SOMA SummerCall for Applications

Six-week summer program for international artists, curators, critics, and art historians conducted in English in Mexico City.July 02 to August 11, 2012

Application deadline: Online applications will be accepted until Sunday April 15th, 2012. However, the size of the group is limited to thirty participants. The application review process begins March 1st, 2012.

http://somamexico.org/seccion/somasummer/info@somamexico.org

S O M A S U M M E RA six-week summer program in Mexico City

Ca l l e   1 3   #25   c a s i   e s q .   R e vo l u c i ón ,   C o l .   S a n   P ed r o   d e   l o s   P i n o s ,   O3800  Méx i c o  D . F .   •   t e l e phone :   ( 5255 )   5277   4947  

www. somamex i co . o r g   •   i n f o@somamex i co . o r g   •   c a r l a . he r re rapra t s@somamex i co . o r g

Since 2010, SOMA Summer has offered a series of short seminars and workshops led by a selection of renowned Mexican and international artists and curators. A number of guided visits to museums and artists’ studios are scheduled. Participants also have the possibility of meeting weekly for individual critiques and conversations with a variety of artists and curators. This six-week intensive program is topic-specific; topics change from year to year. SOMA Summer culminates in an open studio/lecture event where participants present the development of their work.

SOMA offers shared studio spaces at its location. All studios have wireless internet access. SOMA assists those attending the program with finding affordable production in Mexico City, regardless of medium or method.

Though not exclusively, workshops and seminars this summer will focus on the transformation of labor in artistic practice from the Second World War to the present. Seminars and workshops will help the group reflect on the shift from a manufacturing to service economy in developed countries as well as new definitions of labor that have extended beyond all national boundaries.

SOMA Summer participants will revisit the legacy of conceptual art as a mode of production, the role of craft in contemporary art practices, and the pertinency of learning technical skills in art education. The group will also explore the possibilities of alternative economies, and look closely at the ways in which artists participate in decentralized, global networks of production.

Application procedures and a detailed list of activities scheduled for this summer can be found at http://somamexico.org/seccion/somasummer/ or via email at info@somamexico.org. The application format can be found at http://somamexico.org/soma-summer-applications/

The deadline to register for the program is Sunday April 15th, 2012.

Offsite DF with Eduardo Abaroa, 2011

Seminar with Larissa Harris and Anthony Huberman, 2011

Group critique with Anthony Graves, 2011

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Tuition and Housing

Tuition in 2012 is $ 3,000 USD for the six-week program. Tuition does not include accommodations, per diem or transportation. $5,500 USD is a reasonable total budget approximation for the six-week stay in Mexico City (tuition, housing, food, recreation, transportation). SOMA Summer will assist participants with locating housing.

Scholarships/tuition remission are available. Based on portfolio review and proof of financial need, a limited amount of participants will receive discount of up to 30%.

Program 2012

Week 01 (Mon. July 02 to Fri. July 08)

12 hour group critique: Carla Herrera-PratsThese first two sessions allow participants to get familiar with each other. Everyone present a selection of works to the group for about fifteen minutes. We address the social, political and aesthetic implications raised by each project.

Lecture on Wednesday: Cuauhtémoc Medina

Studio Visit: Yoshua Okón.

Individual critiques: Cuauhtémoc Medina

12 hour workshop: Eduardo AbaroaOff sideDF: 9 hour site specific workshop with Eduardo AbaroaThe workshop takes place in three different non-academic locations around Mexico City. By

getting to know our surroundings and their history, we reflect and discuss on the concepts involving site-specificity and the possibilities of art to comment on specific cultural, political, social and geographical situations.

Week 02(Mon. July 09 to Fri. July 13)

9 hour seminar: Cuauhtémoc MedinaThis is a seminar on curatorial engagement within global exhibitions

Lecture on Wednesday: Daniel Hernández

Studio Visit: Marcela Armas

Individual critiques: Eduardo Abaroa, Marcela Armas, RuthEtevez, Carla Herrera-Prats, Yoshua Okón, Edgar Orlaineta, Luis Felipe Ortega

Week 03(Mon. July 16 to Fri. July 20)

9 hour seminar: Mariana BoteyIntersections between the critique of political economy and critical strategies of art productionThis seminar departs from the notion of reification in Lukács, the later theory of image production as the totalizing effect of capitalism in Debord’s texts and films, Marx’s argument of art as a “nonproductive production,” and Adorno’s concept of art’s autonomy.

