Junio 2021
No. 2
Vol. 6
Portada: Mendienta, Ana (1972) Sin Titulo (Impresiones del cuerpo sobre cristal) [Fotografía]
Catharsis can be understood as a process of purificación and emotional, mental, and spiritual freedom. Its origins are attributed to Greece, where Aristotle made use of the word to explain the sensation of the souls being cleaned after watching the Greek tragedies. The cathartic method is used to elevate the emotion and beyond that, the liberation of it. It is curious to think about artworks as part of the cathartic method. Who hasn't cried, shivered, been angry at an artwork? Catártica was born as a project to explore, experiment, discover at the maximum, our capacity to feel through art.
Portada: Mendienta, Ana (1974) Sin Titulo (Señales de Sangre no.2 / Huellas del cuerpo) [Video/Performance]
We are a group of students of different disciplines with the ambition of carrying art to anyone who needs it. With the desperation of making us understand and heard in this world with so much noise, Catártica allows us to have a voice behind tinted letters, having speeches that although they are monologues, open the dialogue in the student’s community and field professionals, and especially reach everyone who ignores, wants to know and feels ready to read voices with contrasting opinions. In a nutshell, Catártica is our tool to make us understand and communicate our sensible and affective relationship with our world.
DANYKA
We need to talk about Picasso
Flip a coin
Bat-women
Self Love
The mexican-est pink 404: Code Disonance
Groundswell is the term used to describe the long, continuous swell generated by storms in remote waters and impacts the Pacific coasts. Such waves are beneficial to marine ecosystems because, in the process of energy trade, the water of these environments is reclaimed. Still, for beachgoers, it can be dangerous because when they are very close to the impacted area, the waves can drag them and they are at high risk of drowning.
After a ten-year absence, filmmaker Michael Bowe returns to the screen with Danyka: Groundswell. The film invites viewers to use all five senses to immerse themselves in reflections on time and age. Demián Bichir plays Armando, a middle-aged novelist who is intrigued by Danyka (Sasha González). The nearly 16year-old brags about being clear about who she is and what she wants.
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The attraction between them is not only physical but also intellectual. Both share a taste for literature: Armando is a published writer and, Danyka aspires to be one. It is unfair to reduce Michael Bowe's most recent film to an adaptation of Lolita; such a reduction would be a superficial reading and would hinder us from enjoying the details that carefully integrate the film. Like the leak in the bathroom, which at the beginning is barely noticeable, as the film advances it reaches the point where it cannot be ignored and soaks the protagonist's feet. The metaphor refers to the impact that Danyka has on Armando's mind because more than seducing him, she brings up questions about who he is and what he wants.
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The long shots and the crashing sound of the sea may seem tedious qualities to audiences used to energetic, up-tempo films. However, these attributes allow us to build the psychological depth of the characters and give nuance to the scenes. Beyond presenting a story that promises answers, Danyka: Groundswell encourages viewers to ask reflective questions.
Note to the reader: My title is a reference to We need to talk about Kevin (2012). I just saw the movie and was quite impressed by it. I'm not going to elaborate because my film-critique skills lie in how easy it is to impress me , but if you would like to watch it, it's available on Amazon Prime Video. I would highly recommend it.
One of these days, like many others, the name of Pablo Picasso came up in a chat, and like many other days my immediate and somewhat sympathetic response - as much a part of myself as my hands - was: Yuck Picasso. I'm sorry, I don't like Picasso at all. If we were living in the same era, if we were sitting across from each other trying to talk, I would probably keep quiet at all the mansplaining he would try to do on any of my arguments. I'd roll my eyes and 1 that would be my entire interaction. I asked my acquaintances from Art History:
Why don't we like Picasso? He was not humble, he believed himself to be an artist God. He was misogynistic. He stole the ideas from others. He was a man’s man. Misogynistic, macho, self-righteous and narcissistic. Because everyone loves him just for that, building a legend with these traits as desirable or something to envy.
