Habitus

by Habitus · 08/26/10

In the late 1990s, a group of young artists transformed the Mexico City art scene and drew international attention to a city that had previously been considered an obscure outpost of contemporary visual culture. Yoshua Okón, one of the defining personalities of that moment, embodied its spirit with video and installations that were impolite, funny, and inflammatory. His seminal works aimed squarely at his society’s hypocrisies, excesses, and human spectacles. Now an internationally known artist who creates and exhibits work all over the world, Okón lives in Los Angeles and Mexico City. He spoke to Habitus from his home in the Condesa neighborhood, where he has spent most of his life.

Habitus: Growing up in Mexico City can mean so many different things and represent so many different worlds that don’t often intersect. Can you tell me a bit about the version of Mexico City that you knew growing up?

Okón: It’s a good way to describe the city and Mexico, as a whole. I’m very grateful to have grown up here; it’s a very complex place that doesn’t allow you to ignore the multiple realities and experiences. It’s a very in-your-face place that doesn’t allow you to live under many illusions.

I grew up in Colonia Condesa, where I still live today. It’s a neighborhood that was historically full of immigrants, so the cosmopolitan dimension of Mexico City is very strong here. It’s also a neighborhood with a very active street life. The old urban planning has survived here; it has a very human scale with lots of parks and green space and small businesses. You interact a lot with other people. This kind of neighborhood puts you in touch with the city’s many realities. As a child I would hang out in the parks and I got to meet an amazing variety of people: recent immigrants, working class, middle class, various races.

My work is very much socially oriented and that definitely comes from my experience growing up in the city and, specifically, in Condesa.

Was there a particular time in your life that you became aware of the city’s violence and corruption and social divisions—all the things that would become central to your art?

That was something I saw almost from the beginning. I don’t think it is particular to Mexico. I lived the in the U.S. for eight years and I would dare say that, in many ways, it’s a much more corrupt society. The difference is that there you have very sophisticated mechanisms that make people feel they are living in a fair society. To me it is, in many ways, much more ruthless. Here, the corruption is far more naked.

You might be best known for a piece in which you paid local policemen to act out in front of your camera. They dance, sing, gesture obscenely, shout. Can you say a little about how the material was gathered?

My experience with the police in Mexico City is very much love-hate. They are so cynical and corrupt but they are also amazing actors. At the end, you know they just want your money and they know it, too. But there is a theatricality to it that I have always hated and always loved. I thought: these guys are so creative and such skillful performers, why not use them as actors? These guys will make you laugh but you will feel highly uncomfortable at the same time.

There is something obviously cynical in the act but, at the same time, there is something that’s also very tender about they way they perform for you.

Exactly. There is something very human and down-to-earth about the way they behave but of course it is also cynical.

I’m interested in the relationship between orchestration and improvisation in this kind of work. How do you find the right level of intervention for a given situation?

Well, I guess that is part of my art. For me making artwork has a lot to do with my curiosity about the world. It is a great way to rethink the way I understand the world and to challenge the viewer. I think we often live mostly by stereotypes. This work is a way of bringing a little distance from everyday life.

It would be very boring for me to come up with a script, or answers, before I create the piece. That’s where performance comes in. I basically set up very simple parameters—the rules of the game that speak for themselves. Reality is always surprising me; most things that happen could have never come from a script.

You encourage people to see themselves and their place in society with humor. There is something kind of democratic in the use of humor in your work, which creates a kind of relationship of equality between the subjects and the audience, who may not be on equal footing in society at large.

I think humor is an incredible useful tool for gaining distance from ourselves. When we laugh, we are more able to see ourselves from the outside. My works are as much about the viewer as the subjects being portrayed. Humor allows viewers to become implicated in the work. Once you are laughing, you are already implicated. A mixture of humor and discomfort can be very powerful.

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by Sabina Berman · 08/26/10

My father didn’t talk much. But when he did, he talked to the air. He would gaze at the ceiling and speak in a grave monotone, disconnected from me and anyone else who might be within earshot. It was like listening to the rain. The few bits of his life that he told me about, he told just like that, and then he fell silent, without searching for a moral. And that silence was like listening to the rain in some corner of my memory, distant, remote.

