MEXTASY 2014: Mextasy Show on Exhibition for Three More Weeks at La Casa Cultural Latina, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign!

UPDATE: March 3, 2014! Great News! Mextasy @ the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's LA CASA CULTURAL LATINA has been extended for three weeks through March 21, 2014! The show is free and on exhibition in the main rooms of LA CASA! Gracias Gracias Gracias to all the fine gente/folks in the snowy fields of the Midwest for extending such a warm welcome to MEXTASY.

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From Tex[t]-Mex to Mextasy to Eyegiene

Televisually Supercharged Hallucinations of 'Mexicans' in our Digital Humanities-laced, Technosexually Voyeuristic Tomorrow(s)

In a wide-ranging talk that builds on the work found in  Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of“Mexicans” in America (2007), but that also incorporates the traveling exhibition (and pop-up rascuache museum entitled Mextasy), and looks forward to my new project entitled Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race, I will try to immerse students, faculty, and community members from the University of Illinois in some of the crazy story of metamorphosis that forms the history of Tex[t]-Mex, what began as a response to the laughter of racist students on the East Coast snickering at the concept of "Mexican Intellectuals," has ended up as a career-long sojourn, an Odyssey-like conquest, to track down and vivisect Latina/o stereotypes in American mass culture.  More recently, the work has evolved, concerning itself more less with issues of ethnocentrism and race and more with what I call technosexual "subject-effects," watchfully surveilling the evolution of human entertainment as it concerns itself less with "the other" and more with the "OS" (think here of Spike Jonze's awesome new movie Her).  There too, however, the massive hangover from European and American genocide, slavery, and racism, will continue to evolve and morph, finding new manifestations in the digital age of smartphones.  Ultimately, this is a lecture about metamorphosis, a movement in my work from an outright focus on deleterious stereotypes into a brave new world filled with the hedonistic pleasures of mextasy.  This, then, is a lecture that tries to capture our contemporary ontology in flux, from "I think therefore I am" to "I see, therefore I must record and broadcast, in order to be--Descartes credo reborn and re-imagined for the high age, the sacred moment of the "selfie."

All Mextasy event/lectures are all free/gratis!

Some prints, new and old, for the show...

Original Posting February 25, 2014

Guillermo Nericcio García y William A. Nericcio 

are Invading the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 

on Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 5:30pm 

@ La Casa Cultural Latina!!! 

Help Spread la Palabra!

as with all the images on this blog, click to enlarge

Click the poster and watch it grow!

poster for the mextasy exhibition, u of illinois urbana-champaign

Mextasy Coming to Illinois! Thursday, February 27, 2014 ~ Guillermo Nericcio García y William A. Nericcio! Desmadres y Mucho Mas More!

Mextasy comes to the wilds of Illinois Thursday, February 27, 2014, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's LA CASA CULTURA LATINA from 5:30-7:30pm... 

here's a recent interview with some background on the show...

An excerpt from an unpublished interview with Lorena Nava Ruggero

LNR: What is Mextasy? Why did you create it?

WN: Mextasy is an art exhibition featuring outrageous stereotypes of Mexicans and other Latinas/os; additionally, it contains sculptures, drawings, photography, and other media that attack the notion of Mexicans as less-than-human in American mass culture. The show I opened along the Rio Grande river in McAllen (September, 2010) and in Laredo this December, Mextasy, is dedicated to the old motherland and my peculiar fatherland.

Mextasy is more than a representation of ecstasy about or for Mexico; it is about the sensuous tracings Mexican culture leaves both sides of the border. More existential state than archive, Mextasy speaks to the living organism of Mexicanicity as it moves between the bodies of Mexico and the United States--an overt and covert delicious miasma that arouses as it excites, excites as it provokes. ¡Que viva Mexico!, within and without its borders.

LNR: How does Mextasy parallel your book?