In the course of this seminar we will revisit key notion such as production, market, exchange, distribution, objectification, cognitive and symbolic capital, value formation, commodification, fetishism, appropriation, residue

and modes of circulation and tension between object and subject. Our discussions will mobilize these categories within concrete examples of art production and will touch upon a revision of related set of problems within post-Marxist and Marxist cultural criticism such as “materialism,” “hegemony”, and “collectivism.”

Lecture on Wednesday: Mariana Botey

Special lecture: Tyler Rowland

Studio Visit: Abraham Cruzvillegas

Individual critiques: Mariana Botey, Abraham Cruzvillegas,Irving Dominguez, Carla Herrera-Prats, Gonzalo Ortega, Raúl Ortega, Tyler Rowland

Week 04(Mon. July 23 to Fri. July 27)

9 hour seminar: Sande CohenCritical Theory and Art CriticismThis seminar will discuss the increasingly globalized situation where critical theory has been banished from public life. Such theory is not doing too well in the schools, either… This seminar will read in a few sources of criticism, Deleuze, Foucault and Baudrillard, and discuss their notions of art and discourse and pose a few problems: is critical art an oxymoron? Is art-history always reactionary? Might artists develop alternatives and what might that be?

Lecture on Wednesday: Sande Cohen

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Special lecture: Chip Lord, Amy Sara Caroll and Ricardo Dominguez

Studio Visit: Mónica Castillo

Individual critiques: Magalí Arriola, Mónica Castillo, Sande Cohen, Carla Herrera-Prats, Chip Lord, Vicente Razo, Amy Sara Caroll.

Week 05(Mon. July 30 to Fri. August 03)

9 hour seminar: Paul PfeifferTBD

Lecture on Wednesday: Paul Pfeiffer

Studio Visit: Mario García-Torres

Individual critiques: Mario García-Torres, Nate Harrison, Carla Herrera-Prats, Víctor Palacios, Bárbara Perea, Paul Pfeiffer.

Week 06(Mon. August 06 to Fri. August 10)

Preparation for open studio

Individual critiques: Anthony Graves

Final critique: Carla Herrera-Prats

OPEN STUDIO : August 10, 2011

Participants 2011

Eduardo Abaroa is an artist and writer working in the fields of sculpture, installation and live action. He has shown his work in several major museums in Mexico; LA MoCA, PS1 and ICA Boston in the United States; Reina Sofía Museum in Spain; Kunstwerke, in Germany, the Nottingham Contemporary Museum in the UK, etc. He has participated in Busan, Korea and Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brasil. Early this march he exhibited Demolition Project: Antrhropology Museum in Kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City.

As a writer, he was an art reviewer for the art section of Reforma newspaper, and has written for other Mexican publications like Curare, Casper, Moho, Codigo 06140 and Tomo. He has contributed texts for exhibition catalogues of artists related to the Mexican context like Francis Alÿs, Melanie Smith, Pablo Vargas Lugo, Tercerunquinto and Dr. Lakra, among others. In the early nineties he co-founded the T44 artist run space in Mexico City. He directed the 9th International Symposium of Art Theory in Mexico City (SITAC) in 2011. Eduardo is the regular course director at Soma.

Marcela Armas was born in Durango in 1976. She lives and works in Mexico City. Her work relates urban situations, sound actions, installations, video and documents in order to investigate about the capacity of different materials and technologies to produce poetics of social reflection. Energy consumption and urban space are some of her main issues. Armas received a BFA by the University of Guanajuato and a MFA by the Politecnic University in Valencia, Spain. She has been supported by the National Foundation for the Arts in Mexico for the development and research of New Media Projects. She is artist in residence in the New Media Research Center in Mexico City. She directed with Gilberto Esparza, experimental electronics workshops Fundación Telefónica VIDA 10 in Peru, Argentina, Chile and Mexico. Her work has been exhibited in Mexico, United States, Colombia, Spain, Brazil, Peru, Canada and Italy.