I don't like Picasso. It is very difficult to sit down and write about a name that has sounded and sounded and sounded and that many probably respect. I can't respect it. First I will talk about the reasons why I am not convinced by Picasso's work. I consider that, in terms of his greatest recognition, Cubism, the work of his very close friend Georges Braque is much more pleasing to my eye. Let's read it well, I'm talking about me and my eyes, my eyes don't like Picasso's cubism. I just read an article called “Georges Braque, the father of cubism in the shadow of Picasso”. Who was really responsible for cubism? I have no idea and I can't assume it because I was not present. But I will repeat something that I have said on more than one occasion: We cannot close ourselves to generalizations. Cubism is not Pablo Picasso, Pablo Picasso is not cubism, and the same is true of Braque. Or surrealism and Dalí, - as much as I enjoy Dalí’s work, or Romanticism and Gericault, or Muralism and Diego Rivera -eugh- and I could go on like this, whatever and whoever. What I'm trying to say is that we have to open our doors. We have been locked up and held by tastes that are often not ours. Let's question ourselves. Do we really like what we like or did someone passed on their likes on to us? I don't like Picasso and I'm glad I can turn to see Braque's cubism, and I'm even more glad to be able to zoom out and look beyond a square. Now, just as we don't lock cubism into Picasso, I think we could give him a break and not lock Picasso into cubism. I enjoy the first periods of Picasso. Yeah, the guy was talented, or whatever an artist has. I like his Pink Period, the Saltimbanquis. Maybe I like it because of the name, or I like it because they all have sad faces in contexts that aren’t supposed to be, I am not sure, but I like it. It connects me to something. I want to refer to Family of Acrobats with Monkey (1905) I like it. Let us see beyond what we see, and not enclose ourselves in the wrapper. This is not about cubism.
Another thing for which I would like to throw a tantrum about for a moment, Pablo Picasso took the "eccentric" of otherness and made it "his". We have all seen Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), their faces are not very Picassos so to say, they are rather an interpretation of traditional, ritual, cultic cultural African masks… Secondly. We have a situation here that affects me greatly. "To separate art from the artist." I want to be honest and talk about my affection because it really does hurt. All the recent accusations against actors, actresses, artists, singers, directors, that at some point I admired, have hurt me because I invest my taste in their works. Works that should NOT be separable from their actions as people. Kevin Spacey, Ed Westwick, Ansel Elgort, Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, did what they did. Everything they did, movies, bad things and all. Pablo Picasso joins the group and I cannot separate Family of Acrobats with Monkey (1905), from the many women who were damaged by his talented hands. Of the almost ten women with whom Pablo Picasso had long relationships, two ended up loosing their minds and another two committed suicide after the painter's death in 1973: MarieThérèse Walter, 17 years old when she became a lover of a 45 Picasso, and Jacqueline Roque, second wife of 45 years at 72 of the painter. One constant of his was to substitute his partners for younger lovers. " Carlos Carabaña for Vanity Fair. (2017)
Pablo Picasso has had a reputation for constantly humiliating the women with whom he associated. Silencing them with his undeniable power. Thank you Francois Gilot, for being the clear example that someone can leave a bad boyfriend behind and shine much beyond his shadow. She, who I am not going to pigeonhole as Mr. Artist's former partner, decided to leave him and talk about his constant mistreatment. A relationship that took away freedom and desire. He seduced her with a supposed intelligence and made her feel minimal. Why do you paint me as a muse if you then humiliate me by putting out cigarettes on my skin? Why do you immortalize me if later you change me for eyes that have not cried for you, yet? Why do you make me fall in love with you if later you cut it out of nowhere? I cannot love Pablo Picasso having lived a relationship with one. I cannot love Picasso knowing what he did, has done, or did not do. I cannot respect, admire, separate the art from the artist because he did what he did right after painting his masterpieces.
It is good that we have now been able to talk about Picasso Carabaña, Carlos (2017) Grandes Artistas, Peores Hombres. VanityFair
Today before waking up I had the revelation of a perfect circle. I was sitting at the table with my exgirlfriend, who two days ago texted to me on Messenger to complain about me referring to her as ‘my ex’, even if she is my ex, and I was there with some chilaquiles that looked like paste. That was when her ex came; he was looking at the plate, and laughed when he remembered them eating chilaquiles before bathing. In the dream I was certain that I had known them eating chilaquiles, and I put my hands to my face when I realized that this story was perfectly closed, and with it, mine. It is hard to put an end to things, and much more to people. Yesterday, after a month I dropped Italian classes. It's not the most persevering move of my life, and that stopped me for a moment. But then I thought that it was more about not doing things by half or things that you just kinda like. Life is short and the most painful loss is that of time itself, because it is not as much as it seems. Lately I try to assimilate the days as a whole life, and what fits in each one is fine. Today is always a good day to die.
But back to the topic, leaving people. The truth is that it does not weigh me down. I have no attachment to almost anything and almost no one. The problem is in killing them. This is what ending a relationship feels like sometimes. One day you wake up with the other person, have breakfast together, enjoy the security of having each other, and the next day everything is fucked. Do not look for me anymore. The betrayal is unbearable. It's obvious. Love is not over by then, and it will take a while for it to burn itself out. But love is not enough in a relationship. I think a lot about people who don't have real friends. It must be a difficult life. Making a friend, as much as it may cost at first, is the purest thing there is. More than the methamphetamine that Walter White cooked up. And it requires little.
