SINGING THE CACTUS


	SINGING THE CACTUS HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016. Made by Palo Cháán Collaborative. Apocalypse Me, Curated by Jan Zalesak, Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem. "When we visited the pyramids in Teotihuacan we were searching for animist traces and instead found cultural imprints graffitied on agave plants and sacrificial daggers that reminded us of emoji’s. The plants told us about fragments of the current state of consciousness of global culture; SEXY SUSHI, $, AMERICA, BLACK/ WHITE, ROSA LOVES JUAN, I LOVE YOU and YOU MISS ME. This video proposes a visual constellation of current migrations that are taking place in Latin America. Horizontally from east to west, it is an abstract approach to new forms of capitalism through global plastic commodities (cheap or luxury items) made by invisible hands. The commuting of industrial products produce new ways of understanding border crossings where the capital is what flows while humanity gets stranded in the process of transition. The video is a dream like ritual built from our own crossings and inspired by video game structures where protagonists go through processes of obstacles and rewards. Vertically, from South to North, multiple levels are crossed by current migrants escaping the violence and corruption of Latin America. Automatic drawings transform the borders of North, South and Central American countries through magical thinking into entities, demons, vehicles, sacred animals and guns. The constellation of this ritual is expressed through the disorientation of absurdity, prayer, humour and sacrifice that occurs during the navigation of the journey". Text Palo Cháán. "Latin America is a place where the colonial order has been in conflict with traditional cultures for more than five hundred years. The genocide of a large part of the original Indian population accompanying the historical period of colonialism, then later on the slave trade, emigration waves associated with the two world wars, the invasions of the imperial policy of the USA, and economic globalisation have given rise to hybridised cultures that have become the subject of interest of post-colonial theory. Patricia Dominguez and Irvin Morazan worked with this layered patchwork of cultures during a joint residence in Mexico City and for their project Sexi Sushi, which they continue to refine at GEF, created the artistic duo Palo Cháán. Sexi Sushi is based both on juxtapositions (globally distributed products such as false nails are confronted with archaeological findings) and on metaphorical recoding (a game with the shapes of individual countries of Latin America in a video of the same name) that has special significance in that it contains an element of the retrospective re-appropriation of metaphorical language, which is one of the potent weapons of the hegemonic “Western culture". Text Jan Zalesak. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. Photo credits Jirí Dvorák. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. Photo credits Jirí Dvorák. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. Photo credits Jirí Dvorák. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. Photo credits Jirí Dvorák. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. "Singing the Cactus" Installation at Emil Filla Gallery, Usti nad Labem, 2016. Photo credits Jirí Dvorák. Still "Singing the cactus", HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016. Still "Singing the cactus", HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016. Still "Singing the cactus", HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016. Still "Singing the cactus", HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016. "Singing the cactus", HD video, audio, 05:17 min, 2016.