Magali Arriola is a curator and art critic. Until recently Magalí worked as the Chief Curator of Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. As an independent curator, Magali has organized El dulce olor a quemado de la historia , the 8th Bienal of Panamá (2008) and Prophets of Deceit at the Wattis Institute For Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2006). Before joining Tamayo’s team, Magali was Chief Curator of Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, curator in residency at Wattis Institute For Contemporary Arts and founder member of group Teratoma and the National Committee of Artistic Industry (CANAIA).

Mariana Botey is an artist/critic born in Mexico City in 1969. She is Assistant Professor in Modern/ Contemporary Latino American Art History in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD. Botey received her Ph.D. in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, in 2010. She graduated in 2000 with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine Studio Art Department Program; and in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London, England. Academic director of the graduate theory seminar Zones of Disturbance (August 2009-August 2011) at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in UNAM. Her experimental video documentaries have been shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, The San Diego Museum of Art, The Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, Red Cat Theater at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles amongst many other museums, galleries and festivals. Since 2009 she is a founding member of the editorial and curatorial committee of The Red Specter: a phantasmal, agitation, and conspiratorial organization working at the intersection of art, politics and theory. The Red Specter is based in Mexico City and is at the center of a wide web of international collaborations with artist, critics,

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designers and curators. Lives and works in San Diego, California.

Amy Sara Carroll is Assistant Professor of American Culture / Latino / a Studies and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University (2004), and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University (1995). Her research, teaching, and writing interests include Latino/a American contemporary cultural production (performance, art, video, and literature), feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, visual culture, cultural studies, inter-American studies, border studies, and critical creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Talisman, Carolina Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Mandorla, Chain, Bombay Gin, Seneca Review, Borderlands, Faultline, This Bridge We Call Home, and Not For Mothers Only: Contemporary Poets on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing. She has exhibited poem-prints at the Audre Lorde Project (Brooklyn, New York), Duke University Museum of Art, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, New York), and State-of-the-Art Gallery (Ithaca, New York).

Sande Cohen received a PhD in intellectual history from UCLA. He taught at Brown (1976-79), UCLA (1979-87 and 2008-2009), and CalArts (1980-2009). He currently divides his time between the U.S. and mostly the Chiang-mai area of Thailand. He is the author of, among other works, Historical Culture (1986, UC Press); Academia and the Luster of Capital (1993, Minnesota); French Theory in America (co-ed, 2001, Routledge); and History Out of Joint (2006, Johns Hopkins). His most recent essays are in Cultural Critique (75, 2010) and Rethinking History (2011). His main area of interest is historiography—the intellectual coding(s) and other organizations of all things timed, including the untimely. This involves using close analysis of discursive behavior in the criticism of institutional practices.

Abraham Cruzvillegas (México DF, 1968) es miembro de la Sociedad Internacional de Tai Chi Taoísta. Estudió pedagogía en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México de 1986 a 1991 y fue parte del taller de Gabriel Orozco de 1987 a 1991. Su obra se ha expuesto en el Contemporary Art Museum-Houston, el Museum of Contemporary Art de Chicago, la Redcat Gallery, en Los Ángeles, la Tate Modern Gallery, en Londres, el Centro Cultural Monte Hermoso, en España, el New Museum, en Nueva York, Modern Art Oxford, Le Carré, en Nimes, Artsonje, en Seúl, entre otros. Desde 1990 Cruzvillegas ha dado clases e impartido cursos y tutoriales, así como coordinado seminarios y talleres en diferentes instituciones dedicadas al arte, a nivel internacional, como la DIA Art Foundation, Malmö Art Academy, Ruskin College-Oxford, Duke University, NYU, Glasgow School of Art, CalArts, the New Museum, California College for the Arts, the Nasher Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, the University of Houston, la Universidad Nacional Iberoamericana, la Universidad de Guanajuato, el museoTamayo, el Centro de la Imagen, el Centro Nacional de las Artes, la Universidad de Sonora, la Universidad de Las Américas, San Francisco Art Institute, UCLA, UCSD, la ENAP-UNAM, La Esmeralda. También ha escrito ensayos y crítica de arte en catálogos, publicaciones periódicas y especializadas como Bomb Magazine, Bidoun Magazine, Artforum, Gagarin, Curare,Casper y los diarios Reforma y La Jornada, entre otros.

