Friday, September 6, 2013

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


Monday, August 5, 2013

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!










Thursday, May 9, 2013

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Heading "Home" to the Big Apple | Mextasy and Textmex Lectures in NYC, April 2013 | William Nericcio

It is weird to think of a trip to New York City as a "trip home"--but in a way, it is true.  The "professor" side of my consciousness will always be wandering the snowdrifts of Ithaca, New York, where I went to graduate school.  New York City, then, was a playground, a respite, a utopia, filled with friends and misadventures.

This coming week I am giving three lectures in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  First one up is a talk at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan entitled, "Bandit, Succubus, Gigolo, Maid, & Fiend: 20th and 21st Century Latina/o Bodies in the Imagination of the Americas"--it is a variation and augmentation of a talk I gave at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 2011. The talk takes place at SVA on Tuesday, April 9, 2011 at 1pm and is part of their Working Lunch series held at 136 West 21st Street, between 6th and 7nth Avenue.  Hit the poster opposite for details.

Next up, on Thursday evening @ 7pm is "Narcheology" a new piece in development for Eyegiene, my new book with UT Press. The full title is "Visual Narcheology: Scarface, Semiotics, and Spectacles of Violence in Northern Mexico and the American Southwest." This talk is at NYU's 20 Cooper Square building, conference room 471 at 7pm and is part of Professor Josefina Saldaña's seminar on narcos. Tap the image opposite with your cursor to see the details.

Last up is the talk at the amazing Observatory Room in Brooklyn. There, I will be giving a revised feature presentation I just gave up the coast at the University of Washington, "Confessions of a Mexican American Hoarder or the Caucasian Bestiary: The Existential and Insane Consquences of Collecting Stereotypes." More details on the presentation are on the Facebook invite page and here, opposite.

Please help me spread the word--I would very much like to bring the entire Mextasy exhibition to NYC in the near future!  Gracias!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Bring Mextasy to Your Gallery or University! Mextasy, the Traveling Exhibition Based on the Book Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America




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 [Colorado]?

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.





Sunday, March 3, 2013

Thank you Seattle!!!!!

A quick GRACIAS from me and Topo Gigo (!) for the amazing welcome given me by Professor Tony Lucero and his amazing band of colleagues, graduate students, and undergraduates in the Simpson School of the Humanities in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington!!!!


Monday, February 18, 2013

Mextasy in Seattle! Details!!!

click and be afraid!
MEXTASY in SEATTLE @ the University of Washington!!!
February 28 and March 1, 2013...

go here or click the squares below....






click it or else!

Sunday, February 17, 2013