Eleven moments have shaped my destiny, he once told me. Just eleven, that’s all. But if you were to take even one of them away, I’d be a different person altogether. I’d have a different name, I’d think in another language, and I’d live on the other side of the world, or else I would have stopped living long ago.

The first of those moments happened at the turn of the century, in Radzin, Poland. That spring night the Jews of the shtetl left their houses and walked along the dirt path to the cheder, the school, where they shuffled around, standing, whispering, quietly wondering if what had brought them together there was really a miracle about to happen. The rabbi was in the middle, seated at a wooden table, and on the table a glass bubble waited enigmatically, empty except for a simple filament that rose about four centimeters from its base. The rabbi beckoned the children over to the table.

Let the children be the first to see the Future, he said.

Reb Meyer, according to my father, was famous in Poland for his oratory.

Among the children who stepped forward and surrounded the table was, of course, my father, Herschl Berman, dark-skinned, with black eyes and payes.

All right, said Reb Meyer, let’s see.

Then, soundlessly, the miracle occurred: the bubble lit up like a tiny sun on top of the table. The people gasped, their eyes opening wide.

Then they applauded.

And the applause grew louder as the rabbi waved his hands, palms down, over the shining light bulb, blessing it in Hebrew. Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who allows us to light electric bulbs.

The next day at cheder, Reb Meyer spoke animatedly about the miracle of a literally brilliant Future. Myriads of light bulbs would arrive to erase the darkness of evil and suffering from the earth. Hadn’t God revealed Himself to Moses as the radiant light of a burning bramble bush? Hadn’t He appeared to Daniel as a bolt of lightning suspended in the sky? Light is the appearance of God, and if God had found it necessary to set fire to a bramble bush in the desert in order to talk to Moses, in the twentieth century he would talk to everyone, ecumenically, through light bulbs.

And now not even fools will be capable of sin, the rabbi concluded.

Over the years, Reb Meyer’s optimism grew bitter in my father’s memory, but the joy of seeing that burning light bulb was something from which he never recovered.

I’ll tell you exactly what I felt when I saw the bulb, my father said to me.

He closed his eyes and spoke to me of the long, cruel winters in Radzin. Winters that lasted half the year and forced people to lock themselves inside their houses or in the temple, because to step outside into the air meant being stabbed by a piercing blade of cold.

During that half of the year the sun was always a hypothesis: maybe it was hiding behind the perpetually clouded sky. And when the wind rearranged the clouds and the sun gradually peeked out between them, Reb Meyer knew it, because the window next to his chair lit up, and beneath his gaze the sheet covered with the characters of the great book of the Talmud grew whiter and finally, radiant. Then he would dismiss his class and order the children to leave the schoolroom to take advantage of the interstice of sunshine.

Out in the snow, the children unbuttoned their black jackets and white shirts, they slipped their tzitzit over their heads, and flung their arms open to feel the sun on their chests. That was the happiness I felt from the light bulb, my father concluded, opening his eyes.

To read more, order Habitus 06: Mexico City

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by David Lida · 08/26/10

Inside her room in a one-story brick compound in Tepepan, Carla puts the final touches on her makeup before leaving for work. Already dressed and made up, Alín, who lives in another room in the house and works with Carla, awaits her. Carla’s room is decorated with a collection of diminutive teddy bears, dolls, frogs (“They’re for good luck,” she says), fans, a wall hanging of the Last Supper, and an altar to a saint known in Tacoaleche, Zacatecas, as the Child of the Doves.

They wear long skirts and blouses. “We don’t like anything vulgar,” says Carla. They buy all their clothes in Xochimilco. “I used to like to shop in the Centro, but now I’m scared. There’s every kind of delinquent over there.” They work as waitresses and hostesses in a beer joint called La Vicenta.

On the wall there is a photo of Carla with a smiling client. —Is he your boyfriend? —Are you kidding? I only see him in the cantina. He’s married.

Alín, who is deaf-mute, produces some photo albums, principally from before she began to dress as a woman. She was a muscular youth with a masculine appearance. There are a couple of photos of her as a woman in the cantina, next to a man whose eyes are either very dreamy or dazed from beer. She makes a gesture in the form of a heart, indicating that the man is her boyfriend. She next mimes her hands as if she’s at the steering wheel of a car, and then waves a palm in the air.