Irving Dominguez is a Mexico City based curator and visual arts independent researcher. He had studied history of photography and theoretical approaches to photography on Centro de la Imagen (CONACULTA), Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora. He attended curatorial workshops at Centro de la

Imagen and the seminar Cultural and theoretical studies on curatorial practice at Teratoma, A. C. In 2007 he helped to create the documentation center of Casa Vecina (FCHCM). From 2008 – 2009 he was curatorial researcher at Centro de la Imagen, and member of the seminar Gender theory and Visual culture studies hosted by Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas and Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género – UNAM during the same period. Recent curatorial work had been made for the Centro Cultural San Carlos – Academia de San Carlos (UNAM) and the Festival Foto 30 on Guatemala City both on 2010. He contributed to the collective project www.mapademexico.org under the direction of spanish artist Rogelio López Cuenca. Twice (2009, 2011) had participated on the Encuentro de críticos e investigadores de foto organized and supported by PhotoEspaña Festival and the AECID – Ministerior del Exterior, España. Nowadays is the coordinator of the project Derivado. Propuesta de interpretación de centros de documentación that involves a group of 7 artists generating artistic experiences after research on contemporary art museums’ documentation centers. Is member of Taller Multinacional,www.tallermultinacional.org, and Centro ADM, www.centroadm.com, artistic independent iniatives both located in Mexico City.

Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. His recent Electronic Disturbance Theater project with Brett Stabaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll and Elle Mehrman, the *Transborder Immigrant Tool* (a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border was the winner of “Transnational Communities Award” (2008), this award was funded by *Cultural Contact*, Endowment for Culture Mexico – U.S. and handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico), also

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funded by CALIT2 and two Transborder Awards from the UCSD Center for the Humanities. *Transborder Immigrant Tool* was exhibited at 2010 California Biennial(OCMA), Toronto Free Gallery, Canada (2011), the project was also under investigation by the U.S. Congress in 2009/10, and was also reviewed by Glenn Beck in 2010 as a gesture that potentially “dissolved” the U.S. border with its poetry. Ricardo is an Associate Professor at UCSD in the Visual Arts Department, a Hellman Fellow, and Principal/Principle Investigator at CALIT2 (http://bang.calit2.net). He also co-founder of *particle group*, with artists Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy Sara Carroll, an art project about nano-toxicology entitled *Particles of Interest: Tales of the Matter Market* that has been presented in Berlin (2007), the San Diego Museum of Art (2008), Oi Futuro, and FILE festivals in Brazil (2008), CAL NanoSystems Institute, UCLA (2009), Medialab-Prado, Madrid (2009), and Nanosferica, NYU (2010).

Ruth Estévez was born in Spain and currently lives in Mexico City where she was Chief Curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil from 2007 to 2010. Ruth received a BFA from the Universidad Pública del País Vasco (the Public University of the Basque Country), a MA in Art History from the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM), and a MA in Museography from the European Institute of Design in Madrid. She is currently working on her thesis for her PhD in Art History at UNAM. Ruth has curated individual exhibitions for artists such as Fernando Ortega, Gabriel Acevedo, and Guy Ben Ner. She has also organized several group exhibitions: El horizonte del topo/The Mole´s Horizon. Palais de Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium, One Foot Apart. Galería Leme, Sao Paolo, Brazil and co-curated: Proyecto Cívico at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Frontier: A Sketch for the Creation of a Future Society, Chiapas, Mexico, among others. Actually she is the Co-Director and Curator of LIGA-Space for

architecture-DF, the first private space in Mexico dedicated to architectural and urbanistic practices.