WN: Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America features over 200 illustrations, with 16 pages in full color; many of these illustrations are stock representations of Mexicans (the sleeping Mexican, the bandit Mexican, the hot, Latina femme fatale). However, the book also includes original art, digital, photographic and hand-drawn, created by me. You know English Professors are known more for tweed and pomposity than their Picasso-like skills--for that reason I publish all my art under the name of Guillermo Nericcio García, what my name would have been if I had been born 10 blocks south of where I came into the world in Laredo, Texas--a bordertown with Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

LNR: You're primarily a writer, but this is an art exhibit -- what was it like to create this kind of "content"?

WN: I have been drawing since I was three--I made my own comic book with my sister before I was ten; after that, I was the political cartoonist for my high school newspaper (most infamous drawing? of Vice-Principal Shoup as a zeigheiling facsist for his punitive pedagogy--I was almost expelled and the nuns at St. Augustine tried to censor the paper).

LNR: What will you focus on in your lectures in [Illinois]?

WN: I will be focusing on my ongoing forensic work on American visual culture--so I will be dealing with the image of Mexico in the United States but also with our changing optics-obsessed culture in general--from Avatar in 3-D to the iPad, we are living through a watershed moment in textual reproduction where the turn to the visual (the semiotic) is accelerating at a mind-blowing pace. Next year, my new book appears with the University of Texas Press; it is entitled Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race--parts of my talks will be drawn from that work.

 

Guillermo Nericcio García y William A. Nericcio are Invading the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign on Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 5:30pm @ La Casa Cultural Latina!!! Help Spread la Palabra!

Guillermo Nericcio García y William A. Nericcio are Invading the 

University of Illinois Urbana Champaign on Thursday, 

February 27, 2014 at 5:30pm @ La Casa Cultural Latina!!! 

Help Spread la Palabra!

More soon!

UCLA Mextasy Lecture, November 19, 2013

click to enlarge

Adrian College Lectures, September 11 & 12, 2013 | William Nericcio and Mextasy!

lecture schedule with corrections

high res version uno y dos

Mextasy @ Adrian College: Exhibition Closing Lectures and Celebration About to Launch!

Streaming video updates below | August 25, 2013

The rumors I started are true--nurturing my wanderlusting Tejano fetish for the American Midwest (where even 
Cleveland or Columbus shimmer on the horizon of my consciousness like Reykjavic or Paris do for others), I have set my sights again on Michigan (sorry Ann Arbor, no Wolverine desmadres this time) and the balmy climes of Adrian at a college there called, you guessed it, Adrian College. 

Located near the financially infamous (of late) Motor City of Detroit, Adrian is known for fences. That's right! Fences--and whilst this gives your border-rat textmex blogger some pause (especially with the all the neo-fascist fervor for border walls these days), I am going to hold my tongue for the moment as the fine liberal arts college is also know for something much more important--social justice.

Here's wikipedia on Adrian: "In the late 19th century through early 20th century Adrian was known as the 'fence capital of the world,' when J. Wallace Page invented the first successful wire fence. Throughout this period, Adrian was one of the first fencing manufacturers in the world and its fences were shipped as far as New York, Berlin, Asia, and Africa." Working in Adrian's favor is the denouement of this microhistory where J. Wallace Page's company  sponsors "the highly successful Page Fence Giants Black baseball team." But Adrian is also known for Adrian College, according to USA TODAY, the "#1 Up-and-Coming College in the Midwest" and I am thrilled to bring my Tejano/Califas-drenched exhibition and lectures to Adrian's shores! The other great thing about Adrian College? It's a thriving abolitionist-era institution of higher ed!

So how will it go down? Adrian College's Shipman Library has installed the full Mextasy exhibit (Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious) in its Heritage Room on the main Adrian College campus. The exhibition will be housed there from August 26 to September 13, 2013. Students and the community can see the exhibit anytime the library is open with Shipman Library regular hours running Monday through Thursday, 8am-1pm; Friday, 8am-5pm; Saturdays, 10am-5pm; and Sundays from 12pm-11pm. 

