menu_issue19

 
Contributors
 

Fiona Farrell
Beatriz Hausner
Felisberto Hernández
Neil Langdon Inglis
Pippa Little
Ben Mazer
César Moro
Robin Myers
Hérnan Neira
Eugenia Prado Bassi
Peter Robertson
Gonzalo Rojas
Bina Shah
Alejandro Tarrab

Issue 19 Guest Artist:
George Blacklock

President: Peter Robertson
Vice-President: Sari Nusseibeh
Vice-President: Elena Poniatowska
Deputy Editor: Geraldine Maxwell
Advisory Consultant: Jill Dawson
General Editor: Beatriz Hausner
Art Editor: Calum Colvin
Deputy General Editor: Jeff Barry
Deputy General Editor: Jerónimo Mohar

Consulting Editors
Marjorie Agosín
Daniel Albright
Meena Alexander
Maria Teresa Andruetto
Frank Ankersmit
Rosemary Ashton
Reza Aslan
Leonard Barkan
Michael Barry
Shadi Bartsch
Thomas Bartscherer
Susan Bassnett
Gillian Beer
David Bellos
Richard Berengarten
Charles Bernstein
Sujata Bhatt
Mario Biagioli
Jean Boase-Beier
Elleke Boehmer
Eavan Boland
Stephen Booth
Alain de Botton
Carmen Boullossa
Rachel Bowlby
Svetlana Boym
Peter Brooks
Marina Brownlee
Roberto Brodsky
Carmen Bugan
Jenni Calder
Stanley Cavell
Sampurna Chattarji
Sarah Churchwell
Hollis Clayson
Sally Cline
Marcelo Cohen
Kristina Cordero
Drucilla Cornell
Junot Díaz
André Dombrowski
Denis Donoghue
Ariel Dorfman
Rita Dove
Denise Duhamel
Klaus Ebner
Robert Elsie
Stefano Evangelista
Orlando Figes
Tibor Fischer
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Peter France
Nancy Fraser
Maureen Freely
Michael Fried
Marjorie Garber
Anne Garréta
Marilyn Gaull
Zulfikar Ghose
Paul Giles
Lydia Goehr
Vasco Graça Moura
A. C. Grayling
Stephen Greenblatt
Lavinia Greenlaw
Lawrence Grossberg
Edith Grossman
Elizabeth Grosz
Boris Groys
David Harsent
Benjamin Harshav
Geoffrey Hartman
François Hartog
Siobhan Harvey
Molly Haskell
Selina Hastings
Valerie Henitiuk
Kathryn Hughes
Aamer Hussein
Djelal Kadir
Kapka Kassabova
John Kelly
Martin Kern
Mimi Khalvati
Joseph Koerner
Annette Kolodny
Julia Kristeva
George Landow
Chang-Rae Lee
Mabel Lee
Linda Leith
Suzanne Jill Levine
Lydia Liu
Margot Livesey
Julia Lovell
Laurie Maguire
Willy Maley
Alberto Manguel
Ben Marcus
Paul Mariani
Marina Mayoral
Richard McCabe
Campbell McGrath
Jamie McKendrick
Edie Meidav
Jack Miles
Toril Moi
Susana Moore
Laura Mulvey
Azar Nafisi
Paschalis Nikolaou
Martha Nussbaum
Tim Parks
Molly Peacock
Pascale Petit
Clare Pettitt
Caryl Phillips
Robert Pinsky
Elizabeth Powers
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Martin Puchner
Kate Pullinger
Paula Rabinowitz
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
James Richardson
François Rigolot
Geoffrey Robertson
Ritchie Robertson
Avital Ronell
Élisabeth Roudinesco
Carla Sassi
Michael Scammell
Celeste Schenck
Sudeep Sen
Hadaa Sendoo
Miranda Seymour
Mimi Sheller
Elaine Showalter
Penelope Shuttle
Werner Sollors
Frances Spalding
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Julian Stallabrass
Susan Stewart
Rebecca Stott
Mark Strand
Kathryn Sutherland
Rebecca Swift
Susan Tiberghien
John Whittier Treat
David Treuer
David Trinidad
Marjorie Trusted
Lidia Vianu
Victor Vitanza
Marina Warner
David Wellbery
Edwin Williamson
Michael Wood
Theodore Zeldin

