Tex[t]-Mex/Eyegiene/Mextasy Lecture & Exhibit; The University of Hawai'i at Manoa | April 2011

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and go here for more on the public lecture

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ABOUT MEXTASY

Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious is a traveling art show/exhibit based on the work of William "Memo" Nericcio and Guillermo Nericcio García--it has previously toured in Ann Arbor, Michigan, San Ysidro, California (as Xicanoholic), McAllen, Texas, and Laredo, Texas. It just closed its Ann Arbor, MI showing March 26, 2011 (where the exhibit kidnapped the American Studies corridor on Wolverine campus). Next up is the April 8, 2011 opening at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Mextasy both reflects and expand upon Nericcio's 2007 book with UT Press, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the Mexican in America. In addition to racist artifacts from American mass culture (the bread and butter of Uncle Sam's unconscious), the show also features works that "xicanosmotic," that is, works by Mexican-American artists where the delicious tattoo of the Mexican/US frontera is writ large as with Perry Vasquez, Izel Vargas, and Marisela Norte.

PREVIOUS SHOWINGS:

MEXTASY was last featured at the Laredo Center of the Arts. The Laredo Center opening followed on the heels of Mextasy's world premiere, September, 2010, at the Art Gallery @ South Texas College's Pecan Campus in McAllen, Texas. Curated by Rachael Freyman Brown, with the assistance of Amanda Alejos (not to mention the meddling of the artist, Guillermo Nericcio García).

Here's an interview about the show from last November.

Catalogue Copy for the Hawaii MEXTASY Exhibit ~ April 2011 @ the University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Drive-Ins, the Remake, Mexico-City Style...

Tex{t}-Mex Enters its Second Printing Trade Paperback Edition with the University of Texas Press

I am happy to announce that Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America is now in its second printing with the University of Texas Press; that's the good news.  The bad news is that the list price has gone up to $26.95 (though you can still find it on Amazon for $15.29--as of this posting at 11:33am, Tuesday, April 6, 2011).

Thanks to all the cool readers who have given my labor of love a peek!

Cool Orson Welles Print from THE STRANGER

source

Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge | A Conference at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa | April 8th and 9th, 2011

This posting covers the American Studies lecture at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa; for info on the Mextasy presentation go here.

I am very excited to be jetting west over the Pacific in April to keynote a conference called Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge, at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, (April 8th and 9th, 2011).


The presentation there derives from the introduction and internal chapters of Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race.... 


Here's the new working title:

The cultural space of Hawai'i was burned into my synapses as a child growing up in Laredo, Texas--they were etched there by KGNS Television, Channel 8, an NBC (now NBCUniversal) affiliate.  This station owned two or three prints of Warner Brothers' cartoons that they played over and over and over again.  Somehow me and my sister Josie never got tired of Wackiki Wabbit, below, and Racketeer Rabbit.

In Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America, I try to document how these Hollywood-borne versions of Mexicans (Speedy Gonzales, Charlton Heston as Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil, etc) proxy for "real" Mexicans in the here and now--infecting viewers of these "innocent" entertainments with seductive hallucinations of "alien" subjectivities that resonate through the psyche forever.


In coming to Hawai'i, I want to advance the critical methodology developed in Tex[t]-Mex and apply it to "exotic" space of these heralded Pacific Islands.


That's part of the talk, the centerpiece of which will include a public screening of the aforementioned Wackiki Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones in 1943:

The other part of my talk will address the focus of this special conference: Space, Place, and the Production of Knowledge. I just got finished revising an essay on Laredo, Texas, bordertown, as the geocultural space that gave birth to the postmodern.  Really!

Myriam Gurba

So the balance of my talk will look at writers, thinkers, painters, and performers who allow the particular and peculiar resonances of their geography, of their cartography, of their geo-psycho-carto-zeitgeist to "color" their work.  Examples include Algeria and France refracting the work of Jacques Derrida, the lower Rio Grande Valley infecting the work of painter Izel Vargas, maybe New York in the work of Jon Stewart, 

My guru! Jacques Derrida

Long Beach, California in the short stories of Myriam Gurba, and Laredo warping the mind of yours truly.


{dig Gurba's take on cultural spaces here...}

I really looking forward to working with the cool graduate student and faculty cohorts at the University of Hawai'i, at Manoa.   Aloha!