosos alrededor resulta extrañamente reconfortante. No obstante, este video muestra una de las caras amables de Los Angeles, Venice Beach. Allí hay sobredosis de vida.

I grew up thinking about 2010 as a sci-fiction year, but it's totally real now. Happy New Year from Madrid!! I am opening the new blog season with a video from the series I don't live in LA @Getty#09. I can't lie, I miss that weird city without a city, where only a few neighborhoods seem to be inhabited by people; where the sky doesn't fit inside the eyes; where people dream about reinventing themselves, and where the clock travels so far behind the rest of the world that everything seems to have happened yesterday. I have to confess though, to see Madrid' streets packed with madrileños doing frantic Christmas shopping or just walking because walking it's fun it has been a surprising pleasure. After two months of feeling at times the last human being on the planet in the streets of LA and having to drive just to go to share some public space with people, I am enjoying being surrounded by thousands of noisy Spaniards. In this video, though, there are people. Lots of them. It shows one of the mildest sides of LA, Venice Beach.

BITTER TEARS, FURY AND POLITICS

This time in Spanish and English



This is like a retwitt. The story on the link below was going to be here but I pitched it to the LA Weekly and they bought it. I am very happy about it because so far only Canadians had encouraged me to write in their language...

It's about the book 'A heartbeat and a guitar. Johnny Cash and the making of Bitter Tears', by Antonino D'Ambrosio. He did a musical presentation of it at Subliminal Projects, the Shepard Fairey art gallery in LA. Fairey's art work related to the book and to D'Ambrosio's documentary Let Fury have the hour was in display there too.

Read it here:

BITTER TEARS, FURY AND POLITICS

En el link de arriba podeis leer un reportaje mío publicado en el LA WEEKLY sobre el libro 'A heartbeat and a guitar. Johnny Cash and the making of Bitter Tears', de Antonino D'Ambrosio. El libro habla del casi desconocido album Bitter Tears, con el que Cash reivindicó los derechos de los indios americanos y que fue censurado de forma fulminante. D'Ambrosio hizo una entretenida presentación musical en Subliminal Projects, la galería de Shepard Fairey (el artista mundialmente famoso por los posters de Obama) en Los Angeles. En la foto dos obras de Fairey hechas para la portada del libro y para el poster del documental Let Fury have the hour (sobre 'activismo musical y artístico') que D'Ambrosio presentará en verano.

GETTING TO KNOW LOS ANGELES #3

This time in English.

This is the third chapter on a series about experiencing LA as a potential Angelina.


HEALTH CARE

I needed a prescription. So I went to one of the dozens of clinics that surround my LA apartment in what it's called 'Little Guatemala', this lively neighborhood of Latino workers with a million clinics around. The doctor's experience wasn't really different from others I previously had in New York: a very uninviting place, dust everywhere, and a stretcher that was so old they had secured it with gaffer's tape:

For the uninsured like myself those clinics request that you pay $20 dollars for a visit and $1o dollars for each prescription. If you need a blood test or something more sophisticated, the bill gets into the hundreds. Doctors don't even look at you when they ask questions. They literally couldn't care less about people's health. They just make sure you sign every possible paper so you won’t take them to court later. Hopefully, the health care reform will also change this way of treating people. If being uninsured won't be an option anymore there won't be any dark stigma for people that cannot afford a private insurer...
We are humans too!!

PUBLIC SPACES

I biked through MacArthur's park a few days ago. It looked very beautiful from the 10th floor of the American Cement Building, where I have been working on my documentary (yes, it will be finally ready quite soon!!). Unfortunately, some parks in LA are not intended to be enjoyed by citizens. I am still trying to understand the reason; all I can say, so far, is that I felt I was biking to hell. I was the only woman; at least three junkies where trying to avoid falling into the water; a wide variety of hustlers where loitering and looking at me without friendly faces and at least two drunk guys mumble who knows what to me. The landscape was either drunken people or homeless sleeping on the park.

In an ideal world, all types of people enjoying the sun would have inhabited this beautiful green space. Someone has told me that those parks exist in LA too. I just wonder how is it possible that an area of town whose streets are alive, as opposite as many others ghostly neighborhoods, is exactly the one where a potentially public space it's a total nightmare. New York parks used to be like that years ago. Now it is a different story. I just hope LA won’t follow Giuliani's example to 'clean' up the city. The 9/11 mayor throws everybody either into jail or into buses with one-way tickets to out of town.

DRUGS
What can I say? As the great Jonathan Gold reminded me, many punk lyrics used to refer to Bonnie Brae, a notorious street in the neighborhood known for being the heroin supermarket of LA (at its corner with 6 st) It seems that crack is more on vogue now days but probably the killer # 1 in the neighborhood is alcohol. Soledad, a Guatemalan who works selling pupusas on Alvarado, told me the sad story that plagues the area: "Almost everybody drinks his salary on Fridays and ends up falling asleep at any given corner. Hard workers but totally depressed by their lives in LA". Is she too? "No hija, en mi país te cortan las orejas para robarte los pendientes. Eso sí que es deprimente. Aquí hay cosas feas pero se puede ser feliz".