Carla interprets: Alín’s boyfriend is a truck driver and he’s far away. Carla also had a photo album, with images of her as a man and as a woman. But a beau stole it. “One of a million bastards,” she says. “Why bother having a boyfriend? Soon enough they rob you.”

Carla says that Alín became deaf-mute many years ago, after her father gave her a brutal beating. Alín does not communicate with any traditional sign language. She has invented her own. Indicating a ring on a finger means married. Male or female gender is demonstrated with explicit gestures describing genitalia, and a finger ground into the cheek means gay. According to her photos, before dressing as a woman, she worked as a babysitter and in a hamburger stand.

Carla used to work in the family business, making metal sculptures from molds: Don Quijote, female nudes, bulls. She sold them on the street outside the Chilpancingo metro stop. After a while she grew bored.

Which never happens at La Vicenta, not even on the slow weekday afternoons when the few clients tend to be asleep with their heads atop the tables. At those moments, Carla says, “I gossip with my colleagues.”

They earn no salary, only tips. “We used to make a lot,” says Carla. “There were customers who would leave twenty pesos. Now they leave two or three.” Nonetheless, they tend to earn fifty or sixty pesos a day, and sometimes more on a busy Friday or Saturday. “There are also clients who give us perfume, shoes, or underwear,” she adds. Certain unscrupulous waitresses take advantage of the drunkest clients and divest them of their money. In fact, the waitress that introduced Alín to Carla is now in jail, doing three months for robbing a sailor.

Customers tend to behave, except for the drunks, who grab buttocks or other parts of Carla and Alín’s mysterious bodies. Alín has a feminine form thanks to hormones, while Carla’s is pure illusion. “The best lies are true,” she explains.

Theirs is not an easy life. Alín shows some scratches on her chest, the result of a tiff she had with another waitress, who bit her index finger, leaving a notable scar. She also has a majestic hickey on her neck, a gift from a guy who accosted her on the street a few nights earlier.

Alín is 23, Carla 38. Her dream is to open a beauty salon in Xochimilco. Truth, lie, or something intermediate. She says, “I’m not always going to live this way.”

To read more, order Habitus 06: Mexico City

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by Margo Glantz · 08/26/10

With the passage of time, the shoe loses its origin and its etymology. How many people today know that the Spanish word for “shoe” comes from the Turkish? It is a Renaissance term; it did not exist in Spanish before. Other words were used, like calzado, meaning footwear. In the first dictionary of the Spanish language, the one written by Covarrubias, we read that calzado refers to a person who wears shoes, as opposed to the devout who made a religious statement of not wearing them. Teresa de Ávila and Saint John of the Cross, for example, were commonly known as the barefoot Carmelites…

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The great colossus of Egypt went barefoot. Homeric heroes as well, though there is some room for debate on that point. But as we read in Deuteronomy, Moses can proudly tell the Israelites: “I have made you walk through the desert for forty years and your sandals have not worn out beneath your feet.” That is, I believe, the first written mention of footwear. Although if we really think about it, God had already anticipated the necessity of a good foundation when He created us. Our very first shoes are the ones offered by our own anatomy: the soles of our feet assure a firm and solid step. The softness and elasticity of this primeval footwear is mainly due to an incredible collection of little bones, the sesamoids, found beneath the first metatarsal.

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The dignity and beauty of the bare foot is preserved only in statues.

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And this preamble is essential for someone trying to write the story of a woman whose greatest ambition was to walk through life in designer shoes.

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She was not born on silk sheets, nor did she taste her first bite from a silver spoon. She worked in a small-town shoe store that sold downtown styles (knockoffs) at discount prices. The specialties of the store were clodhoppers designed for the comfort of matrons and little old ladies (black polish, austere and measured cut) and dress shoes in beige and red, grey and black, or white with chestnut or navy, made for ambitious young women from working-class neighborhoods.

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Once upon a time I might have wanted to be Cinderella, to have an evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters. To wake up one lovely morning to find Prince Charming in the kitchen, accompanied by a servant carrying a magnificent case lined with purple satin and containing the famous and eternal crystal slipper, in exactly my size.

