Getting Up for the People: The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca - Softcover

De La Rosa, Mike Graham; Schadl, Suzanne M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604869607 ISBN 13: 9781604869606

Verlag: PM Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Getting Up for the People tells the story of the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO) by remixing their own images and words with curatorial descriptions. Part of a long tradition of socially conscious Mexican art, ASARO gives respect to Mexican national icons; but their themes are also global, entering contemporary debates on issues of corporate greed, genetically modified organisms, violence against women, and abuses of natural resources.

In 2006 ASARO formed as part of a broader social movement, part of which advocated for higher teachers’ salaries and access to school supplies. They exercised extralegal means to “get up,” displaying their artwork in public spaces. ASARO stands out for their revitalizing remix of collective social action with modern conventions in graffiti, traditional processes in Mexican printmaking, and contemporary communication through social networking.

Now they enjoy international recognition as well as state-sanctioned support for their artists’ workshops. They use their notoriety to teach Oaxacan youth the importance of publicly expressing and exhibiting their perspectives on the visual landscape.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Mike Graham de La Rosa is a Mexican American street artist/activist, Spanish teacher, and curatorial intern working toward his master’s degree in Latin American studies. He is the recipient of a New Mexico Higher Education Department scholarship and a Tinker Foundation award for his work on ASARO.

Suzanne M. Schadl is curator of Latin American collections at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches Latin American Studies. As the LaEnergaia collections manager for a Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) grant, she also explores digitally born archiving. She currently is the Rapporteur General in the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) and editor of the Resources for College Libraries’ Spanish and Portuguese Literatures list.

The Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca (ASARO) is a contemporary Mexican artists’ collective comprised of young art students and street artists. They employ multiple mediums including wood and linoleum block prints, large-scale graffiti murals, interventionist stencils, and wheat pastes. Public and academic interest in their work (as evidenced in exhibits and recent publications) is proof of their success in “getting up.”

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Getting Up for the People

The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca

By Mike Graham de la Rosa, Suzanne M. Schadl

PM Press

Copyright © 2014 ASARO, Mike Graham de la Rosa, and Suzanne M. Schadl
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-960-6

Contents

Preface, 
Introduction: Manifesting Visual Rebellion, 
Remixing Creative Revitalization — Disrupting the Matrix, 
Peripheral Getting In, 
Multispective and Social Action, 
Counterculture and Consciousness, 
Pa'l Pueblo/For the People, 
Stand Up, Speak Up, 
Acknowledgments, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

REMIXING CREATIVE REVITALIZATION — DISRUPTING THE MATRIX

"Creative ability is a resource upon which the people of Oaxaca have historically drawn to survive and revitalize. The assembly of revolutionary artists arises from the need to reject and transcend authoritarian forms of governance and institutional culture and societal structures which have been characterized as discriminatory and dehumanizing for seeking to impose a single version of reality and morality or simulacrum." — ASARO Manifesto

A 2007 exhibition in Oaxaca titled Grafiteros al Paredón (roughly "Graffiti Artists Up Against the Wall") demonstrates the second statement in ASARO's manifesto. This indoor replication of scenes (once visible, but since removed from Oaxaca's streets) asserts memory by remixing art and space. The exhibition serves as visual documentation of both artistic rebellion and state censorship. In it, a larger-than-life likeness of Oaxacan anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón overwhelms repeated profiles of Ruiz Ortiz with labels identifying the governor as many things, including thief, murderer, authoritarian, and innocent. Shown in the Oaxaca Graphic Arts Institute (IAGO), the installation is replete with added graffitied phrases like "Stop the information blockade," "Unite people," "The resistance continues," and "APPO lives." These regenerated works proclaim ASARO's continued employment of creative re-vitalization to transcend discriminatory and dehumanizing authoritarian restraints.

