Saturday, December 27, 2014

Watch out Lexington, Kentucky (AKA Mexington, Kentucky), Come April 2015, Something Mexican Your Way Cometh!




First notice here on the good ol' Galleryblog that I have been invited to bring the Mextasy traveling circus to Lexington, and the University of Kentucky, April 2015 for a couple of lectures--I am going to try to sneak in a pop-up version of the Mextasy exhibition as well, though that is still up in the air.

Here's an outline of what I will be up to there!  The series I am speaking in foregrounds notions of the  transnational and social theory:

Chicanosmosis and the Transnational Imaginary (Imaginary)
21st Century Mextasy In and Beyond the Ivory Tower
Dr. William A. Nericcio
In the closing moments of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the “Mexican” of America,  right at the point where all hope was lost, when imagining a progressive space for Latinas/os seems all but impossible, a turn occurs. It is a turn to hope, to a future, to something positive.
Naïve, right? 
For a Derridean (and a rascuache Nietzschean), especially a post-movimiento Tejano who had learned his craft at the feet of Gayatri Spivak, Ramón Saldivar, John Kronik, Wolfgang Holdheim, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jonathan Culler, and Carlos Fuentes, this was not a predictable move.  Theory is negative and imponderable (and insufferable), but I wanted to use it to say something different.
And I did: I coined the neologism Chicanosmosis.  Chicanosmosis or, in the book, Xicanosmosis, is a term that contemplates international intercourse through the semi-permeable fabric of the U.S./Latin American border—a site of transnational intrigue that reeks of hegemony and seduction, imperialism and the voyeuristic turn. In Tex[t]-Mex, the focus was on Frida Kahlo and American writer/artist Gilbert Hernandez, but one could have as easily have focused on El Chavo del Ocho & Pee-wee Herman, or United Fruit/CIA & Narco-cultura en las Americas (this last “narcheology,” as I parsed it in lectures at NYU/SVA in Manhattan last year, is fodder for another colloquia).
So this presentation for Social Theory will represent simultaneously a retrospective and scenes I might be accused of performing something like Nostradamus-like clairvoyance. It is the sum total of my present theoretical adventures based as it is on the writings of Fanon, Said, Sontag, Marx, Foucault, Gallop, Paz, Taussig, Liu, Borges, Virilio and more—and it is my own thing. 
Take the subtitle I have appended to the main title: Imaginary (Imaginary)--the former imaginary, an adjective, common, ubiquitous; the latter imaginary, a noun, the nominalization of the Imaginary, post-Lacan, now de rigueur in the academy. Frenchies were all the rage in the 80s and they still are in a way—this too will probably come up. (In Tex[t]-Mex, I actually created a literary term, la quiebra, in order to break with East Coast Francophiliac jargon-forging—no joke!). 
Readings are to be determined, but they will include works in progress from Eyegiene: Mutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex, Race, and the Smartphone as well as select readings from work by Edmundo Desnoes, Frantz Fanon, Slavoj Žižek, Gayatri Spivak, and others to be implicated shortly.








Thursday, December 18, 2014

Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Happy New Year, and Feliz Año (not Ano!) Nuevo from all the Folks at the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog, 2014!

What a year it has been! Mextasy, the pop-up Art Gallery/Exhibition continues to expand with upcoming shows in Dallas @ Richland College, February 2015, in Mexington (aka Lexington), Kentucky in April 2015, with mucho mas more to come!

Also on the horizon?!  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Mextasy might just be coming to the boobtube, to television, with a weekly show based on Tex[t]-Mex, the book, and Mextasy, the exhibition. Follow our trials and tribulations here: https://www.facebook.com/MextasyTV 
and on @eyegiene via twitter!

Have an amazing 2015!

Yours,

William A. Nericcio y
Guillermo Nericcio García

Friday, December 05, 2014

Los Hollywood! David Tomas Martinez! Perry Vasquez! y Mucho Mas More at the Mextasy Fiesta/Birthday Party at Mi Barra, December 5, 2014, Friday, from 8pm to ???


click to make way bigggggger!
Ok, don't tell anybody (swear now!) shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Friday, December 5, 2014 at Mi Barra- Rock En Español in glorious Chula Vista, Califas, we are planning a combined birthday party (don't ask how old I am!), concert, reading, filming, desmadre extravaganza as we celebrate the announcement of Mextasy TV, my crazy venture into the world of television and streaming media with Miguel-Angel SoriaCarlos SolorioGerardo Bola JuarezAlex Balassa, and other secret angels (and devils)!!!!! 