Mario Garcia Torres was born in Monclova, Mexico in 1975 and lives and works in Mexico City. Some of his recent solo exhibitions include: September Piece, Jan Mot, Brussels (2011); Directions: Cyprien Gaillard and Mario Garcia Torres, Hirschhorn Museum Museum, Washington (2010); What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon (2010); Have You Ever Seen the Snow?, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2010); I Will Be With You Shortly, Peep-Hole, Milan (2010); It’s Embarrassing, but for Some Time Now I Only Have Had Title Ideas in English, Espai 13, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona (2009);Unspoken Dailies, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2009); The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers 2.11: Mario Garcia Torres, 9 at Leo Castelli, Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2009); Early Color Video Tapes, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2009); MATRIX 227, UC Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2009); All That Color is Making Me Blind, Jan Mot, Brussels (2009); Il Aurait Bien Pu Le Promettre Aussi, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2009); Some Stories that Went Missing…, Kunsthalle Zurich (2008);Mario Garcia Torres, White Cube, London (2008). He has also participated in numerous important group exhibitions: 29th Sao Paulo Biennial (2010); Taipei Biennial, Taipei (2010); 8th Panama Biennal, Panama (2008): Yokahama Triennial, Yokahama (2008); Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2007).

Anthony Graves is an artist and founding member of Camel Collective, formed in 2004. In 2004–05 he was a fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program, and in 2009 received his MFA from the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University. He has exhibited internationally under his own name and that of Camel Collective in venues such as Artists’ Space, New York; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North

Adams; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City; OCAT in Shenzhen, China; and Århus Kunstbygning in Århus, Denmark. He has written on the work of Michael Ashkin, and has an essay in the forthcoming book Architectural Inventions. Anthony Graves is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Chip Lord is an artist who works with video and photography. As a member of Ant Farm [1968-1978] he produced the video art classics Media Burn and The Eternal Frame as well as the Cadillac Ranch sculpture in Amarillo, Texas. Since 1980 he has worked independently and in collaboration producing video installations and single channel videotapes. His media work straddles documentary and experimental genres, often mixing the two, and has been shown widely at film and video festivals and in Museums. In 2005 a survey of his video work was shown at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arts Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain. His photo project Movie Map was shown at the Rena Bransten Gallery in 2003 and in the group exhibition, AUTO.SUEÑO Y MATERIA in Gijon and Madrid, Spain, 2009. In partnership with Bruce Tomb and Curtis Schreier he created Ant Farm Media Van v.08 [Time Capsule], for the exhibition “The Art of Participation from 1950 until Now” for SFMOMA, 2008. In 2010 he completed a public video art piece, titled To & From LAX, for the remodeled Bradley Terminal at LAX Airport. A related single channel video, IN TRANSIT, was completed, 2011.

The exhibition, ANT FARM 1968-1978, originated by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives, 2004, has shown at five other locations in the US and Europe. Additional exhibitions were at the FRAC Centre, Orleans, France (Oct. 11 – Dec. 22, 2007) and the Graduate Architecture School at Columbia University (March, 2008). Each exhibition produced a book monograph about Ant Farm.

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Nate Harrison is an artist and writer working at the intersection of intellectual property, cultural production and the formation of creative processes in modern media. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation, “Appropriation Art and U.S. Intellectual Property Law Since 1976.” Nate’s art work has been exhibited at The American Museum of Natural History, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Centre Pompidou and The Kunstverein in Hamburg, among others. Nate has also lectured at a variety of institutions, including Experience Music Project, Seattle, the Art and Law Residency Program, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, New York and SOMA Summer, Mexico City. Nate earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts and is a doctoral candidate, Art and Media History, Theory and Criticism in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. Currently Nate is on the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Carla Herrera-Prats received her BFA at “La Esmeralda,” in Mexico City, and her MFA in Photography at CalArts, Los Angeles. She has been a participant at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Carla has recently taught at the Cooper Union, the California Institute of the Arts, the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the Director of the Graduate Program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and runs Soma Summer. She has shown her work in venues such as Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, Darb, MUAC, Centro de la Imagen, Museo Dolores Olmedo, in Mexico City; Centre Vu, Quebec; Artists Space, Art in General, New York; The Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, and Darb, Cairo, among others. Herrera-Prats is co-founder of Camel Collective, a group of artists, writers and film makers with whom she has worked since 2005.