"These icons are a way for young people to express their power. To say, 'Well, okay, let's use these images that the State has appropriated but they can also be ours with symbolism that come from the youth.'" — Ita, ASARO

Bringing retooled street images back together in a gallery provokes important debates about the consequences of Mexico's authoritarian history and Oaxaca's cultural patrimony. In 1920, Flores Magón wrote a letter to a Russian-American confidant denouncing the notion of "art for art's sake" by describing adherents as incapable of expressing feelings and ideas. His image encourages debate about art and space. Revered for equating public ownership with liberty, Flores Magón provokes questions about who is responsible for Oaxaca's patrimony. His image in this exhibit suggests that officials had it wrong a year earlier when they called ASARO's street installations "act(s) of aggression against the built heritage of Oaxaca." The exhibit asks: what is the "built" heritage of Oaxaca; who constructed it and for what purposes; and who determines its future?

"An intervention could start with a person reading a line in a magazine, or something written in the bathroom. Or it can be a vagabond every day in front of a pristine wall. The trick is changing the context and transforming it into something else. You don't change the natural state of the thing, but you change the context in which it's framed. ... This place,the Espacio Zapata, intervenes with the dominant order. As you go to other galleries, you come to see other forms, other possibilities to intervene in the street." — Ita, ASARO

Posing questions like these inside a gallery rather than outside on the streets creatively repurposes physical space. It "gets back up," thus transcending institutionalized versions of events again, this time from the inside out. Participating in such a reciprocal dialogue with Flores Magón looking on is significant. The image of Flores Magón, who was exiled from Mexico for illustrating the absurdity of authoritarian "order," connects 2007 with the past and employs its memory for direction in the future. This creative remix harks back to indigenous Mexican beliefs in incarnate connections between the living and the dead celebrated throughout Mexico on the first days of November, and venerated in the artistic persistence of calaveras (skeletons) in Mexican art. The very belief in bridges between life and death rejects single versions of reality by encouraging empathy and communication across time and space. It suggests a cyclical rather than linear perspective further enhanced in artistic works that transform through participatory processes. For ASARO it is not so much "getting up" through public art as it is raising the people back up within it.

"Workshops help young people believe in themselves. For a struggling community, these workshops are power to grow and be stronger in their resistance to the problems they face." — César, ASARO

Creativity is not just distributing images for visibility; it is connecting — through those images and their circulation — with the past. The diptych print Son Ellos o Somos Nosotros (They Are or We Are) brings multiple historical events together in two artistic pieces. These works portray a general strike in which working people hold the line against fascism. Some of the characters depicted in the crowd hold signs favoring the socialist revolution or newspapers advocating anarchism. Some wave flags with hammers and sickles while others raise their rakes. These pieces are historical and contemporary, suggesting continuity and solidarity across time and space. The crowd in this image seems to be a throwback to early twentieth-century strikers, but the boy holding their banner wears a contemporary baseball cap cocked to the side with APPO's five-pointed red star.

Labels across the bottom of this diptych form a timeline connecting historical and contemporary Mexican rebellions. Guerrero identifies a prominent leader of Mexican Independence and Oaxaca's neighboring state, which served as a major theatre of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1917. EZLN identifies the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which emerged as an internationally recognized rebellion in 1994. UNAM memorializes the student protestors who disappeared after a bloody conflict with police in Tlatelolco Square just days before Mexico hosted the Olympics in 1968. Atenco identifies a contemporary uprising against the displacement expected as a result of airport construction outside Mexico City in 2002. SME labels the Mexican electricians' union, past and present. Obreros recognizes workers everywhere at any time. ASARO adds APPO to this assembly of historic resistance, paying homage to the strides made throughout Mexico in collective organization and adding this contemporary network of social movements to the mix.

"During our struggles, our people have always used tools to make graphics reproducible. In Mexico we have a great tradition of graphic production used for utilitarian and social purposes. ASARO tries to further develop that tradition." — Mario, ASARO

Somos Pueblo (We Are the People) expresses this idea differently. It illustrates special interconnections in a stylized map of Oaxaca de Juárez. Against the black background, white lines form a cartographic depiction of Oaxaca's historic...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1604869607
• ISBN 13: 9781604869606
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zeichner: ASARO ASARO
• Anzahl der Seiten: 128
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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