RSVP via Facebook here!

The party will start around 9pm--spread the palabra and get out a pen and mark that calendar!!!! There will be music (Los Hollywood and the one and only Perry Vasquez performing from his opus, GATES OF HECK), readings by me and David Tomas Martinez, performance art, cerveza, cool peeps, surprises, desmadres, y mucho mas more!


map to Mi Barra: http://goo.gl/maps/paCvV
fiestalinkazohttps://www.facebook.com/events/1523793981201597

The ghost of Lupe Velez sez, "Go to Mi Barra"!!!

Thursday, November 06, 2014

Now You Can Insert "Maria, the Maid" into Any Project You Dream Up!!!!

I don't know why it should surprise me that established tropes and stereotypes from the world of print media, film, and television, should make the grand leap into the digital realm, but still it does.

Take a minute and check out the 'cool' animated special effects available to you at Motion VFX!  Who are they?
"MotionVFX is a registered trademark of a company called MotionVFX, which is created and owned by Szymon Masiak. Szymon is very well known in computer graphic industry and has been working in it for over 20 years in areas like computer games, commercials and major motion pictures."
A warm thanks to my collaborator on the Mextasy.TV project (Producer/Director Miguel-Angel Soria), for sending me this latest incarnation of made-to-order, er maid-to-order, "Mexican" marionettes--the focus of a large part of my book Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America with UT Press.


Here's another analog version along the same lines appeared in The New Yorker back in the day:

You can read my take on it here:



Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Jo Raquel Tejada, aka Raquel Welch, Immortalized at the SDSU Faculty Staff Lounge!

Readers of the Textmex Galleryblog know that we have devoted a fair amount of web-space to the pre-eminent Latina bombshell in American pop culture, Raquel Welch--go here for a roundup of postings.

But before Welch turned heads back in the day she was one of the most famous alums (though she did not graduate) of SDSU--back then she was Jo Raquel Tejada, or Tajeda (sic), as the SDSU Faculty Staff Club didactic has it, pictured here with Melvin Anderson, who seems to be biting himself in this snapshot!

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click to enlarge


Thanks to photographer Michael Borgstrom for the camera shots!


Wednesday, October 29, 2014

New Prints Now Available at the Mextasy Tictail Poster Shoppe! Yolanda Varela, Raquel Welch, and Salvador Dali!!!!

Go here, Yolanda Varela, and here, Salvador Dali and Raquel Welch, for the full skinny!  More info on the Richland College/Dallas, Texas, Mextasy show coming soon!



Saturday, October 25, 2014

KTEP's Focus on Campus Show: Bill Nericcio and Louie Saenz! October 2014


When I was at UTEP for the Mextasy exhibition a few days back, I was lucky enough to be invited on the air of the local NPR station, KTEP, with an El Paso legend, the man of a million voices (look out, Mel Blanc, you've got competition!!!!), the one and only Louie Saenz.

 Big love and huge abrazos to Louie and his cool producer, Norma Martinez, for making it happen!  Here's the show in its entirety:

Bandits, Amazons, "Wondairful Señorita[s]" and More: The Rollicking, Fantastic Adventures of Wonder Woman in Mexico {via Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine}

I love it when my vocation and avocation converge as they do in this wonderful comic installment on Wonder Woman from the one and only Pappy's Golden Age Comic Blogzine! An illustrator and lover of classic comics (especially Wonder Woman, Gilbert Hernandez rendering opposite, with Luba!), and a curator of artifacts focused on constructions of "Mexicans" in U.S. mass culture, rarely do I chance upon an artifact that blends these worlds (not to mention my not-so-secret fetish for fantastically strong women!).  Here's a page from the issue featuring bandit "Mexicans," Wonder Woman, freakish Mayra the giant y mucho mas more. The entire comic story here.

¡Gracias, Pappy!


Tuesday, October 21, 2014

San Ysidro High School Mextasy/Tex[t]-Mex Lecture: Welcome to the World of Great Writers, Christian Villamea

A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to spend a Friday out at San Ysidro High School, the guest of Aaron Magnan and his incredible crew of students (here's a photo album from that  day).  One of their assignments was for them to read Sandra Cisneros' "Woman Hollering Creek" short story, my essay on Laredo and the border ("What is 'Truth' at the Border" in Border Lives), and some passages on deterritorialization by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari--this is no normal high school and Aaron is a one-of-a-kind teacher (and rock star).

