(23 August 2024, Un Teatro)
Words are actions. Movements are actions. In this production, both are directed inwards, towards the character, and outwards, towards the public. Neither is refined through characters' collisions with one another. Collisions must occur elsewhere, in the audience's mind. The concluding dance is a tribute to the timelessness and the universality of the struggle one elects for oneself.
(Museo Franz Mayer, 10 August 2024)
A good photographer seeks beauty. A war photographer is no exception. That is why many a war photographer (e.g., the Turnley twins) has settled in Paris to photograph beautiful people and things (see also Greg Williams).
The war photographs at the World Press Photo exhibition are ugly and staged. When everyone has a camera and an X account, most photojournalists are redundant. They are rarely in the right place at the right time. The smartphone-brandishing crowd always is. Or that is the impression the exhibition conveys.
To make a living, a photojournalist must differentiate his product from that of the crowd and must search for a paying audience beyond X. Exhibition juries are one such audience, hungry for photographs that would indulge their political agenda du jour. The same goes for journalism. It is harder to make a living as a competent reporter than a partisan columnist. Or that is the impression the press conveys.
(Museo Jumex, 18 August 2024)
Damien Hirst's is a study of beauty. Beauty is that which facilitates survival. Is a medicine cabinet beautiful because it helps one survive? Is a shark ugly because it is a threat to life? What if it is sliced into two parts? Is beauty skin-deep? Is tobacco ugly because it kills? Do butterflies remain beautiful once dead?
Hirst's work is appreciated. People come see it. They find it beautiful. Beauty must be deeper than skin-deep.