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Time, honesty, the ability not to take things personally, recognize what we see about ourselves in the other and learn to listen. Oh, and be non-judgmental. Everything so easy. What better model of love than friendship. Borges used to say: “Friendship does not need frequency, love does; friendship can do without frequency, love, on the other hand, is full of anxieties, doubts, where lack of frequency can be terrible. " And in the end, it seems to me that just as a good friend can save your life in the darkest moments, how much more can the collection of great people in your life elevate you. Sometimes I feel like Og Mandino writing about these issues, now I just need to give couples therapy, but my title is still pending and with the excuses of these days there is no when. For now I continue to advise people who did not ask me to anywhere. What I usually do is that I stand on the corners where people wait for the bus, and after making them lower their guard with a compliment about their appearance, I attack them with a string of suggestions to improve their life: I venture if they have brothers and how many, If they have the belly of being married I talk to them about the importance of keeping the sheets of the marriage bed clean, and if they bring the face of having spent a terrible night I flip a coin between suggesting more effective methods to care for the dying elderly or tactics to sleep early to children, like mixing warm milk with sleeping pills. Most of the people claim to 'just be passing by' to leave as soon as they can, others do not even have the decency to take off their headphones, and the most timid have no other than to stay to listen to advice about a life they do not lead from a complete stranger. As I was telling you, life can be like this sometimes.
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Imagen: Frank Sawyer
Semblance: Defender of the idea that reading is the mean for excellent learning, Valeria Levy became a National Best Seller with her novel The Game in 2018 and, that same year, she was awarded with the Doctorate Honoris Causa by the Doctoral Faculty Ibero-American for his career and contributions to society. In 2019, she received the National Prize for Female Leadership and the Ibero-American Prize for Literature at CANACO. Giving numerous lectures in various schools and radio interviews, Valeria Levy talks about literature and the importance of it and seeks, at the same time, to promote the habit of reading and inspire young Mexicans.
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Valeria has always been passionate about art (in any of its presentations). From the coasts of Africa, passing through Mexico and reaching Alaska, Vale has captured with his camera places that have amazed her; either for its history, culture, art or landscape. She hopes to transmit the essence of each place he visits in his photographs and thus be able, even through memories and photographs, to return once more. “Literature and photography have always been extremely personal and important products of artistic expression for me. In every book I read, every word I write and every photo I take; I leave a part of me. My trips to different parts of the world have been my greatest source of inspiration for my photographs. Each of the photographs has a story behind them, they tell a little about the traditions of the women of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, who call themselves batwoman.”
Importance of the bat in Pre-Hispanic cultures: In Pre-Hispanic Mexico, the adhesion of these links and their transmission from generation to generation forged in the community a series of cultural values, which, in addition to providing cohesion and communal identity, have functioned as elements of order and social control, thus They directly or indirectly intervene in the process of knowledge and use of wildlife. In preHispanic Mexico, the bat was considered a being from the underworld and was associated with decapitation. Likewise, it represented darkness, earth and death, however, it was also associated with the cult of corn and fertility (Retana and Navarijo, 2012)
Behance: Valeria Levy IG: @valerialevy_ Retana, O. & Navarijo, M. (2012) Los valores culturales de los murciélagos. Revista Mexicana de Mastozoología (Nueva Época), 2(1):18.
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Without looking, I found myself breathing calmly, excited and sublime. To love you, I had to love the woman, all the women in my life hence, myself. Still rebuilding myself and finding someone who I do not know, but without fear, without waiting and without anxiety about what I will find I keep walking and maybe starting to live, and to experience a dream, which may be a wonderful one. Safe and grounded in myself, I take a deep breath and inhale all the beauty of the Universe and I breathe out again, in a swing, living, dying and ... living again.
Ilustración: Dylan Glynn
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Have you ever wondered why there is a color so characteristic of a culture that bears its own name? That’s the story of the mexican pink The story begins with Ramón Valdiosera, a fashion designer, author, painter, cartoonist, cartoonist, cartoonist, illustrator and collector from Veracruz. Although he was also widely known as the Director of the Mexican comic newspapers: "El Pepín" and "Chamaco Chico", he also was a renown as a costume and fashion designer. So much so that he is considered one of the fathers of Mexican fashion (Anáhuac, 2020). Valdiosera knew the importance and beauty behind the textile designs that were made throughout the Mexican Republic, it is part of the identity of the mexicans, at a time when Mexico was building its identity as a country. Therefore, he focused not only on understanding the production of traditional garments but also the history and "anthropology" that lay behind each one of them, and for this reason, he transferred those characteristics so typical of huipiles and colored fabrics to pieces of his own in his creations, proper for a high fashion show (Anáhuac, 2020). Valdiosera's vision was the starting point for fashion in Mexico to be seen as part of its culture, we began to find our identity in it and began generating amazing proposals full of talent. (Nájera, 2017) ,
In a time where fashion and trends were highly controlled by European and American canons it was not common to see Mexican designers at major fashion events. That changed once Valdiosera took on the project of reclaiming Mexican culture and its beauty in textiles. By 1946, Valdiosera was showing great promise in Mexican fashion, its brightly colored dresses and designs inspired by various cultures were made with traditional processes from the regions of Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas. Huipiles, bottoms, skirts and jorongos adorned modern cuts of the postwar era.
