It wasn’t a good look by any means. After decades of languishing in storage, unseen and censored, Barbara Carrasco's epic 1981 mural L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective spent several nights during its triumphant re-installation at Union Station last month shrouded under black cloth. The mural was covered during eight private......
The artist Dash Snow promised me an interview, over and over. Every time I ran into him during his 2007 stay in L.A., he’d say, “We still gotta talk, man.” The last time was at the after-party for the opening of his show at Peres Projects in Chinatown. The party......
It was the weirdest thing: Election Night, Mexico City, 2006. I was inside the “macro-newsroom” of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) at the moment the polls were officially closed. Surrounding the room, monitors designed to show incoming returns from each of Mexico’s 31 states flashed on. The buzzing reporters and......
It may be a typical Monday for many in Southern California but for millions there and across the U.S. families are preparing to celebrate fiestas patrias, the season of Independence Day celebrations for Latin American countries that begins tonight with the "Grito," or The Yell, of Mexican Independence. The ritual......
The palm trees are laid out everywhere, in rows and clumps, in corners, and all over the structure that from a distance -- with its metal surfaces and elevated floor -- evokes the broken tropical landscapes of war and dislocation. Buenos Aires-born New York-based Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija landed in......
* Photo above, a demonstration during the XVII International AIDS Conference, via AIDS2008.com. There were too many reasons to come away depressed by the knowledge gathered and shared at the International AIDS Conference this week, so few reasons to be hopeful that a cure could be reached or that millions......
* Image above, hijras in Chennai, India, by Maciej Dakowicz. I took my first full tour of the Global Village at the AIDS Conference here in Mexico City on Tuesday and truly found myself in a "global" community: Activists and organizers and artists from all corners of the world were......
The AIDS Conference opened with a bang on Monday: An activist take-over of a symposium hosted by a pharmaceutical company (which decided to stop distributing HIV drugs to kids) and a speech by Bill Clinton where I suppose he said some quotable things. On Sunday night the gala opening happened......
More than 800,000 Mexicans in the metropolitan region went to special polling places on Sunday to register their opinion on the energy reform package being pushed by President Felipe Calderon's conservative PAN party. Depending on your source, it was either a rousing civic success or a shameless fiasco. I'm leaning......
How "cool" is Mexico City? Well, the new issue of Vice magazine is all about Mexico, and especially the capital. You can lament this, ignore this, or just get over it and go see the bands. A week ago the editors and media agents behind the urban bad-kid cocky hipster......
