Dadanoias's Eyegiene

All over the web there are people travailing as eyegienic archivists--sentient visual agents with this uncanny, superhuman capacity to see--a visual acuity that marries the archival instincts of a bookhead like Borges to the mischievous vision of Helmut Newton.

These latter days fusions of Michel Foucault and Manuel Alvarez Bravo plumb the depths of the world wide web in search of eye-candy; then, they hold it for us to study.

"Dadanoias" is one of these figures: an artist, photographer, eye-chivist, and model--her site is here. What I ran across on her site was this super cool kids book filled with representations of people from 7 different cultures--the Mexican one, pictured here, is priceless.


More soon.

Chicana Feliz

Just a quick link to a cool Chicana/o Arts blog by Zulma Aguiar I just ran across that everyone else seems to have heard about!

A Puerto Rican and a Chicano Walk into a Blog...

No, it's not a joke! It's a cool xicanOSMOTIC experiment by Angel Aviles-McClinton and Paul Martinez called The Bullfighter's Cafe! Check it out!

Mexican Erotic Graphic Arts

Just a quick link to a cool posting by Henry Jenkins at MIT--his brief piece on Lupe Velez helped me to formulate my reading of our late departed Mexican Spitfire; this piece, largely by a graphic arts guru colleague of Jenkins is curious to say the least!

Lupe Vélez! The Band!

I just discovered that there is a band from Sardinia called Lupe Velez; while this has nothing to do with the chapter in Tex[t]-Mex and Bananas to Buttocks called "Lupe Vélez Regurgitated; or, Jesus's Kleenex: Cautionary, Indigestion-Inspiring Ruminations on "Mexicans" in "American" Toilets," it does go to show you that the spirit of this "Mexican Spitfire" lives on internationally in mass culture. Check out their band myspace page here.

Mexican TV! Online, Free, and Streaming

Again, just a quick link here for a site that archives links to streaming, live Mexican television stations! Get your fix of El Chavo Del Ocho and get your work done!

Rita Hayworth, Film Noir, and Tex[t]-Mex's Unwritten Chapter

When it takes you sixteen years to finish a book, you can't imagine the relief when you finally see that baby in print--and now, with the first anniversary of the publication of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America, I am just getting around to thinking about some of the things I left out, forgot, or screwed up in writing the book. This Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog is part of that process of rectification, illumination, re-invention, and revision.

While I am pretty happy with the chapter on Margarita Dolores Cansino, aka Rita Hayworth, "When Electrolysis Proxies for the Existential" (witness the number of times I have come back to it in these "pages"), the one thing about it that does bother me is the short shrift it gives to Hayworth's noir classic Gilda. In my web spelunking, I happened across a page on noir and Charles's Vidor's film that I found useful for its quality AV assortment (the Turner Classic Movies embedded trailer for Gilda is first-rate) and archive here for future reference even though the author's preachy sermons ("Gilda! Don't strip") I could do without.

More on Gilda in the future.

Guanabee With Shocking Revelations on Ethnic Stereotypes and Minorities!

Guanabee is back in the house with a January 3, 3007 revelation on Ethnic Minorities and how they feel about stereotypes! News at eleven.

ArtCAL: Natural Forces Against Type: Laura Aguilar and Denise Montoya

Another quick odyssey worth the price of a click turned up today on ArtCAL regarding the work of Laura Aguilar (pictured) and Denise Montoya. The exhibit, Fuerzas naturales: Against Type, is also available here--though gallery snapshots are not available yet. Here's a choice excerpt from their gallery didactic:

"Stereotyping consists of preconceived images, expected behaviors, and assumptions about a certain group, with the caricaturization of specific attributes. These defining (mis)perceptions are amplified and perpetuated in mass media and popular culture, thus altering the expectation of and treatment by others. A typical example in Latino culture is the bandido, and within that culture, the malcriada, a subject explored by Delilah Montoya through her images of female Mexican boxers. The Latina lesbian body is a typecast subject challenged by the self-portraiture and landscape compositions of Laura Aguilar. The contrasting mixture of potent photographs by women representing women from two markedly different viewpoints within their shared culture creates a forceful visual interplay that provokes new dialogues about stereotypes."

If you are cruising the west side of Manhattan, do yourself a favor and check the exhibit out!

Amazing Graphic Artists...

Just a quick link today to the site of a dynamic duo of gifted graphic artists: Joe Scorsone and Alice Drueding--the one image sampled above works well with this galleryblog's entries on ethnicity and contemporary culture. Thanks to StumbleUpon and the Wild River Review for the links!