Saturday November 3 * 7-10pm * $10 suggested donation
Celebrate the opening of two exhibitions with music from Son La Lucha and poetry readings from Rick Pieto and friends.
Rick Pieto
GLITCH POEMS
The Glitch Poems are in the tradition of visual poetry. Each glitch poem contains, at its core, several traditional poems. These conventional poems are improperly mixed and conveyed with - some intentional, some arbitrary - visual symbols, numbers and letters. Glitch poems follow from inappropriate mixing of visual and literary elements where noise and interference scramble the reliability of the poetic text and its messages. Furthermore each poem is printed numerous times creating surfaces that produce a density that denigrates the integrity and clarity of the stand-alone traditional poem but creates a visual poetry with interminable poetic readings and juxtapositions between the multiple layers. Each poem hinders the typical act of reading by creating a seemingly illegible surface that at the same time sets up innumerable surfaces that appear as our eyes glance over the page combining words, phrases and graphic symbols into fortuitous new poems.
Alfredo Castro
DE CON STRUCT ION & RESISTANCE
I live in an urban environment surrounded by mid-rises (no high-rises in DC, yet) so I keep thinking about this remark by [architect Antonio] Gaudí, that "There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners." But "modern" buildings built in urban environments today are founded around a minimalist aesthetic of "clean" lines, sharp corners, and simple geometry. The microlens on my analog film camera allows me to zoom in and deconstruct the whole into its parts: facades of glass panels, square windows without ledges, and rectangular awnings that are little more than vestigial almost ironic accents on the wall.
As a photographer I enjoy making gelatin silver prints. I find satisfaction in such an intimate medium because it forces you to be very intentional with the limited number of shots, revealed through a painstaking, labor-intensive process. Stylistically, I'm also fascinated by carrying over the concept of chiaroscuro into photography because that contrast of light helps achieve a sense of volume and depth in minimalist geometry I attempt to capture on film. Furthermore, black or shadow is often considered "negative space", we're told to ignore it, but I don't want to ignore it; in fact I want to embrace it because it is only through the negative space that positive geometry is revealed.
I don't scan any of my photos, I am very deliberate about not digitalizing my photos.
Music from SON LA LUCHA
Son La Lucha, is a community group based in Washington, DC that facilitates weekly workshops (also known as “talleres”) to Latino and other interested community members who want to become versed in the musical tradition of Son Jarocho and perform at social justice-related events. Son Jarocho (also known as “El Son”) is a traditional musical genre from Veracruz, a state in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico, where Spanish, Indigenous, and African roots, were joined more than 500 years ago to create this unique style of communal music.
The music is traditionally played with unique stringed instruments including the Jarana (rhythm), the Requinto (lead), and the Leona (bass), and includes other instruments such as the quijada (jawbone) and the traditional dance or “zapateo” that provides the music with its rhythmic quality. Through the use of this traditional music, Son La Lucha aims to strengthen ourselves, enrich DC’s unique culture, and empower youth leaders to engage with pressing issues facing the local community. The music of Son Jarocho is passed on through peer-to-peer mentoring and in DC, a growing community of Mexican-Americans and other Latinos have continued to learn and maintain this unique and rich musical tradition and its spirit of activism and resistance.
Son La Lucha’s aim is to create a space to learn and share El Son and other related cultural traditions, where folks leaders can also organize, volunteer, and support local social justice efforts, as a group. This new project is specifically geared towards community members who can’t pay for music classes, but believe in the power of music and culture as an agent for change.