GETTING TO KNOW LOS ANGELES #2

This time in English

This is the second chapter on a series about experiencing LA as a potential Angelina.

Alvarado St.

IMMIGRATION, LOVE AND MOVIES
I am living around MacArthur's park, which means I am a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes around Guatemalan, Salvadorian and Mexican workers who think I am a gringa who doesn't understand Spanish. It's a lively neighborhood where you can incessantly listen to Jose Luis Perales , buy cheap socks and impossible clothes, have great tacos, pupusas -and great pastrami at Langer's- and get fake green cards.

"ID's, ID's". That's the most common word uttered around the area. The cholos (gang people) control the business but deep in the chain of command there are illegal immigrants walking the streets and offering their bargains: the cheapest ID is $40, the most expensive could be $700. Maybe because I look 'gringa' but I speak Spanish with my thick Castilian accent, one of those men agreed to talk to me. "If you just jumped the fence we try to be good and give you a deal. If you are European we charge you more and if your car looks expensive the price goes up". At least, they have a heart...


Alvarado on a Sunday morning

The cost also depends on how fake the ID looks. The quality of the number it's key too. "If you want a green card with a real number you are going to have to pay for it, but we can get you anything". The price of the best ones, $700, looks very cheap to me, compared with New York, where as far as I know you have to pay at least $2000 for a good green card in the black market. "The business is bigger in LA and we sell mainly fake numbers but every employer knows it and everybody plays along" this guy told me.

He was caught months ago when he sold an ID to a cop in the area. He was deported but crossed the border again; it cost him $4000. "I have done it a few times, so that was a 'good customer' price; if not it could have been $5000 or $6000". He used to work in construction in LA but he wasn't making much money. "This is a better business, it's worth the risk" he says, although he wouldn't say how much he makes. "In Mexico there is no money and my girlfriend is here so I had to come back". Whether it's love or money who keeps him here, he doesn't even think about going back to his country. Neither are millions of illegal immigrants who are trapped in all kind of emotional or economic webs.



Picture of 'Love and Documents',
a great short movie recently screened in LA and
directed by Ben Fine using muppets.
It's based on the following story and it´s a good example of how art
can help to raise awareness:

I have a very good friend in New York who crossed the border more than ten years ago. He's married to an American because he loves her but he can't get his green card because he entered the country illegally and laws don't forgive it. It's a catch 22 situation. They are trying to press the government to change the current law and include their case in the future immigration reform: there are at least half a million people in the same situation. You can read about it here, and you can help them by sign their petition for the waiver reform here.

POR FIN, UN PERIÓDICO!!

This time in Spanish

Interrumpo estos relatos sobre Los Angeles para hacer una declaración muy poco habitual en estos tiempos de crisis periodística: he babeado abriendo un periódico. Por primera vez en meses, me he sentado frente a un 'ladrillo' de papeles - en concreto 320 páginas!- como esos que solían llegar cada domingo a los kioskos y me ha apetecido leerme absolutamente todo, incluída la sección de deportes, de la que soy muy poco adicta.



No, ni el New York Times ni Los Angeles Times han mejorado milagrosamente sus ediciones de la noche a la mañana. Siguen su proceso de degradación y aburrimiento paulatino en papel como casi toda la prensa tradicional. Ha tenido que ser la iniciativa del escritor de moda, Dave Eggers, la que me haga recuperar el placer de devorar prensa escrita (e impresa).

Su nombre? San Francisco Panorama. Ya sé que todo lo que cuento no es noticia: hace meses que se especulaba sobre cómo sería la iniciativa de Eggers, que anunció a bombo y platillo que preparaba un periódico 'como los de antes', con mucha letra, mucho papel, reportajes largos y trabajados, en formato sábana y hasta con cómics, concretamente 16 páginas de viñetas!

Pero yo no lo había visto hasta hoy. Y a mí me gusta escribir sobre lo que veo. Llegó a las calles de San Francisco el día 8 y por fin en Los Angeles conseguimos uno ayer. En una de las primeras páginas se explica al detalle qué pasa en Congo, con background, análisis y esclarecedores gráficos, hay un reportaje sobre la sequía en California y también locuras como el recorrido fotográfico de un asado de cordero, desde que el cordero pasta en la hierba hasta que llega al plato, con toda la parte gore incluida. Las elecciones afganas al detalle, Michael Chabon escribiendo sobre música, Stephen King sobre deporte, estupendos periodistas despedidos de otros medios hacen reportajes de investigación...

