The state of Cultural journalism
From my perspective, what passes for cultural journalism in both Mexico and
the United States is abysmal. Having been a journalist myself
on occasion over the years, I can attest to the fact that editors and publishers seem
oblivious to the fact that good journalists deserve to be paid fairly for their work.
Having pseudonymously written a few excellent pieces for a Mexican online journal, the pay was quite low, but the opportunity to reach readers made it preferable to not being read. Following publication, the editors didn't follow up with more
assignments to take advantage of my expertise, knowledge and close proximity to
important cultural events in NYC and Mexico, missing a golden opportunity to become
a significant magazine after printing two pieces. Money was their excuse.
Getting free mediocre writers to produce fluff was preferable to them.
On another occasion I was interviewed in Mexico by an American expatriate for a piece
in Vice. The result was a hatchet job focusing on petty gossip, ignoring the more
controversial and thought provoking elements covered in our conversations, particularly
in relation to work I've produced in Mexico since my arrival two years ago.
The piece never came out, leading me to surmise that Vice may be a data gathering tool
for the NSA to keep tabs on dissident voices with a history of shaking things up,
(otherwise marginalized by the censorship of omission practiced by corporate media.)
A short profile was written about me with an interview, appearing in a Mexican
art magazine called Spleen, which was quite excellent, though it should have come out
a year earlier. Journalists and editors are notoriously late in catching onto anything
interesting that's going on, in both Mexico and NYC.
I've noticed several cultural publications in Mexico that are completely unreadable and
insufferably boring, obsessed with "good taste" and "contemporary art."
They feature dull profiles of bad artists with pedestrian resumes, all carefully avoiding
disturbing the status quo by producing anything remotely disturbing or innovative.
One free paper in Mexico that appears to be designed to showcase new cultural
events and products is completely clueless as to who the best artists currently flourishing
under the radar in Mexico are. They regularly focus on conservative fashion shoots and
pieces reviewing cutting edge artists from 50 or more years ago, with occasional forays
into predictable tattoo art or trendy corporate rock bands.
On one occasion last year I was invited to the office of a free art magazine in Mexico
City to discuss possible articles or artists to write about. The editor, who acted as if he
were interested in my perspective, never followed up with any assignments.
He did the same thing to a Mexican curator of art parties which he'd invited to the office
to see if she'd also contribute. His publication continues to be irrelevant and
deeply conservative in it's timidity, apparently due to a fear of offending potential
advertisers. Like every other art zine in Mexico, it is unreadable.
Due to the unfortunate vacuum of remotely interesting cultural journalism in Mexico City,
it became necessary for me to self publish my own magazine here, in Spanish and English, called Hatred of Capitalism. Included in the premiere issue was photography
and illustrations by powerful Mexican artists, ignored by the elitist media and
cultural institutions here, as well as my own writing and pieces I selected critiquing
contemporary art. Included was The Extremist Manifesto, announcing the
emergence of a suppressed movement of radical artists opposed to the stifling
corporate contemporary art scene, creating genuinely shocking and provocative
work under the radar of curators, journalists and institutions who have been co-
opted by the rancid values of crony capitalism and tired elitism.
As usual, when corporate and so-called alternative media fails to do it's job,
it becomes necessary to create your own media. As Duchamp predicted, the
great artists of the future will go underground. In NYC, I published The Underground
Film Bulletin for 7 years to cover a flourishing scene that had been completely ignored
by all journalists and curators due to it's potent content. Later, a book was published in
England called Deathtripping, exploring the material we covered in the magazine ten
years earlier. Better late than never. This is where the cinema of transgression became
known to world academic communities and continues to reverberate in such shows as
the Kunstwerk Museum's retrospective in Berlin last year. All museums and galleries in
Mexico are still oblivious to this important movement, as well as the homegrown
extremist artists I am trying to call attention to in Mexico City.
Art is meant to disturb. There is now a system in place that rewards art that is boring,
pointless and insignificant; a huge mass deception designed to keep in place
a trivial, fashionable clique of followers incapable of resisting what is expected of them.
Successful practitioners of capitulationist art make big, bland "conceptual" or "business"
projects/pieces that offend no one and remain safe for corporate sponsorship. In this way, the
global elite that pulls the strings of gatekeepers playing by the rules of predatory
capitalism are able to neuter the power of modern art by burying it alive.
The situation regarding cultural journalism in America is slightly worse. Real estate
greed has rendered NYC a cultural wasteland; astronomical rents extracted
by landlords have made it impossible for artists to produce cutting edge work in
an underground environment and any semblance of community has been wiped
out with few exceptions, usually erased by the police as soon as any attention is
focused on something new and original.
Boring art newspapers like the Brooklyn Rail have a policy of avoiding anything
controversial, thought provoking or original, just like their counterparts in Mexico.
As a result of this censorship of omission, people are starved to experience real art
that challenges their perceptions and prejudices and I am flown in a few times a year
by newcomers wondering what happened before everything got sanitized, in order to
lend authenticity and expose them to what they have missed.
This sad state of affairs could be rectified if just one person with money would step up
and publish a useful magazine on paper or online and employ good writers to
cover interesting subjects. That is how history is made. We are apparently living in
a new Dark Ages, where everything is a simulation, and millions of people are pacified
by propaganda and corporate disinformation, while essential, significant and newsworthy
art is being regularly ignored and avoided by gatekeepers and sheeple playing by the
rules, which stinks. Conformity and complacency are at an all time high while the global
elites and their empire crumble and things get worse.