There will be two major media-rich presentations associated with the Mextasy extravaganza. There will be a community lecture entitled  "Compulsively Desirable, Utterly Loathsome: Mexican and Latina/o Bodies in the 21st Century" on Wednesday, September 11, 2013, in Jones 110, 7:00pm–8:00pm. And there will be a campus lecture as well Thursday, September 12, 2013, entitled "Disrupting the Optical Hegemony of Stereotypes Now: Tex[t]-Mex, Eyegiene, and the Visual Dynamics of a Technosexual Tomorrow" in a room to be announced, 12:00pm–1pm.  A big gracias goes out to the Mextasy event sponsors: The Office of the Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs, Modern Languages and Cultures, Collegium II, ALPHA/Fin-Com, Institute for Ethics, Student Life, Multicultural Programs, Department of English, and the Institute for Creativity. 

An even bigger thank you and abrazo goes out to Professor Aïda Valenzuela, without whose imagination, vision, and drive, this event would never have happened!

EXTRAS

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a video and a cartoon for the Adrian College Lectures!

1. Humphrey Bogart and Alfonso Bedoya light up the screen in a scene from TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRES

2. Classic SPEEDY GONZALES antics from CANNERY WOE

 

click image for the streaming page

last promo posters--as with most images here, click to enlarge

MEXTASY Exhibition Coming to Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan, August-September 2013--Added Bonus? Two Lectures by William Nericcio

Wicked Desmadres Your Way Cometh! 

MEXTASY
SEDUCTIVE HALLUCINATIONS OF LATINA/O MANNEQUINS PROWLING THE AMERICAN UNCONSCIOUS

WILLIAM ANTHONY NERICCIO & GUILLERMO NERICCIO GARCÍA

Mextasy Exhibition | The Heritage Room | Adrian College | Shipman Library
August 26 to September 13, 2013

Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious, an outrageous traveling exhibition of Mexican stereotypes and cutting-edge Latina/o Art and Photography invades Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan opening August 26, 2013. Students and the community can see the exhibit anytime the library is open. Shipman Library hours are: Monday through Thursday, 8am-1pm; Friday, 8am-5pm; Saturdays, 10am-5pm; and Sundays from 12pm-11pm.

 Tex[t]-Mex/Mextasy Lectures! | Jones Hall & Velade Hall | Adrian College

There will be two major media-rich presentations by our guest(s) associated with the Mextasy extravaganza:

1. A community lecture entitled “Compulsively Desirable, Utterly Loathsome: Mexican & Latina/o Bodies in the 21st Century” on Wednesday, September 11, 2013, in Jones Hall 110 from 7:00 to 8:30pm.

2. There will be a campus lecture entitled “Disrupting the Visual Hegemony of Stereotypes Now: Tex[t]-Mex, Eyegiene, and the Optical Dynamics of a Technosexual Tomorrow” on Thursday, September 12, 2013, in Knight Auditorium, Velade Hall, from 12:00 to 1:30pm.

Mextasy @ Adrian College Sponsors: The Office of the Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs, Adrian College; Modern Languages and Cultures; Collegium II; A.L.P.H.A, Multicultural Programs; The Department of English; and The Institute for Creativity. An even bigger thank you and abrazo goes out to Professor Aïda Valenzuela, without whose imagination, vision, and drive, this event never would have happened!

Batten Down the Hatches! Some Desmadres Your Way Cometh, Midwest!!!!! MEXTASY exhibition Coming to Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan

Batten Down the Hatches! Some Desmadres Your Way Cometh, Midwest!!!!! MEXTASY exhibition Coming to Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan

Several Prints, Most New, for the August-September MEXTASY Exhibition @ Adrian College in Michigan

click the images below and, poof, like magic, they expand!

Gael Garcia Bernal Mextasy Print Test

click to enlarge

Happy Birthday to Richie Valens!!!!

click to enlarge--original image source, Ruben Molina

A New Interview on the Border, on Textmex, Mextasy and Mucho Mas More--via DIVERSIONS!

hit the image for the interview via soundcloud--

on the left, Ciera Heimbigner, center, Bill Nericcio, right, Allie Schulz

diversions facebook page...