VAST ARCADE LOS ANGELES
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT BY WAY OF AN INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY RITA GONZALEZ AT THE HOME OF ARTURO ERNESTO ROMO, 8/20/05
“Evergreen St. @ Cesar Chavez Blvd.: The young group of artists wanted to make a name for themselves. They decided to paint a mural utilizing their collective body fluids, secretions, and excretions. The image was intended to be a historically and politically correct panorama of the events that encompassed the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. What they ultimately created was an abstract mess that was quickly condemned as a health hazard. The community objected to the way the artists had conducted themselves as they smeared the bio-hazardous medium on the wall. The artists were arrested and charged with violating current ‘tagger’ laws. Their bail and fines were paid by a prestigious gallery as an advance against future sales. The artists are now recognized in art circles across various continents.”
497
Harry Gamboa Jr. in Urban Exile From
The Chosen Fugue
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Arturo Romo—come together— Here in this room are your allies, doubles, catch-as-catch-can accomplices, and arch-nemeses. They surround your makeshift proposal with its pages spread out and falling off that too-small card table in your front room.
“Dr. Eufencio Rojas!”...
“Presente”
“Liki Renteria!”...
“Ehh!”
“George Lopez”...
(Silence)
“El Pendejo!!”...
“Soy Yo!”
“Antonio Villaraigosa!"...
(Sound of locked jawbone cracking)
“Dr. Renato Frias!"...
(Low frequencies)
All are gathered here to pick up the parts and play with the remnants of Sr. Romo’s backhands.
First, let’s examine this document entitled, The Crystal Brilliance Manifesto. We have all studied The Art of Noises, have we not? Do you sense a rupture in the seams of 20th century art history now that we have come to a point where we can conjure the Futurists perfectly at home on Whittier Blvd?
Your Crystal Brilliance Manifesto loops los planes (which we remember were penned with blood, cactus, and semen) with the escritos of David Alfaro Siqueiros. His seemingly hazardous development was “an antinomic double objective: on one hand, encouraging the development of "new means" for literature and the visual arts through the incorporation of avant-garde principles; on the other, the promotion of truly independent perspectives based on the recovery of indigenous traditions.” (Mari Carmen Ramirez)
Romo, you penned, “Think of a mural dedicated to double vision, to sound, to the dead twin of the puff of smoke that you released from your lungs one night, to the long faded trails of movement left behind by your hands pushing into the concrete. Sounds should pass through your mind about now, wooshes and abstract noises and fractal like guffaws, hoots and car horns. “
And then a crash defines the disso-stinct…and then we see the cinematic trails of Siqueiros project which somehow landed in Sergei Eisenstein’s erotic film bins.
Sr. Romo, think back to the Futurists’ dream of a mural dedicated to sound—think of Russolo’s praise of the-- “crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning mills, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways…” (Russolo 85 Futurist Manifestos, edited by Umbro Apollonio, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2001: 74-77.)
[A squabble ensues as the fellows each grab for the most outlandish object and our script. AHEM! Order ensues as the Doctors “unpack” the mural—now whitewashed—at the corner of Workman and Broadway. The mural is rumored to be the source for Romo’s Crystal Brilliance Manifesto.]
Doctors: It is the aim of the present squadron of do-gooders to erase all murals left behind that make voluptuous this corporeal city. This is part of a larger citywide effort to rid the city of art fueled by insinuations and imperceptible innovations within the landscape.
Renteria: Doctors and fellow colleagues, excuse me, but you are missing the fine point. In manifestoes of liberation movements, “’we’ is offered as the authentic voice of ‘the people’ even as that entity is confounded and contested.”* But our Romo gives us the singul-us voice of the “ethno-schizophrenic.”
George Lopez: Compas, listen to me, the artist once told me that what attracted him to this seminal mural was that “it wasn’t the history of anything.” Just take a look at it for yourself (cue glass slide!) Examine the Time shards—the male/female hydra—and notice how the male portion pricks the sky with a knife and the female portion offering a peace dove. The ambidextrous hydra creature holds two cherubs aloft (one male and the other female), as the Mexican eagle clenching a snake descends upon the whole watery scene. It’s all fucked UP!!!
