Mujeres y El Santo en El Paso Conmigo
(The Women and El Santo in El Paso with Me)

Statement

This interactive DVD uses edited Mexican films from the sixties that the user can manipulate to create a remix of the content across the three Retrovision televisions. The main star in these films is the Mexican wrestler, El Santo, el enmascarado de plata or the wrestler with the silver mask. Santo was considered a brave, strong, valiant, exceptional man. With traits like these, Santo left an indelible impression on me and I would run around the neighborhood in Chihuahua where I was born in a mask and cape.

In these Santo films, there is constant representation of women as victims of male conspiracies as well as their inabilities to cope with technology. At the same time, the films are campy and reference some of the themes of the Hollywood Universal Monster films of the thirties and forties: women in distress and a hero summoned to save her.

The subtitle narratives that play on the DVD stream raise awareness about the women who have been murdered in Juarez over the past fifteen years. There are also narratives about my experience with Santo, my brother and some thoughts I have about human relationships in western civilization. All of these narratives are locative and influenced by my experience growing up Mexican in El Paso, Texas, on the border with Juarez, Mexico. As the user manipulates the streams and creates her own mix across the three televisions like a desktop DJ, she experiences the constant flux and change expected out of living in a border community of transnational identity.

Notes

Shown May 13th - 28th 2005: Final MFA Thesis Exhibition, at Core New Art Space Denver, Colorado.

Soft Core @ Core, Contemporary Erotic Art by Denver's Best Established and Emerging Artists

Statement

The Soft Core @ Core was the third art show members of Potential Cloud Formations had been invited to show in. This exhibit was unique in that the collection shown was interactive new media art and tradition contemporary studio art. Despite the in media being on different ends of the art spectrum the overall theme and content of each piece worked well with each other.

Deconstructing Gender | Between

Notes

Shown Feb. 16th - March 9th 2006: Soft Core @ Core, Contemporary Erotic Art by Denver's Best Established and Emerging Artists, at Core New Art Space Denver, Colorado.

See Westword's full write up about the Soft Core exhibit in their Artbeat column, or just check out Michael Paglia quote on the show, "...and let me just say that it isn't so much erotic as it is vulgar."

Technical Difficulties

Statement

The history of the “technical difficulties” signs broadcast during outages, end of day, and color & resolution correction on the different television stations. In the past, television signals where turned off at the end of the day; today, however, the only pause or break from an endless stream of information comes when something breaks. Through this exploration, I subvert what is considered an annoyance to the viewer and loss of airtime for the station and transformed it into a nostalgic and desirable image, and a reminder that a break from the media can be a welcome one.

Images on four monitors slowly transition between different “technical difficulties” screens, such as noise, static, color bars, and resolution calibration. The duration of each is no longer than three minutes.

Notes

Shown Mar. 2003: Technical Difficulties, Rotating Artist Exhibit, The Cable Center Denver, Colorado. Is now part of the The Cable Center's permanent digital art collection.