Szu-Han Ho is an artist whose work addresses the intersection of spatial practices, material culture, and affective knowledge. Her research interests have revolved around the shared metaphors of economics and ecology. After receiving a B.A. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, she launched a multi-year collaborative project integrating art installation, architectural proposals, performance, and agricultural research on a 250-acre site in West Texas. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received an MA in Visual and Critical Studies and an MFA in Film, Video, and New Media. Recent projects include a mobile exhibition at the Geographic Center of the US (in conjunction with the Center for Land Use Interpretation), a performative property survey at Mildred’s Lane Historical Society, and a traveling exhibition of analogue models to psyches and natural systems. She is currently developing a collaborative, site-specific choral piece based on bird communication. Szu-Han teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at University of New Mexico.

Cuahtémoc Medina (Mexico City, Mexico) is an art critic, curator and historian with a PhD in History and Theory of Art, University of Essex, and a BA in History from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Mexico City. Since 1992 he has been a full-time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, and has taught at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. Previously, he was the first curator of Latin American Art Collections at Tate, London (2002-2008); director of the 7th International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory, Mexico City (2009); and is one of the founders of Teratoma, a group of curators, critics and anthropologists based in Mexico City. Exhibitions include Teresa Margolles’s project, What Else Could We Speak About?(2009), for the Mexican Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale; The Age of Discrepencies, Art and Visual Culture in Mexico 1968-1997 (in collaboration with Olivier Debroise,

Pilar García and Alvaro Vazquez, 2007-2008), Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Francis Alÿs. Diez cuadras alrededor del estudio (2006), Antiguo Palacio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City; and 20 Million Mexicans can’t be Wrong (2002), South London Gallery. Medina also organized Francis Alÿs’s When Faith Moves Mountains (2002). He is currently organizing Proyecto de Arte Contemporáneo, Murcia with a year-long exhibition project entitledDominó Caníbal. Some of his recent publications include South, South, South, South. 7th International Symposium of Contemporary Art Theory México (Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, 2010); “Towards a New Architecture” in Tercerunquinto. Investiduras institucionales (INBA-Conaculta, Cuauhtémoc, 2009); “La oscilación entre el mito y la crítica. Octavio Paz entre Duchamp y Tamayo” inMateria y sentido. El arte mexicano en la Mirada de Octavio Paz (Museo Nacional de Arte, INBA-Landucci, 2009); and “Entries” (in collaboration with Francis Alÿs) in Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception(Tate Publishing, London, 2010). He also contributes a bi-weekly art criticism column “Ojo Breve” inReforma newspaper, Mexico City.

Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City in 1970 where he currently lives. His work is like a series of near-sociological experiments executed for the camera blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation and questions habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality. In 2002 he received an MFA from UCLA with a Fulbright scholarship. In 1994, he founded La Panadería, an artist-run space in Mexico City.

His solo shows exhibitions include: Octopus, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA, HH, Baró Sao Paulo Brazil, Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Ventanilla Única,Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Canned Laughter, Viafarini,

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Milan, SUBTITLED, Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich, Bocanegra, The Project, NY, Gaza Stripper, Herzeliya Museum, Israel, Cockfight, Galleria Francesca Kaufmann, Milan, Oríllese a la Orilla, Art & Public, Geneva, Lo Mejor de lo Mejor, La Panadería, Mexico City. His Group exhibitions include: Amateurs, CCA Wattis, San Francisco, Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London, The Age of Discrepancy, MUCA, Mexico City, Adaptive Behavior, New Museum, NY, Terror Chic, Spruth/Magers, Munich, The Virgin Show, Wrong Gallery, NY,Mexico City: an exhibition about the exchange rates between bodies and values, PS1, MoMA, NY, and Kunstwerke, Berlin. He has also participated in: Mercosur Bienial, Porto Alegre, Brazil, Istanbul Bienial,Istanbul, ICP Trienial, NY, California Bienial, OCMA, New Port Beach and Torino Triennale, Turin.

