At the southern end of Mexico City’s Juárez neighborhood, a two-story apartment complex, built in 1912, occupies an entire block, its elegant brick architecture contrasting with the auto parts store across the street. A set of white wooden doors in one corner of the historic mansion mark the home of Alberto Bustamante, co-founder of electronic music label NAAFI, also known as Mexican Jihad. , designers and performers he met on his scene at his 2010s party in the capital. Bustamante and his collaborators later created his Traición, his club his night a month, an inclusive haven for the city’s eclectic, gender-fluid community.
Illustrators, photographers, performers and sex workers showed their talents, including designing flyers and staging shows, and other creative projects soon flourished. to grow old). Latest Idea: The pop opera Atlacoya: Agua Triste del Lago de Texcoco is designed by architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, best known for designing the city’s anthropological museum in the 1960s, to bring a sense of patriarchy to life. about how it was used by the state to impose. National character. On April 29, a 40-minute experimental theatrical piece (the last act of an opera) will debut at the Alternative Culture Center in the industrial area of Azcapotzalco. Tonoa new performance arts festival currently taking place throughout Mexico City.
“NAAFI is important to queer life in this city,” says Samantha Ozer, curator and founder of Tono. “People know them as record labels and club fixtures, but what’s missing is the way they do it. [its] Members – actors, performers, artists – have long explored a more interdisciplinary representation. Dozens of artist friends helped create the new work, the core group of which is made up of Bustamante. Playwright and artist Pex Romero, 30. La Bruja de Texcoco, 35, is an underground her trance her singer who references traditional Mexican music to debunk clichés such as macho and mariachi. Here, in an edited and condensed conversation, the trio discuss collaboration.
Alberto Bustamante (Creative Director): my house is always open It’s used as an office and has an exhibition space and a sex dungeon. Pepx and I started working together organically. I made music for their plays, they came to my gigs, and when we started his Traición, they became performance curators. Partying has always provided me with a platform to explore issues of identity and pre-Hispanic roots to have a good time. Fashion designers Barbara Sánchez Kane and Victor Barragán, and visual artists José Eduardo Barajas and Wanshui, friends who do interesting things in their respective fields, wanted to join the project. The common denominator of our work is working with the local talent that is most relevant at the moment. People call us collectives, but the way we create culture is more idiosyncratic. We have a certain background (architecture in my case), but for an opera like this to happen in Mexico without any organized support, it has to be informal and punk. Similar to planning a club night.
Pepx Romero (writing the script and playing Pedro Ramírez Vázquez): Alberto and I have been hiking a lot lately, sometimes with the help of psychedelics. That’s how Alberto and La Bruja ended up in Monte Tlaloc when I was drafting the script. Temazcal [sweat lodge] This is where La Bruja first embodied an important character of the opera.When they told me about this mountain [named after the Aztec rain god] With the highest archaeological site on the continent and an alien landscape that reflected an ancient, ritualistic worldview, I was able to use words and symbols to compose it into a story. melts into the party. Nocturnal celebration is our home – we’re not turning our backs on it.
La Bruja de Texcoco (starred as Chalchiuhtlicue, the Aztec rain goddess; helped compose the score): As a musician, composer and actress, she creates works around the many genres that exist in traditional Mexican music and studies them to build her own identity. As she travels around the country and meets her folk artists, she finds a part of herself in the cultures of different places and regions.This search led me to Texcoco [east of Mexico City],”you Bruja [witch],I have been waiting for you. ‘ My love of music has allowed me to transition hand in hand with the constant magic of this land.
