Xalapeña hospitality
My 'conferencia' in the visions of transdisciplinarity simposio was 'composition between disciplines: statements and stories from a social change school'. Not wanting to be all me, I offered not only Sonata Quijada & the Ground Whereon, but also Rob's knit-covered trash ball he'd left at G!I - one week of trash in a 7"-diameter spheroid - which I passed around the audience, and a poem by Indigo she left in a returned book five years ago that had always astounded me - which worked well translated line by line and impressed the audience, too. Both here and the previous week in West Virginia, kids in the audience were drawn to SQ's toyscape like a magnet. Annamaria age 4 happily declared "That was for children!" I think this Veracruzana performance was the first time in its 20 year life I had presented it in a country with a history of US intervention, and the reception was immediate and positive, particularly when the text twist comes in.
The hosts were a newish program that had recently been allotted .6 hectare of land near the gleaming silver green university library (thanks to a far-sighted, progressive rector) where they are creating a 'station for ecological dialogue & eco-alphabetization' that has more a feel of a utopian encampment than an academic department. Around a bare wooden polygonal gazebo called 'the palepa' (a kind of seed, I think) and wooden crescent-shaped building there were tents, rock paths and raised gardens in progress, flanked by Dr-Seuss-like, elevated composting toilets and trees trees trees. The program had been started by four professors in different fields who would hold 'ludic' meetings regularly, i.e. play, which included reading a lot of Maturana. The program and the symposium had a lot of emphasis on the body, connection with the earth, love and conviviality, and many participants including me were amazed and moved. There was a bonfire with children of the facilitators playing Son Herocho, a popularly revived local style of music with ukelele-like instruments, Mexican country voices and many verses. Tequila and pulque. Workshop on green roofs and indigenous dance (where I was), 'world cafe' discussions. The other invited presenters included a Palestinian mathematician who abandoned Harvard to assist mothers in Ramallah to create a school and spoke about the mathematics of his mother, who never learned to read, in her turning a square of cloth into a dress in a day -- as anti-school as Ivan Illich -- I felt a lot of affinity with him and many others. On the other hand yet also with affection and sympathy, the person who agreed to translate for me was heir to an hacienda and was still growing coffee (which supposedly is no longer profitable), a site for several hollywood films.
The trash ball had made it through Lewisburg's hyper meticulous x-ray security-hope there's no snag bringing it back.
The hosts were a newish program that had recently been allotted .6 hectare of land near the gleaming silver green university library (thanks to a far-sighted, progressive rector) where they are creating a 'station for ecological dialogue & eco-alphabetization' that has more a feel of a utopian encampment than an academic department. Around a bare wooden polygonal gazebo called 'the palepa' (a kind of seed, I think) and wooden crescent-shaped building there were tents, rock paths and raised gardens in progress, flanked by Dr-Seuss-like, elevated composting toilets and trees trees trees. The program had been started by four professors in different fields who would hold 'ludic' meetings regularly, i.e. play, which included reading a lot of Maturana. The program and the symposium had a lot of emphasis on the body, connection with the earth, love and conviviality, and many participants including me were amazed and moved. There was a bonfire with children of the facilitators playing Son Herocho, a popularly revived local style of music with ukelele-like instruments, Mexican country voices and many verses. Tequila and pulque. Workshop on green roofs and indigenous dance (where I was), 'world cafe' discussions. The other invited presenters included a Palestinian mathematician who abandoned Harvard to assist mothers in Ramallah to create a school and spoke about the mathematics of his mother, who never learned to read, in her turning a square of cloth into a dress in a day -- as anti-school as Ivan Illich -- I felt a lot of affinity with him and many others. On the other hand yet also with affection and sympathy, the person who agreed to translate for me was heir to an hacienda and was still growing coffee (which supposedly is no longer profitable), a site for several hollywood films.
The trash ball had made it through Lewisburg's hyper meticulous x-ray security-hope there's no snag bringing it back.