Gonzalo Ortega received an MA in Kunst im Kontext (Art in Context) from the Universität der Künste Berlinin 2006 and a BFA in Visual Arts from the National University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1996. From 2007 to 2011 he was director of the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte – MUCA Roma, where he organized the exhibitions: El arca de neón (the arch of neon), 2008; Proyectos para desconstrucción (Projects for deconstruction), 2009;A-B, 2009; and Residual / Artistic interventions in the city, www.residual.com.mx, a collaboration with the Goethe Institut Mexico and the UNAM, and ORBE (2011). He is co-founder and curator of the independent project plusminus7 for the support of Latin American art in Berlin, Germany, together with the German art historian Kirsten Einfeldt and visual artist Angelica Chio. Gonzalo has edited and contributed in many catalogues such as Residual / artistic interventions in the city, UNAM-Goethe Institut, 2010; MEMORIAS 2003-2006, and 2006-2009, Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, MUCA Roma, 2007; Berlinz. Sprachraum Berlin-Linz, Universität der Künste Berlin and

Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria, 2006; Still Life. Naturaleza Muerta, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, 2003; Coyote, I like Mexico and Mexico likes me, or just another dead Mexican of American artist Daniel Joseph Martínez, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, 2001.

Luis Felipe Ortega was born in Mexico City in 1966. He has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions since 1993. Though Ortega uses different media (sculpture, installation, photography, drawing), video has been a permanent tool in his production. He started recording actions and then making visual narratives that make the viewer travel through silence and void. In 2001 the Centre Pompidou acquire his piece Remake, 1994 (in collaboration with Daniel Guzmán). His most recent solo exhibition, titled This is it, now is now, opened at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, in Mexico City, in 2010.

Raul Ortega Ayala. The methods Ortega Ayala draws on in his practice have resembled the work of an ethnographer. Immersing himself as a ‘participant observer’ in environments such as those connected with food, gardening and office work, he has then used the materials and experiences resulting from these immersions to produce groups of works which he calls ‘souvenirs’. The artist’s engagement with each ‘world’ has included taking employment as well as conducting practical and theoretical research. He is currently exploring a new methodology for a new series of work devoted to the concept of absence. Ortega Ayala lives and works in Mexico City. He received an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and Hunter College in New York and studied philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico concurrently with his undergraduate degree in painting. His work has been exhibited internationally including recent solo shows at Stroom, The Netherlands, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico, The Kowalsky Gallery, London (curated by Gilane Tawadros) and in group

shows at TENT / Witte de With in Rotterdam, Tramway in Glasgow, EV+A in Ireland, the Liverpool Biennial and the Barbican Centre.

Barbara Perea is a Mexico City-based contemporary art critic and curator, with a special focus on electronic, sound art and video. She has a degree in Art History (Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City). In 2001 she co-founded the curatorial collective (id)entity David Perea, with fellow curator Mariana David. As David Perea, they participated in Habitat Sónico, the fourth edition of the Sound Art Festival, at X-Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico City, 2002), organised an artist residency program which included Artur Zmijewski, Pawel Althamer, Jorge Macchi and David Castro, curated five exhibitions, and co-produced two artworks by Santiago Sierra and Artur Zmijewski. From 2003 to 2006 Barbara Perea served as director of MUCA Roma, in Mexico City (University Museum of Science and Art) where she curated or organized numerous exhibitions. She has published over 50 reviews and essays in the magazines Dónde ir (Mexico City), Artecontexto (Madrid), and Artlies (Houston) and contributed to the following exhibition catalogues: Plataforma Puebla 2006 (Puebla, 2006), Arnulf Rainer: la imagen equivocada (Mexico, 2007) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Some Things Happen More Often Than All of The Time (Madrid, 2007), amongst others. With Príamo Lozada, she was artistic co-director of Plataforma Puebla 2006, and co-curator of the Mexican Pavilion at the 52 Venice Biennial, which hosted Some Things Happen More Often Than All of the Time, a solo show by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. With Guillermo Santamarina she co-curated Soni(c)loud, as guest curators for the experimental sound festival Radar (April, 2007), and prepared the opening exhibition and acquisitions programme for Laberinto de las Ciencias y las Artes, a science and art museum in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. She has worked as New Media lecturer at CENTRO university, in Mexico City and is currently part of the team of Transitio

S O M A   S U M M E R! A  six-­‐week  summer  program  in    Mexico  City

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mx, the Internation Electronic Art and Video Festival.

