Answerless
(MX City)

I noticed a woman next to me clenching wallet photos and the woman standing in front of her squeezing a colorful piece of fabric tightly wrapped in brown paper. The man beside them had a soccer ball pressed firmly against his chest. And she, she kept staring at herself in a heart shaped mirror cupped securely in the palm of her hand.

Moving from spot to spot, I realized that practically the entire audience was holding objects. A child’s doll. A bowling ball. A wooden crate. Worn out sneakers. A hair blower. A plastic hanger. A kitchen knife. All were listening so dedicatedly as they repeated his lines. I was drawn to their unshakable concentration. They started inching closer. I did too.

It was as if they needed to be there. I could see lips moving in personal conversations between themselves and the items they’d brought. They had to be following instructions. It was all so orderly.

A dense fog of vibrations, frequencies must have been hovering overhead. He appeared to be tapping into it. Maybe transmitting. Calibrating. Clearly triggering each person differently. Memories. Cracks. Desires. Wounds. Inherited traumas. False beliefs. Possibilities. Constraints. Fleeting panic. Hopes. All flooding. A few shed tears. His dare was contagious. The commitment of the group was clear. A quirky devotion rapidly spread.

High into the air he lifted a glass jar that filled with brightly wrapped candy. I saw its sculpted bird lid, but I was too far back to see exactly what he did with it. Then he pointed down to something in front of him. I saw people starting to jump onto the stage. I did too.

The crowd eagerly lined up on either side of this freshly painted wooden frame, a clever prop, waist high and simply constructed. Each patiently waited for a turn. They’d proudly step up, take a silent moment before gently laying the object into the white box. He didn’t seem at all surprised that he’d drawn such a massive gathering. Diverse. And so willing.

He praised them. He congratulated them. He admired them. He encouraged them. He honored them. He laughed with them. Flashlights. Sunglasses. Used coffee cups. Beer bottles.  Stuffed animals.  Bras. Family snapshots framed & unframed. Bags of dried beans. Limes. Headphones. Bangle bracelets. Hairbrushes. Donuts and chocolate coins. Books. Folded up notes. Baseball caps. CDs. A sequined compact. Cigars. Xeroxes of all kinds. A dead plant. Some just made a gesture.

As I watched each contribution being buried deeper among such a fast growing pile while witnessing such exuberance, so mesmerizing, their sense of relief, this visible unity, I reached for a bobby pin in my hair, moved as far as I could to the edge and tossed it in. I returned to the rear to make room for more to do the same.

He raised his arms and started swaying them back and forth. Everyone followed. He applauded. We applauded. He acknowledged. We acknowledged. He celebrated. We celebrated. He beamed. We beamed.

No one wanted to stop.

He told them that he had another event in early September. Immediately, a circle formed around him for souvenir pictures. An autograph. Exchange talk. Feel his comfort. He seemed used to it. But what would become of the “contents?” I didn’t want to spoil the moment to ask. Latecomers kept arriving to the square. They all knew exactly what to do. I’d never seen Cristóbal Jodorowsky perform. I’ve read that he’s put his finger inside a wound and changed a lung.

I climbed in the same direction they had done to reach the plateau where ceremonies and rituals are no longer held. We were not allowed to wander. The five complexes had been abandoned over 900 years ago. He explained how the site had been skillfully planed to face magnetic north at an 18 degree tilt. He pointed out the newly completed restorations, the remains of vandalism, looting and symbolic clues that had been excavated. He retold stories of who did what to whom, raising questions that might never be resolved.

Three distinct layers of earth, centuries apart, had been added after they’d offered her to the wind. Broken ceramic pieces left in the circular mound signified the sacrifice. He emphasized how the passage of sun and moon had been precisely mapped through their symmetrical alignment with the structures. He described how a pole would be placed to mark a star’s reflection after the sunken courtyards had been filled with rainwater that mirrored the celestial sky.

We trailed behind him as he zigzagged up the stairway to reach the highest point. He’d firmly insisted that we follow so as to not disturb the ancestors buried beneath the tiers of carved blocks with remnants still red, yellow, orange and green. He said that if we listened closely we might be able to detect in them fragments of human speech. The Hñahñu. The scholars. The dead. The warriors. The high priests. The women who had been present. The laborers that carried rock from the quarries. The builders who burned limestone for mortar. I thought I’d hear chattering voices like I have at the hollow. But I could only feel the vast distance from then to where I stood.

Painters Remedios Varo, Alice Rahon, Lenora Carrington, José Horna and Wolfgang Paalen had each found shelter from WWII in the international solidarity of Mexico City. The overhaul of the Surreal had been resonating loudly among them long before I ventured through La Danza de los Espectros at the Museo de Arte Moderno.

Windows. Doors opened to the unexpected. The obscure. Amplifying instantaneous disclosures. Provoked by the air, the light. Inventing aesthetics. Picture-beings. The women artists not shoved into the shadows. Foraging into places between roars and silences. Modernizing consciousness. Multiple realities colliding and merging. Sharpening the stage as the perimeters of established muralism were waning.

Cy Twombly: Paradise. Museo Jumex.

“You know, my mind goes blank. It’s totally blank. I cannot sit and make an image. I cannot make a picture unless everything is working. It’s like a state.”

I started thinking about the Generación de la Ruptura and what I’d seen at MUAC’s exhibition, Defying Stability. Artistic Processes in Mexico 1952-1967. Breaking from overly traditional and stifling social realism. Juan José Gurrolo’s film of scratched and drawn strokes by Vicente Rojo superimposed over industrial b&w footage. Rufino Tamayo. José Cuevas. Renovating culture. Acceleration in all disciplines. El Teatro Pánico. Breton’s Surrealism criticized for having become too ordinary, too acceptable, too fashionable. Kati Horna’s photograph of the censored  La Ópera del Orden. Kazuya Sakai’s rhythmicized watercolors.  Mathias Goertiz’s design of  “Total Art” for the Museo Experimental El Eco. Archibaldo Burns’ 16mm   A Hole in the Fog.

A terracotta statuette stood alone in a glass case at the Anthropology Museum. Outstretched arms, elbows somewhat bent, palms face up, mouth with a slight droop, shoulders shrugged.  Was she gesturing, “You asking me.  I don’t know?” But she was a Veracruz priestess. Four dark spots on the top section of her headdress. Oversized toes. Bracelets painted black coiled around each ankle.

Piercing astute eyes.