El SF Panorama está agotado en todas partes. La tirada ha sido de apenas 20,000 ejemplares y en principio es un periódico de un día. Eggers no quiere emular a Rupert Murdoch, simplemente aspira a recordarle a la gente -y a los Murdoch planetarios- que leer diarios con reportajes bien escritos de muchas páginas solía ser un placer y podría seguir siéndolo. Yo también lo creo.



Visualmente es un regalo: hasta las recetas de cocina están hechas con buen gusto. Y los textos... una delicia. Y eso que varios versan sobre temas muy locales de San Francisco, pero importa poco: esa es la clave del buen periodismo, conseguir que te interese hasta lo que en principio te resulta lejano y ajeno.

Obviamente es imposible leérselo en un día, ni siquiera en una semana, pero apetece. Y eso es lo que realmente debería importarle a quienes editan periódicos, que sus lectores tengan ganas de leerselo todo, incluído un reportaje de casi 30 páginas sobre el Camino de Santiago en el suplemento dominical !!! (llevo 15 y es lo mejor que he leído nunca sobre el tema)

En este blog y en este encontraréis más detalles -económicos y creativos, resulta que ha sido bastante barato hacerlo....- y descripciones sobre el contenido. Aquí van las críticas, siempre inevitables. Yo me declaro fan y lamento que el proyecto no se convierta al menos en un mensual. Por cierto, ya han entrado en segunda edición, pero no será cuestión de horas si no de semanas: la reimpresión llegará en enero.

GETTING TO KNOW LOS ANGELES #1

Yes, believe it or not I am still in LA. I've been 'missing in action', I am sorry, but I had to organize many things in order to stay here in December so my blog suffered of lack of attention, but I am back!

It wasn't difficult to avoid returning to New York: the winter is killer there and December presented itself in LA under the warm light of my beloved Cadiz, (who knew it???) and with different kind of temptations, like a very cheap apartment to stay in or a kick-ass bike to be a rebel and bike instead of driving in LA so, how could I say no? Plus, I am a journalist working for a newspaper in crisis that shrinks everyday and in consequence my amount of work is shrinking too so I figured I wouldn't miss much...




The USC/Getty fellowship provided me with the best possible Cicerones in town, but after those three heavenly weeks, reality hit back. I don't want to be one of those reporters that land in a place and start judging it right away, without really knowing or understanding what life is like in that place. That's a sin that we journalists commit too often and I'd like to avoid it. That was one of the reasons for me to stay in LA longer: let's try to have an Angelino life and see if it is possible to understand why this city is evenly loved and hated.

I am going to try to do my best at describing very simple experiences that are also related with important discussions that are going on around the country and the world, like health care, public transportation, public spaces, culture, immigration or food. I' ll do it over a series of posts.



THE ILLUSION OF BIKING IN LA
Yes, I've tried and it's possible. If you don't have a car, a bike makes your life easier, but it's not a solution if you want to go to the other side of the city... unless you have loooots of time!! -I' ll talk about driving in LA in the next few days and also about the project CicLAvia-. My biking trip from Downtown to Hancock Park wasn't too difficult, 45 minutes biking. But the thought of going back in the dark of the night, through blocks and blocks of empty sidewalks it wasn't an appealing idea. It feels very good to be alone in the middle of the countryside looking at the landscape. The emptiness of a city sidewalk and the deafening sound of silence when you are surrounded by inhabited houses it's very foreign and creepy to me... as a Swedish friend asked over and over for a year after she moved to LA, 'where is the city'?????

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
Well, it seems that in LA the city is always indoors. It feels weird because the climate would make it the perfect outdoors city but if people don't use public transportation, chances are that not many people will flock to the streets to going to places. They just flock into their cars. In fact, LA must be one of the very few cities in the world whose subway looks like this at rush hour:


This picture, taken at 8,30 am on the red line
must look like a dream to new yorkers....

The subway is not too bad, it's quite ugly but at least it's clean, and the city is trying to improve it opening new lines and promising a big expansion,. For buses is quite another story. Some of them look like they belong to a seventies horror movie: they feel old and quite abandoned inside -sorry to say that the GPS screens don't make up reality- and the amount of mentally ill people that board them it doesn't make it better. Public transportation in LA reflects class and economy without mercy : an overwhelming amount of users are Latinos, blacks, elderly people or homeless. I tried buses a few times, and I guess it also depends on the neighborhood but I never had such a depressing experience in a bus before. From a very old sick woman with her very cheap wig on to the super fat guy that hadn't shower in at least a month and walked into the bus drinking and screaming provoking zero reactions around, all I could think of is to leave the bus asap. I couldn't, I had to go somewhere. So were many workers that just happen to don't make enough money to have a car. The depressing view they have to endure inside buses every day probably just make them dream of killing somebody. I would end up in a gang if I had to take the bus everyday... It should be mandatory for every Angelino to hop the bus at least once a week, so people with voice and power -the poor never count- would start asking for improvements. Cities need to boost their public transportation system's asap. Did anybody hear about climate change and Copenhagen in LA????