El Pendejo: But what of the manifesto’s “impassioned chronicle of the oppression that has led to the present moment of rupture; its forceful enumeration of grievances; [and] its epigrammatic style”?!?
AER: Well, I can only speak for myself cabrones, but we’re all here looking at this manifesto, shelled in the context of my house, this table, Harry Gamboa’s semi-fictitious/underground art group and I can’t help but think that we’re all in way over our heads- which might be a good thing.
Eufencio: Being over one’s own head can be liberating in the most metaphysical, upper-chakra sense. In 1996, I remember I was selling sundry items out of the back of my pickup when a tornado touched down and created the rupture that we spoke of earlier. Right there on Van Horne and Huntington… I certainly felt over my head there- in fact the tornado had flipped me head over foot and I stayed suspended in that pose for quite a while. At that moment, I achieved a strange purpose- the moment of terror granting me a great disturbance. “Attain deliverance in disturbances” said a very wise man.
George Lopez Candle: I don’t know why exactly Eufencio’s words sparked this thought in me, but maybe it’s related. I wonder what it’s like to be a projected person like all of you all… I’m just an object imbued with the magical properties of strange celebrity. I’m a waxen echo of a TV-spectral echo of a comedic routine echo of a flesh and blood echo of a neighborhood echo. I’m a product of many products- I’m all fucked up! But I’m an object.
El Pendejo: [whose flash of brilliance exhibited earlier is now waning] I know ha, shi, sometimes I’m tripping out too, you know, like last weekend I was hanging out at my homegirl’s pad, and we were blazing… and when I get like that, I’m like thinking some deep ass shit… [now more introspective] like, what does it all mean, I mean, you ever wonder that? Like I look at my hand and I’m like, damn, it’s just… there.
Renato: Do you find inspiration in these moments- in these moments of “blazing,” where your sun and moon essence, your male and female have met?
El Pendejo: Nah, it’s not like that between us, she’s my homeboy’s oldest.
Liki Renteria: Speaking of male and female energy, I’ve noticed an imbalance in the conversation. We are heavily in male/lead/alcohol/wind territory, and this whole conversation is about to teeter off the page. A critique I would have of your work Arturo, is the complete lack of female voices, excluding those within the Renteria family of course…
AER: Absolutely correct, I do wonder why it’s been that way for so long. Maybe I feel more comfortable crafting male characters. It does put me ill at ease though to look at you fellas and note the imbalance. I would like to hear what Rita has to say about it.
Liki Renteria: But back to the epigrammatic style of the manifesto… in my practice, the practice of the inner body, the inner world, we use potencies, images, ideas, icons or vocalizations that have inherent power. One of the most powerful healing tools in our arsenal is penumbra, or the illogical statement. The breakdown of an intelligible form of expression creates a rupture, a pulse (see koan), buried somewhere in the outer mirror-ghost of the second brain. Harnessing the energy of that rupture for healing is what all good curanderos do. Seems to me that the manifesto- and the mural on the slide, and Sergei’s crossing of the border, and the King of Terror tornado that Eufencio was talking about, and the fact that Mr. George Lopez Candle is talking at all… all points to a catastrophic rupture in the roundness of the globe- this time we’re not talking about a small pulse of puzzlement in a single person’s brain, but a gigantic landslide of dissolution. What’s being produced seems more like a city of puzzlement than a simple pulse, something big enough to walk through.
Arturo Romo will present A Vast Arcade Los Angeles at LAX in 2006. The show may feature: “Cultural thing, Indian and Mexican things, Raiders paraphernalia, candles and incense, gut busting blues CDS, bootleg DVDs and Playstation games A rack of belts and ties, recycling services, bookson esoterica and plant healing, champurado, licuados, toss bones and tarot services…”
