9-TRIBUTE TO PEDRO VALTIERRA

PEDRO VALTIERRA

Rarámuris

This is a selection from the photo-report "The right to live and die in peace, the last legacy of the Tarahumaras", published in the newspaper La Jornada in October 1994.

The photographer visited the communities of Choguita, Creel and Guachochi, in the state of Chihuahua. That year, like many others in the Sierra Tarahumara, the droughts and the impoverished soil added to the generalized marginalization and the processes of plundering of their territory, causing a severe famine.

But what Valtierra wanted to capture was not the tragedy, but the strength of this people and the pride of being Rarámuri that is expressed in their eyes. This is the people that resists with rooted dignity and only asks for respect and peace. Capturing that essence is the challenge of photojournalism, says Valtierra.

Pedro Valtierra / Cuartoscuro

Photographer since 1972 and creator of the Cuartoscuro photojournalism agency in 1986.

Fifty years of experience reinforce his commitment to society because when carrying a weapon as powerful as the camera, it is essential to carry out serious and responsible journalistic work that records what happens in daily life, something that not only applies to his work, but also He instills it in other photographers and collaborators of the Cuartoscuro agency and in the workshops he teaches in the media and universities.

Since 1984 Pedro Valtierra began the project that materialized in 1986 when he founded the Cuartoscuro agency, which aims to inform, through quality image, in an objective, timely and truthful manner. From the beginning, he proposed an innovative line of work that has made this photojournalism agency the most important in Mexico.

8- TANIA CANDIANI ( Cromática)

TANIA CANDIANI

Iáname, syoname, sitákame (Cromática), 2018

Cromática is a project by Tania Candiani that began in 2015. It is made up of series that start from the idea of synesthesia to establish different relationships and organizational models of sensory associations. In this project, the rescue of traditions is seen as a vehicle for the preservation of memory and, therefore, of the different techniques applied in crafts, such as in textile work.

The conceptual epicenter of Cromática is the use of colorants that, in parallel, refer to three of the kingdoms of nature. Red, from the animal kingdom with the grana cochineal, indigo blue, from the Indigofera bush or Xiquilite (in Nahuatl) and mineral pigments such as chrome yellow. These three elements allow the deployment of a whole range of disciplines based on the use, application and connections that are established in the dialogues that take place between technology, understanding and thought.

Iáname, syoname, sitákame is a work that is part of Cromática. For this particular serie at Fundación MARSO, the artist made, in collaboration with three Rarámuri weavers and seamstresses from one of the settlements in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, three typical costumes (but with synthetically dyed fabrics) based on a dialogue about the meaning of colors in the Rarámuri worldview. Thus, the skirts, which are normally sewn to sell or wear, become ethereal elements, repositories of reflections about their ancestral legacy.

0- How to Make the Route

 

0 - Cómo realizar el recorrido

7. Kipú (escucha / listen), 2021

Kipú (listen), 2021

Francisco J. Rivas (Tito Rivas)

Phonography, sound field composition

14:06 min.

In a phonography we face a sonorous writing, a process of inscription that fixes on a surface the outline not only of a sonority, but also of the act of listening from which it emerges. Although it can be said that it is the machine —the phonograph— that hears, it is also possible to sense through it the experience of the listener, the eagerness, and instincts of the one who comes close trying to know about a reality in an aural way. In the phonograph what is written is the relief of an experience and within it is founded the gesture in which we communicate through the sinuous contour of the sonorous forms. Not an "aura" (as W. Benjamin would impose on these artifacts of the age of technical reproducibility) but perhaps an aurality, a device, a dispositif that emerges through listening with a specific sense of belonging and meaning.

In this phonography I have tried an aural approach to the Raramuri culture.  The work is composed from field recordings made by the author in the Sierra Tarahumara and the re-use of archival sound documents, including the first phonographic testimony recorded in Mexico, made by the ethnographer Carl Lumholtz during his explorations in the area in 1898.

In the work are spliced recordings from three different temporalities that provide a window into the sonorities of the Raramuri people. Without altering the original recordings as possible, the composition invites to get immersed in that sound world.  

Kipú is the Raramuri word that means “listening”. This work tries to open a space for this listening, a resonant place that would detaches from silence some form of communication. 

F. Tito Rivas

Recorded on location in the Sierra Tarahumara, Chihuahua, Mexico, 2011, 2015.

Additional recordings extracted from:

Paisajes Sonoros de Chihuahua, Tito Rivas, Peter Avar and Erick Ruiz. Instituto Chihuahuense de Cultura, Fonoteca Nacional, Radio Berlin Brandenburg, 2015.

Mexico, Western Sierra Madre, tarahumare indians. Thick groove cylinder recording by Carl Lumholtz. Indiana University, Archives of Traditional Music, 1898.

Sonidos del México Profundo: Pascolas y matachines de la Sierra Tarahumara. INI-RAD-II-6 (XETAR), 1985.

6 TIERRA NORTE

This line of action /research is focused on the accompaniment of the indigenous communities from northern Mexico. We are working especially with the Rarámuri (Tarahumaras) to establish forms of exchange with other cultural agents, develop educational tools and create networks with other indigenous communities in Mexico and different regions of the globe.

The idea is to stimulate the creative potential of the community, strengthen innovative actions that address the different problems that afflict them and accompany them in their strategies of preservation and defense and of their territory, language, worldview and artistic-craft expressions. With these projects we also seek to find new ways of marketing their products through fair exchange dynamics, in which the community itself is always be the main beneficiary.

In 2020 we started several productive, artistic, commercial and cultural projects in collaboration with artists, designers, architects, filmmakers, chefs, anthropologists and researchers.

ABOUT FUNDACIÓN MARSO

 

MARSO was founded in 2011 as a platform for dialogue and participation for the international artistic community in Mexico City — especially for emerging artists — collaborating with cultural institutions, organizations, and museums in Mexico and abroad. In 2012, it also began to operate as a commercial gallery, representing the work of 16 artists from different countries and participating in international art fairs.

In February 2018 we ceased our commercial activity to strengthen the work of the institution as a non-profit initiative, focused on the development of projects that bring contemporary art closer to social work, through exhibitions, research and participatory action projects. We seek to integrate creative thinking with other disciplines, in dynamics that favor virtuous cycles and critical positions on issues such as: gender, native people and environmental culture.