Dialogue

Lecture - Performance

'Green Room / Arcadia.

My project Green Room / Arcadia, at W139 is essentially about the impossibility of communication with another person. Questions not asked, sentences never finished, doubts about ideas or matters of the heart never ventured or how memories of a particular event are different for each person, sometimes remarkebly so. On the other hand this work is a joke about the notion that someone would really follow through with such a time wasting exercise, in the cost effective 1990's. My main concern is to get my mailing list transferred onto my laptop - but people keep interrupting me, and I love being interrupted. (mostly) '

AMORALES

In conversation with...

Super Barrio

Lecture at W139 - 3 oktober 16.00 uur

In october, the Mexican left wing political activist Marco Rascon will come to lecture at the artists space W139 in Amsterdam Rascon has been invited by the Mexican artist Carlos Amorales. Amorales is working on a project for which he is creating a fictional identity that can be performed by different persons. Amorales wants to insert this fictional identity in reality to provoke social situations in which patterns of behaviour can be analized. Marco Rascon, a former representant of the PRD* in the country's parliament, is well known in Mexico and abroad for his ten years work with the figure of Super Barrio, as well as his association with the Asamblea de Barrios**. Super Barrio was invented after the earthquake that partially destroyed Mexico City in 1985.

Though his true identity remains a mystery, he is one of Mexico City's most popular figures, and since his first public appearance in 1987 he is the symbol of the struggle for tenant's rights in the 'barrios' of the city. Because of his popularity, the police are reluctant to arrest him. Public meetings with cabinet-level officials provided him with certain legitimacy. More than influenced by a Marvel Comics type of super hero, Super Barrio's concept is derived from the culture of the Mexican free wrestling characters and their popularity in Mexico's media culture as performers, film- and comic stars, as well of being myths of the every day life ethics. Super Barrio's appeal within the popular classes and succes as a political form has set an example for other invented characters which perform nowadays in Mexico's political scene, forming what could be called 'The Mexican Super Hero's League of Justice'.

In the lecture Rascon and Super Barrio will talk about their political strategy and working experience in the context of Mexico's society, as well as trace and discuss the possible connections or affinities which their political concept has with the ideas and the practice of performance as Art.

• Partido Revolucionario Democratico

** Neighbour Assembly