Assistant Editor: Sara Besserman
Assistant Editor: Ana de Biase
Assistant Editor: Conor Bracken
Assistant Editor: Eugenio Conchez
Assistant Editor: Patricia Delmar
Assistant Editor: Lucila Gallino
Assistant Editor: Sophie Lewis
Assistant Editor: Krista Oehlke
Assistant Editor: Siska Rappé
Assistant Editor: Naomi Schub
Assistant Editor: Stephanie Smith
Assistant Editor: Robert Toperter
Assistant Editor: Laurence Webb
Art Consultant: Verónica Barbatano
Art Consultant: Angie Roytgolz

 
Click to enlarge picture Click to enlarge picture. Our Art by Alejandro Tarrab
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
 

 



Our Art

We hate each other. We give each other
sad folk songs and harsh blows with stones of sound. Low strokes, on our faces. We like what we do. We’re here to hate each other, to spit at each other and yank each other by the face. With needles in the chest, my heart. Center, scepter. We dance. We draw our heads together in such a way that we can hear each other: our art. We build a shelter, an altar full of portraits: us, talking nonsense, dancing to shove, tough. Later we see the photos, daguerrotyped, burned and yellow, and we nearly weep. Together. With needles in the eyes, my heart, we build what’s ours: sad songs, harsh blows thrown and legible, a fine dust just alighting on the skin. In those photos there are children in formaldehyde. Fetuses diluting in the image. Aberrations of two heads saying art into the ears. We see them and we implore for us, for the sons of the sons and so on. Soon we end up laughing. It’s moving. How is it that one thing leads to another?, how is it that one extreme stays behind and drags us toward the other? To laugh at what we are, with the needles now giving way. Sedation. Contractions of happiness. Shoves of happiness together. So, we feel a new compulsion to create. Something we call ours, neither yours nor mine. Something inherited, founded, bound to a history, but that isn’t history. Something other, unoriginal, that burns us such that we must say it. Something flagrant and anonymous. A performance that hits the un-center of what’s created. Your head close to mine (percussion, I can barely hear you). In secret you captivate me we have to dance. Something ephemeral, tragic, and fractured. Dangerous. Strobes, harsh blows against the stone. We’re here to hate each other. There’s a song whose lyrics say (I’m no good at translation): we undress in the darkness and my fingers will pass through the holes in your spine.


Arte nuestro

Nos odiamos. Con canciones folk
tristes y golpes duros con piedras de sonido, nos damos. Toques bajos, en la cara. Nos gusta lo que hacemos. Estamos aquí para odiarnos, para escupirnos y sacarnos por la cara. Con agujas en el pecho, corazón. Centro, cetro. Bailamos. Juntamos de tal manera las cabezas, que podemos oírnos: arte nuestro. Construimos un refugio, un altar con retratos: nosotros hablando sinsentido, bailando a empellones, recio. Después vemos las fotos daguerrotípicas, quemadas y amarillas, y lloramos casi. Juntos. Con agujas en los ojos, corazón, construimos lo nuestro: canciones tristes, golpes duros que proyectan y pueden leerse, un polvo fino posándose apenas en la piel. En esas fotos hay niños en formol. Engendros diluyéndose en la imagen. Aberraciones de dos cabezas diciéndose al oído arte. Las vemos e imploramos por nosotros, por los hijos de los hijos y así. Acabamos pronto riendo. Es conmovedor. ¿De qué manera una cosa lleva a otra?, ¿de qué manera un extremo queda atrás y nos arrastra hacia otro extremo? Reírse de lo que somos, con las agujas ya cediendo. Sedación. Contracciones de alegría. Empellones de alegría juntos. Entonces, sentimos un nuevo impulso por crear. Algo que llamamos nuestro, que no es tuyo ni mío. Algo heredado, fundamentado, ligado a una historia, pero que no es historia. Algo ajeno no-original, que nos quema y debemos decirlo. Algo flagrante sin su autor. Una performance que acierte en el no-centro de lo creado. Tu cabeza junto a la mía (percusiones, casi no puedo oírte). En secreto me cautivas hay que bailar. Algo efímero, aciago y fraccionado. Azaroso. Led, golpes duros contra la piedra. Estamos aquí para odiarnos. Hay una canción cuya letra dice (no soy bueno traduciendo): nos quitaremos la ropa en la oscuridad y con los dedos ellos repasarán los huecos de tu columna.