In response to the readings, Magnan's students were charged with doing a presentation--this one, by Christian Villamea, blew my mind!  World watch out for this guy, he can write!


Christian Villamea
Sep 25, 2014

    “San Diego, at times, was more violent, more vulgar. San Diego more truly disclosed those seething racial antipathies which in an odd way suture that nation still called the United States.”
   William Anthony Nericcio
"What is 'Truth' at the Border"
    Racism has never been something new to most if not all of the people in this auditorium right now. It’s the color of our skin, the distinct sound of our names that inspire cruelty that spills out burning like lava from the lips of others. For people like me, it’s the shape of our eyes and the idea that we are much too Filipino to be considered American and much too American to be considered Filipino.
    And here we see our first prime example of cultural confusion at the border. I’ve got the eyes of an Asian but the name of a Spaniard and the experiences of Levittown American suburbia if William Levitt had decided to build a subdivision down in Baja. I don’t know what to call that. I don’t know what to call myself. And then I read this essay “Remembering” and realized that even though I’ve heard the words Hispanic, Chicano, and Latino countless times before, I have absolutely no idea what to call those either.
    You see, minorities often feel confused about their identities because the names that have become common for them weren’t made by them. We didn’t choose to have ourselves classified by a color wheel and split apart as if San Diego was the New World and we were the soldiers expected to fight over a mix of territory and respect.
    Other people made that choice for us. Dr. Nericcio refers to those other people as “Anglo Californians;” in other words, the white majority of not only California but the U.S. as a whole. They categorized us for the sheer sake of their own convenience. They told us that who we were was a factor of the color of our skin and not the character of our hearts.
    But that’s where we have to stop blaming them, because we’re the ones who committed the next big crime. We did the worst thing we could’ve possibly done in this situation:
    We believed them.
    And so our steps grew heavier as we felt the weight of the melanin, the pigment resting in each and every one of our skin cells, carrying us deeper and deeper until we’re six feet under a pile of broken hearts and deflated dreams.
    But you know, I think we deserve that. That is our punishment for letting other people define who we are. Look down at your arms and realize that they’re the same color as the bronze medal you would earn in a contest for being yourself. And if you’re not yourself, then who are you? How can you ever hope to find your own truth at the border when truth is being beaten in a dark alley by a group of muggers that you’re not allowed to be angry at because you’re one of them?
    One truth I’ve experienced at the border is that white kids have never been racist to me, at least not to my face. In fact, my best friend here at San Ysidro is white, and the ironic thing is that Mexican kids make fun of her for that. Sometimes people ask me why I’m so intelligent and I don’t really have the heart to tell them it’s because Mexican kids bullied me into a library that I spent most of my preteen years in because of their stereotype that that’s where Asian kids belong.
    But I’d be willing to forgive all of that. I forgive the kids that make my best friend cry at night. I forgive the kids that made sure I never had real friends until halfway through seventh grade. I even forgive the kid that asked me if I was going to bomb him and his family because obviously being Asian means you have a family history of kamikaze pilots.
    It’s not your fault. That’s what I was trying to get at earlier. You didn’t choose a life where you would have to feel burdened by something as simple as who you are, or what parents you were born to. I get it. We grow up so used to racism that it becomes normal for us, and because other people have been racist to us so often, we feel that it’s just normal to be racist as well.
    What I am not willing to forgive is if you hear these words right now and still choose to believe that a life where you cannot be proud of who you are is a life of normalcy. What I am not willing to forgive is if you hear these words right now and still choose to believe that it is okay to hurt other people simply because other people have hurt you before.
    We must work together to wipe this stain of racial vulgarity off the face of this otherwise beautiful city. We must not pay our pain forward or back, but rather transform it into a lesson to be preached into the hearts and souls of our neighbors who suffer beside us. We must remind ourselves that it is not normal to be ashamed of who we are. The color of our skin, the shape of our eyes are not burdens for us to shoulder; they are merely footnotes to the novels that lay within our hearts.
    We must embrace who we are. Only then may we work to find our own truths at the border.
    Thank you.
Author Christian Villamea, with friend, Brittney Sweetser
@ San Ysidro High School, September 2014



Monday, October 20, 2014

A Recap: SDSU Alum Jo Raquel Tejada (aka Raquel Welch) and the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog

No new posting today--merely, here linked for your convenience, a recap of postings of the most famous Latina undergraduate to NOT graduate from San Diego State University, Jo Raquel Tejada, or, as you may know her, Raquel Welch!