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It is time to confess that this story is autobiographical and, as such, deeply sincere.

To read more, order Habitus 06: Mexico City

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by David Gutherz · 08/18/10

Citizens of the Windy City, be sure not to miss a rare opportunity to see the thought provoking thriller Backyard (El Traspatio). Mexico’s official submission to the 2010 Academy Awards, Backyard is a fictionalized account of the all-too-real 1990′s Juarez femicides written by Sabina Berman. A critically aclaimed playwright and contributor to our soon-to-be-released Mexico City issue, Berman has made it clear that she has intentions that transcend the simple catharsis that characterizes the murder-mystery genre. “When people leave the theater,” she told one interviewer, “their sense of right or wrong will be strengthened.”

Presented as part of the Maya Indie Series, Backyard will be playing for only one more night in Chicago. After that, its off to Miami until the 26th.

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by David Gutherz · 07/06/10

Frida Kahlo in Baden-Baden

Today–July 6,  2010–would have been famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s 103rd birthday. A great champion of indigenous Mexican traditions, Kahlo’s face (which was also her greatest subject) has become for many the iconic image of Mexican womanhood.  As Ganit Ankori of the Jewish Museum points out, however, Kahlo was a shapeshifter by nature who “portrayed herself in alternative roles, appearing as an androgynous creature, a crowned nun, the Hindu goddess Parvati, a little deer, and as a Jew.” And though today some have found reason to doubt her Jewish origins, it is clear that her passion for unremitting reflection on her own porous self-identity is a pursuit at once timelessly Jewish and utterly contemporary. Consider this comment by Ilan Stavans in  an interview soon to be published in our  Mexico City issue:

“My face is many faces. For years I avoided myself in the mirror because the face I encountered always appeared to be looking at me inquisitively, demanding that I recognize it as my identity. Not only the mirror but photographs and other reflections. This isn’t easy in Western civilization, where mirrors and cameras are eternal tormentors; it’s impossible to make a move without being observed by others, and those observations being fixed forever in snapshot. My parents are obsessed with photographs. No sooner does one step into their apartment than the multiplication of faces from the past becomes apparent: family pictures on the walls, in albums, piled up on living-room tables. There is no way I am able to avoid the vicissitudes of myself whenever I am in their house. This is torture for me. It is true that our face is our façade. However, do we need to know how we look to understand who we are?”

This is the sort of question–or existential condition,really–to which Frida devoted so much. And we honor her life by continuing to reflect.

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by David Gutherz · 06/23/10

Congratulations to Habitus contributor Katie Orlinsky for getting a number of her stunning photos featured in the New York Times! The upcoming issue of Habitus will be carrying a photo essay of hers on migrant workers in Mexico.

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by David Gutherz · 06/23/10

©SharonaGott/Flickr

A  Jewish man calls his mother in Florida. “Mom, and how are you.”
“Not too good,” says the mother. “I’ve been very weak.”
The son says, “Why are you so weak?”
She says, “Because, I haven’t eaten in 38 days.”
“Mama,” the man says, “that’s terrible. Why haven’t you eaten in 38 days?”
“Because I didn’t want my mouth to be filled with food, just in case you should call.”

Today, in preparation for the upcoming Mexico City issue, we’ve grabbed two delicious (and totally divergent) reflections on the “political gastronomy” of Mexico. First, Juan Villoro’s thought provoking piece from n+1, “Gangsters as Superstars,” in which he reflects on the contemporary transformation of Mexican politics into “an all-you can-eat buffet where everyone snatches everyone else’s plate, yells at the same time and carries off his leftovers in Tupperware.” Then, on a lighter note, check out this great recipe for Gefilte Fish a Veracruzana, from the March, 27 2010 episode of the Splendid Table.

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by Joshua Ellison · 03/19/10

I’m leaving Mexico City today and want to thank all my gracious hosts.

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by Joshua Ellison · 03/18/10

A driver sleeps in his bus in the mid-afternoon in Coyoacán, just around the corner from Frida Kahlo’s house. Also not far from here, Leon Trotsky was bludgeoned to death by a Soviet agent in his home.

The old colonial neighborhood still has a bohemian, intellectual character. Habitus contributors Margo Glantz and Pedro Meyer both live nearby.

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