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Talks

Mexican Fugue, Part 1

Thursday, Apr 12, 2012

7 p.m.

Participants

Maria Ines Canal, professor of contemporary theory and social science, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco
Tarek Elhaik, assistant professor of cinema studies, San Francisco State University
Jesse Lerner, professor of media studies, Pitzer College
Rogelio Villarreal, editor-in-chief, Replicante Magazine

Image: Pablo Lopez Luz, Vista Aerea de la Ciudad de Mexico, XII (Aerial view of Mexico City, XII), 2006; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Pablo Lopez Luz

Taking its title from the late Olivier Debroise’s book Fuga Mexicana, this event is a conversation among four colleagues who are passionate about Mexican modernity and visual culture. The panelists reference Photography in Mexico while examining some of the images and clichés that constitute the canon of Mexican visual culture: Maguey plants, volcanoes, urban poverty, pre-Columbian pyramids, the Day of the Dead, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and more. They evaluate and bid a respectful farewell to this magnetic and decaying legacy in the context of what Mexican anthropologist Roger Bartra called the “splendors and miseries of the post-Mexican condition.”