If the city were smart enough, they would make life inside public transportation a less depressing experience, improving the quality of the buses, the amount of them and taking care of their homeless, that choose buses -and public libraries I am told- to spend their time. It seems that now they are less than they used to be, 'only' 48,000, but I am living downtown and I see them all the time, and it's heartbreaking. Governments are there, among other things, to take care of the weakest parts of society, that's what I learnt in Spain. In the USA 'weakness' equals 'looser', that horrible word that reflects better than any other the cultural values in which Americans are educated. That's why people seem to be afraid of the 'public option' in the health care debate. Being taking care of it sounds like a sin to millions of people. But they should realize that paying for health care doesn't guarantee real or better care...

I don't live in LA (day 3)

This time in Spanish and English

Hoy he descubierto que un inmigrante italiano llamado Simon Rodia emuló a Gaudí sin saberlo al construir las Watts Towers, una escultura con aire a La Sagrada Familia en el corazón del barrio de Watts, en Los Angeles. Se pasó más de tres décadas dedicado a su obra, reciclando materiales para construirla poco a poco y sin ningún tipo de ayuda entre 1920 y 1954. Las Watts Towers estuvieron a punto de ser demolidas en los años cincuenta pero sobrevivieron a la amenaza de las inmobiliarias y hoy permanecen erguidas como supervivientes ejemplares de la historia de este duro suburbio de Los Angeles, habitado principalmente por afroamericanos e infaustamente conocido por los 'Watts riots' de 1965. Según cuenta la leyenda, mientras Rodia construía sus torres alguien le mostró una foto de La Sagrada Familia. "Se parece a mis torres" exclamó con cierto desdén. Tras contemplar la foto un rato exclamó "!Pero a él le ayudaron a construir su iglesia, yo lo hice solo!".
La banda sonora es un jarocho, música tradicional de Veracruz grabada en directo durante una cena musical en casa de Sasha Anawalt. Uno de los intérpretes es Cesar Castro, un mexicano que hoy vive en Los Angeles y que tiene un brillante futuro como músico. Por alguna razón su jarocho me recordó al viaje al desierto de Mojave que también hemos hecho durante la usc annenberg fellowship. El video no es periodístico, es otro experimento sin apenas edición con la digital harinezumi.



Today I discovered that an immigrant named Simon Rodia built a sculpture -the Watts Towers- that resembles Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. He shaped it in the heart of Watts, one of the toughest and resilient neighborhoods of Los Angeles. We had a very unique guide who told us how the story went: "One day somebody showed Rodia a picture of Gaudi's church. He looked at it and said with some disdain 'it looks like my towers!'. Then, after a pause, he added: 'He definitely had some help, I did it alone!". Rodia spent more than 30 years building his towers all by himself between the '20s and the 50's.
The musical score is by Cesar Castro, who played jarochos live during a musical night at Sasha Anawalt's home. California used to belong to Mexico, I guess that's why I made the unconscious connection between jarochos (traditional music from Veracruz) and the Mojave desert in this video piece. It's not a reporting piece, it's another experiment with almost no editing with the digital harinezumi.

I don't live in LA (week #1)

This time in Spanish

Me he paseado por el estudio de Frank Gehry de la mano de su socio, Craig Webb; he visitado tres casas clásicas de LA -Eames, Schindler y Hollyhock- guiada por un crack de la arquitectura, Victor Regnier; he descubierto a un personaje increíble llamado mister Jalopi y al director de un proyecto artístico fabuloso, Machine Project; he cenado con Jonathan Gold, un premio pulitzer experto crítico gastronómico del que casualmente publicó un perfil la revista New Yorker la semana pasada- y que en lugar de escoger un restaurante pijo y carísimo nos llevó a un tailandés nada ostentoso pero absolutamente celestial. También he conocido a Peter Sellars, -no confundir con Sellers- polémico director de ópera y teatro, un buda, en palabras de uno de mi fellows, un genio, en mis propias palabras; también he descubierto los secretos de la arquitectura Googie -nada que ver con Google- con la que arrancó la 'car culture' en California y con la que se inauguró el mundo de los shopping centers mucho antes de que estos se convirtieran en horribles cajas rectángulares.
Conversar con toda esta gente tranquilamente, on y off the record, sin las prisas absurdas que normalmente rodean la vida periodística es un lujo impagable. Y aún me quedan otras dos semanas! Tengo un montón de material que irá saliendo en forma de videos y fotos pero poquito a poco porque esto de ser una annenberg/ getty fellow apenas deja tiempo para nada más!

I don't live in LA (day 2)

An experimental audio visit to the Getty Villa with my fellow fellows and a surprising amount of kids.