By 1949 at the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, Valdiosera presented his designs in a parade that wowed an international audience with its predominant use of the color bougainvillea and traditional Mexican textiles. It caused such a stir among attendees and journalists, so much so that the American press called it the Mexican Pink or Rosa Mexicano.
-What is the origin of this color? - asked a journalist "It is the color that represents our culture," the artist replied.
References Universidad Anáhuac México. (2020). La historia detrás del rosa mexicano. https://www.anahuac.mx/generacion-anahuac/lahistoria-detras-del-rosa-mexicano Nájera, M. (2017). Ramón Valdiosera, padre de la moda mexicana. https://coolhuntermx.com/ramonvaldiosera-padre-de-la-moda-mexicana/ .
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It is a piece based on creative writing intervened with a simple word processor with Artificial Intelligence. The content of this text becomes a metaphor about the proximity
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of humans with the processes mediated by the digital, transformations that impact on the cognitive development of our day to day.
Recovering Rosa Menkman's notion of noise, this collaborative piece is proposed as an immersive reading aloud, and that from an open narrative combines fragments of sound exercises made through databending while presenting an essay on data corruption and the digital paradox in a human world.
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This work is the result of the Art and Digital Technology course at UDLAP, in the Spring 2021 period in which students navigate through various theoretical tools that allowed us to expand our horizon of digital knowledge
Brainstorming | Key concepts Virtual, The digital, Machine-man, Artificial Intelligence, Technological Innovations, Digital data processing, computing solutions, artificial consciousness, data duplication, corrupt archives, cyberfeminism. Requiem for noise, a collectivized chat, open narratives, a cacophony of voices that dialogue about the unfolding of the soft tissue that contains the data, the images in a digital world mediated by screens. Noise to scream at images
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If you are interested in publishing with us, take into account the following: 1. All texts and artworks must be sent to the Catártica official email 2. Every text received will be checked by the Catártica team. 3. If the editor considers it, changes will be made on the text, always respecting the authors original voice. 4. If you consider translating your own text into Spanish you can do so, our translators will check the process. 5. The texts and works must be sent in the following format Microsoft Word Arial 12 pts Margins superior and inferior must be 2.5 cm and 3 cm on the sides Images and illustrations should be cited in APA and sent in JPG or PNG
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Magazine Director María Inés Flores Nachón @notae_stethicallypleasing maines_flores@live.com Cover Desing Antonella Guagnelli Cuspinera @antonella_gc antonella.guagnelli@gmail.com Editor Fernanda Loutfe Orozco @ferorozco ferlorozco@hotmail.com Editorial design Junuen Caballero Soto @junuencaballero junuen.caballero@gmail.com Publicity Lucero Solís Tellez @lust_tsul lucero.sol.tel@icloud.com María Inés Flores Nachón @notae_stethicallypleasing maines_flores@live.com Artil Maria José Diáz @mapi_md mapidiaz42@gmail.com El Séptimo Arte Lucero Solís Tellez @lust_tsul lucero.sol.tel@icloud.com Arts 101 María Inés Flores Nachón @notae_stethicallypleasing maines_flores@live.com Crónicas de Marte Luis Fernando Salas Ramírez @fersalasrz luis.salasrz@udlap.mx Catalogarte Rossanna Huerta Romero @rosehro rossanna.huertaro@udlap.mx
Noche, Derroche, Nochera Alejandro Domínguez Nieto @hermann_cheesse alejandro.dominguezno@gmail.com Rincón de los poemas Sandra S. Smithers sandysmthrs smithersgr@gmail.com Ambulantes: Interviews Diana Carolina Gomez Ortiz @dcgo98 diana.gomezoz@udlap.mx Translators Ana Delia Castillo González @anna_2121 Claudine Gabriela Aguilar Encinas @gabe.docx Glosario Catártica Emma Patricia Zamudio Salas @emma.zamudio.92 emma.zamudioss@udlap.mx Spotify Diana Carolina Gomez Ortiz @dcgo98 diana.gomezoz@udlap.mx