I can only continue to fight against it with no funding or support, in private and
occasionally in carefully circumscribed public forums, taking a hermetic path
to the truth, which must be avoided at all costs by those in denial of this sorry
state of affairs.
the United States is abysmal. Having been a journalist myself
on occasion over the years, I can attest to the fact that editors and publishers seem
oblivious to the fact that good journalists deserve to be paid fairly for their work.
Having pseudonymously written a few excellent pieces for a Mexican online journal, the pay was quite low, but the opportunity to reach readers made it preferable to not being read. Following publication, the editors didn't follow up with more
assignments to take advantage of my expertise, knowledge and close proximity to
important cultural events in NYC and Mexico, missing a golden opportunity to become
a significant magazine after printing two pieces. Money was their excuse.
Getting free mediocre writers to produce fluff was preferable to them.
On another occasion I was interviewed in Mexico by an American expatriate for a piece
in Vice. The result was a hatchet job focusing on petty gossip, ignoring the more
controversial and thought provoking elements covered in our conversations, particularly
in relation to work I've produced in Mexico since my arrival two years ago.
The piece never came out, leading me to surmise that Vice may be a data gathering tool
for the NSA to keep tabs on dissident voices with a history of shaking things up,
(otherwise marginalized by the censorship of omission practiced by corporate media.)
A short profile was written about me with an interview, appearing in a Mexican
art magazine called Spleen, which was quite excellent, though it should have come out
a year earlier. Journalists and editors are notoriously late in catching onto anything
interesting that's going on, in both Mexico and NYC.
I've noticed several cultural publications in Mexico that are completely unreadable and
insufferably boring, obsessed with "good taste" and "contemporary art."
They feature dull profiles of bad artists with pedestrian resumes, all carefully avoiding
disturbing the status quo by producing anything remotely disturbing or innovative.
One free paper in Mexico that appears to be designed to showcase new cultural
events and products is completely clueless as to who the best artists currently flourishing
under the radar in Mexico are. They regularly focus on conservative fashion shoots and
pieces reviewing cutting edge artists from 50 or more years ago, with occasional forays
into predictable tattoo art or trendy corporate rock bands.
On one occasion last year I was invited to the office of a free art magazine in Mexico
City to discuss possible articles or artists to write about. The editor, who acted as if he
were interested in my perspective, never followed up with any assignments.
He did the same thing to a Mexican curator of art parties which he'd invited to the office
to see if she'd also contribute. His publication continues to be irrelevant and
deeply conservative in it's timidity, apparently due to a fear of offending potential
advertisers. Like every other art zine in Mexico, it is unreadable.
Due to the unfortunate vacuum of remotely interesting cultural journalism in Mexico City,
it became necessary for me to self publish my own magazine here, in Spanish and English, called Hatred of Capitalism. Included in the premiere issue was photography
and illustrations by powerful Mexican artists, ignored by the elitist media and
cultural institutions here, as well as my own writing and pieces I selected critiquing
contemporary art. Included was The Extremist Manifesto, announcing the
emergence of a suppressed movement of radical artists opposed to the stifling
corporate contemporary art scene, creating genuinely shocking and provocative
work under the radar of curators, journalists and institutions who have been co-
opted by the rancid values of crony capitalism and tired elitism.
As usual, when corporate and so-called alternative media fails to do it's job,
it becomes necessary to create your own media. As Duchamp predicted, the
great artists of the future will go underground. In NYC, I published The Underground
Film Bulletin for 7 years to cover a flourishing scene that had been completely ignored
by all journalists and curators due to it's potent content. Later, a book was published in
England called Deathtripping, exploring the material we covered in the magazine ten
years earlier. Better late than never. This is where the cinema of transgression became
known to world academic communities and continues to reverberate in such shows as
the Kunstwerk Museum's retrospective in Berlin last year. All museums and galleries in
Mexico are still oblivious to this important movement, as well as the homegrown
extremist artists I am trying to call attention to in Mexico City.
Art is meant to disturb. There is now a system in place that rewards art that is boring,
pointless and insignificant; a huge mass deception designed to keep in place
a trivial, fashionable clique of followers incapable of resisting what is expected of them.
Successful practitioners of capitulationist art make big, bland "conceptual" or "business"
projects/pieces that offend no one and remain safe for corporate sponsorship. In this way, the
global elite that pulls the strings of gatekeepers playing by the rules of predatory
capitalism are able to neuter the power of modern art by burying it alive.
The situation regarding cultural journalism in America is slightly worse. Real estate
greed has rendered NYC a cultural wasteland; astronomical rents extracted
by landlords have made it impossible for artists to produce cutting edge work in
an underground environment and any semblance of community has been wiped
out with few exceptions, usually erased by the police as soon as any attention is
focused on something new and original.
Boring art newspapers like the Brooklyn Rail have a policy of avoiding anything
controversial, thought provoking or original, just like their counterparts in Mexico.
As a result of this censorship of omission, people are starved to experience real art
that challenges their perceptions and prejudices and I am flown in a few times a year
by newcomers wondering what happened before everything got sanitized, in order to
lend authenticity and expose them to what they have missed.
This sad state of affairs could be rectified if just one person with money would step up
and publish a useful magazine on paper or online and employ good writers to
cover interesting subjects. That is how history is made. We are apparently living in
a new Dark Ages, where everything is a simulation, and millions of people are pacified
by propaganda and corporate disinformation, while essential, significant and newsworthy
art is being regularly ignored and avoided by gatekeepers and sheeple playing by the
rules, which stinks. Conformity and complacency are at an all time high while the global
elites and their empire crumble and things get worse.
I can only continue to fight against it with no funding or support, in private and
occasionally in carefully circumscribed public forums, taking a hermetic path
to the truth, which must be avoided at all costs by those in denial of this sorry
state of affairs.