final

This blog is no more. Visit Mañananarama in the afterlife on Tumblr.

intermission

In the meantime, please visit Mañanarama on Tumblr.

i'm home

cactus and sombrero

Mexico:



Narcostate Mexico:



Designer Narcostate Mexico:

flight of the calder

The dashing Pablo León de la Barra has a great series of posts on his latest trip to the homeland at the CFTAR blog.

The latest one features a series of before and afters of the Mexico City Camino Real Hotel (1968), detailing the tragic refitting of the interiors in NAFTA moderne style (paradoxically, by the original architect, Ricardo Legorreta, no less).

It's particularly disheartening to see a once stark and dramatic lobby that was presided over by an electric-orange spider-like Calder turned into a tacky snack bar.

Pablo reports that the sculpture was eventually auctioned at Christie's and sold to some Portuguese fellow with better taste and sense of historical and aesthetic merit than the sad lot of Mexican barons that now handle the hotel.

So goes modernity in Mexico.

fiberglass ambassadors

Je ne passe jamais devant un fétiche de bois, un Boudha doré, une idole mexicaine sans me dire: C'est peut-être le vrai dieu.

Charles via Walter

lost

How do you preserve what's already lost?

transition

modern preserves

"Preservation is not the enemy of modernity but actually one of its inventions."
Rem via David.

peace train

The aestheticized infrastructure of the Revolución Pacífica.

old

When I was growing up, the future was limitless possibility, jet-age, space-age techno-utopia. “Modern” meant new. Now, modern means old, and the future I grew up seems dated, irresponsible, obsolete. (Deborah Aschheim)

34 - 61

burnout

oh-woh baby

I was unaware of the African-American Female Singing Norteño Covers on Youtube sub-genre.

rise

I wonder how soon we'll be able not only to digitally store, but also resuscitate.

neglect

Note to self: reflect on the value of neglect.

authoritarian representation

Architecture as authoritarian representation.

sentimental

How do we distinguish the historic from the sentimental?

left

So little is left of so many things.

1965

Luis Buñuel, Simon of the Desert. (1965)

More on The Desert, faith, technology, consumerism, gadgetry and endless-loop mutually dependent negative relationships:

Sam Jacob, "More Scenes in Cartoon Deserta". (2009)

Reyner Banham, "The Great Gizmo". (1965)

Footnote 1. Consider that while gadgets might fail consumer capitalism hasn't. Gadgets aren't only delivered everywhere anywhere: they are the means of delivering consumer culture, everywhere anywhere. The magical-mechanical coffin is only the medium.
Footnote 2. Modern Consumerist Cities as the ultimate Desert.

Footnote 3. Buñuel takes the fall of Simon as the fall of Heroic Modernisms. (Vid. Spain under Franco or Post-Revolutionary Mexico.) Consumer culture was the final nail on the coffin for Revolution. The calm of consumer culture conquers the scary wilderness of sociopolitical disruption.

#lgnlgn