In her honor, here is a new promo-poster for the upcoming 2015 Dallas Mextasy show!

click to make mucho mas more grande!





Thursday, October 02, 2014

El Paso, Texas, y Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Look Out! Guillermo Nericcio García, William Nericcio, & the Mextasy Exhibition @ UTEP--the University of Texas, El Paso, October 15, 2014, 5pm Quinn Hall 212



Born and raised in the dusty, hot (then unpaved, thanks J.C. Martin) streets of Laredo, I have never really ventured to that other grand bordertown up the Rio Grande, El Paso, Texas! But that fault is remedied the second week of October with the traveling Mextasy roadshow venturing to UTEP--the University of Texas at El Paso. I will be the guest of the students and faculties of the departments of Communication and Chicana/o Studies there!  The main talk is at 5:30pm in Quinn Hall #212--it's free and open to the public. What to expect? Desmadres, readings, screenings, signings, hawking of posters, and some snippets from my new book Eyegiene!
new event poster: click to make mucho mas grande!



older event posters--click to make enlarge






Monday, September 29, 2014

Monday, September 15, 2014

Cassandro! Lucha Libre Star in the Pages of the New Yorker--New Feature Piece by William Finnegan!


Readers of this blog know that the working-class-opera-world of Lucha Libre is near and dear to this Chicano chronicler's heart--a new, extensive piece on the world of Lucha Libre, more specifically, luchador Cassandro's special universe has just appeared in The New Yorker.  See it online there or via pdf facsimile here. The fine piece is by William Finnegan--more on the author apppears here.

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Thursday, September 11, 2014

Beware Latino/a Robots or Fiesta de Cyborgs! Robotic Erotic Electric Keynote Presentation at the Boise State University THATcamp! September 13, 2014 @ 9am!

Just a quick posting with some info on my 2nd Idaho-based adventure in one year! Last Spring I was hanging at Boise State University with my Mextasy show (poster from the April 2014 fiesta-of-desmadres, opposite).

This weekend, September 2014, I have been invited back to shower tons of pictures/videos on all things digital humanities at BSU's third annual THATCamp.


What's a THATCamp?  (¡that's what I said!)...


THATCamp is an acronym-headed neologism for "The Humanities and Technology" Camp. Held at Boise's awesome Discovery Center,  the gathering will draw a diverse and eclectic group of cybernauts, pointy-headed intellectuals, artists, coders, gamers and more. 


Me? I will be holding forth (at 9am!!!! no less) on erotic robots and other cybersexually curious provocations--the result of a semester's worth of experimentation with over 200 undergraduate students at SDSU.  If you like getting up early and are anywhere near Boise, come on out and give a shoutout--a big abrazo to Memo Cordova and Francisco Salinas who made this mad improvisational presentation a reality!! I am on the bill with headliners JP Chastain and Eric Gilbert and host of other cool androids/robots/cyborgs!

Here's the ridiculous, Gilligan's Island/Ginger poster Guillermo Nericcio García whipped up for the event!







If you have read this far, you get a surprise treat! *spoiler alert* A preview of some of the graphics from the improvisational lecture entitled: "Robotic, Erotic, Electric: More Ruminating Thoughts on Literature, Film, and Cultural Studies in the Utterly Perplexing and Delightful Age of Social Media, Ubiquitous Surveillance, and the Selfie!"


https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152732440023653.1073741836.555658652&type=1&l=1cbb05eabc


Sunday, August 31, 2014

El hijo de la.... The Semiotic Son of England's William Hogarth and Mexico's Rius! Lalo Alcaraz's Cunning Satirical Illustrations!

If you are not a regular reader of Lalo Alcaraz's LA CUCARACHA, if your daily fishwrap of a newspaper (that is, if you still have a newspaper in your city) does not carry it, get your infusion of top-shelf, satirical genius here: http://www.gocomics.com/lacucaracha

Here's Lalo's most recent entry, Sunday, August 31, 2014--a telling, pointed send-up of neo-fascist, racist, anti-immigrant pendejos from Murrieta:

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Here are some other recent gems by Lalo. Click them to see them in large, living color!






Hogarth and Rius? They are amazing also!

HOGARTH




RIUS

source






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