Paul Pfeiffer (born Honolulu, Hawaii, 1966) is an American video artist whose work incorporates the use of found footage. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA Printmaking) and Hunter College, New York (MFA), and has lived and worked in New York since 1990. Pfeiffer is represented by carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Thomas Dane, London. He has had solo shows at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2001), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002), the Barbican Arts Centre, London (2003), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003), The Project, New York (2007), carlier | gebauer, Berlin (2008), MUSAC, Leon, Spain (2008) and the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009). He participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and was awarded the inaugural Bucksbaum Award. In 2001 he participated in the 49th Venice Biennale. He won the visual arts Alpert Award in 2009. Pfeiffer’s work is time-consuming and meticulous. “Pfeiffer makes a show of removing his subjectivity while investing himself intensely in his work: It can take him four months to produce a scant two minutes of video.” He is the recipient of the Guna S. Mundheim Prize and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin for Fall 2011.

Vicente Razo (Mexico City, 1971) is a Mexican artist currently based in New York. His work engages in a polemic and critical understanding of art practice as a possibility for cultural resistance and social intervention. He is interested in the intersections between popular culture, politics and art production, therefore his work ranges from museum making, printing ready mades to creating record libraries. Razo studied art in the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, received an MFA from New York University and attended the Whitney

Independent Studio Program. Razo has presented his work in The Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Dispatch New York. He has exhibited in group shows at PS1 Contemporary Art, South London Gallery, Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, MALBA in Buenos Aires, Argentine, The Pinacoteca do Estado in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Ex-Teresa in Mexico City, among others venues. Razo’s work is in the collection of the Hammer Museum, and at the collection of the MUAC, the institution with the biggest collection of contemporary art in Latin America. His art has been reviewed by the New York Times, Artnews, Artforum, Frieze, and Art Nexus, amongst others. Razo’s work has been highlighted in the anthologies about contemporary Mexican art New Tendencies in Mexican Art (Palgrave-MacMillan 2004) and The Age of Discrepancies: Art and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1968-1997 (Turner-UNAM 2006). He is the author and editor of the book “The Museo Salinas Official Guide” (Smart Art Press, 2002)

Jorge Reynoso is currently Technical Secretary of the Dirección General de Artes Visuales, located at MUAC (the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). He has been director of the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (2007 – 2009), and vice-director of both the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (1991 – 1998) and the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes (MUCA, 1998 – 2003). Besides his work as curator and museographer of contemporary art projects, he is professor of Art History at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado and at Centro, Diseño, Cine y Televisión. Reynoso frequently writes about contemporary art, from academic papers to books for children.

Tyler Rowland was born in 1978 in Reno, Nevada, raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and lives in New York. Rowland is an information-gatherer, a material-collector, and an object/tool-maker. He believes that art has social value. He uses his life, his

work, his family, and his home/studio as departure points and often sacrifices or copies objects of personal value. He has shown at venues including Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), SAPS (Mexico City), Murray Guy Gallery (NYC), GASP (Boston), More Fools in Town (Turin, Italy), and at ESL Projects, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Eungie Joo’s Six Months (all in LA). He has a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. He has taught at Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art, Harvard University, and Edward Everett Elementary in the Boston area and currently he teaches sculpture at Vassar College. Rowland will be featured in an up-coming group exhibition in Mexico City at UNAM’s Casa de Lago in February 2012.

Visit to Jumex Collection

Open Studio - Performance by Martin Roth

S O M A   S U M M E R! A  six-­‐week  summer  program  in    Mexico  City

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