The current situation at Mexico is of natural disaster crisis.
There has been several earthquakes around different states of the center and south.
This right followed from drug war, goverment and organized crime dissapearance of people, so I dare to say the "natural" state of the country is of crisis, I think 'crisis' is a startpoint of energy flow, but other issues are not resolved by people, we let them just vanish and protest for them but not this time, thanks to social media there has been a heavy movement to help out on the affected areas with medical supplies, food and even shelter, although it is not a good thing, the result, similar to anarchy (since the goverment institutions are not helping at all) is an actual synergy, magick, in a way, people have come together to change reality.
The toughtest earthquake happenned the same day of the 32nd anniversary of the earthquake of the 1985, is the catastrophy a way to remind us of our history, not just of destruction, but what we are able to accomplish as a whole?
Chaos(not to confuse with crisis) for me, is the primary force for action, hidden in the unconscious mind, that which allows existance, entropy if you will.
But what does it take for anyone to have the will and strenght to bend reality and re-create it?
below a videoperformance I did back in january titled "Breaking point" I was asking myself, and feeling, what does it take for a person to take action, what leads to it, might it be a big event or a succesion of hard things?
Hello Alejandro, I’m Victoria (EAS artist liaison and web coordinator) I am very interested in your question ‘what does it take for anyone to have the will and strength to bend reality and re-create it?’ This is a question that is so hard to answer because there are so many things that play into it, like how Kate mentioned natural disasters as a means to strike fear into society. Fear in general is a factor as to why people do not stand up and defend themselves from the corruption that exists almost everywhere today.
As you mentioned, social media have now become tools that help people shed light on injustices occurring on a daily basis. But there are two sides to this coin, because then people actually see that those imposing the laws are the ones who follow them the least, and unnatural/violent death is such an easy thing to come by nowadays that people are scared to stand up; they’re scared to get shot, disappear, get badly hurt, be ‘made an example of’, and everything in between. Those who are supposed to be the protectors of society more and more often are being seen as people to fear as well, so many can be hesitant to act for this reason.
This is why I do agree with you that chaos is cause for action; while it does strike fear in many, it also wakes people up to the reality we live in; the more we expose the negativity the more people will want to stop it together. We have to fight for something better no matter what, because in all reality, present day institutions are not really in the best interest of everyone. I know that this is a heavy statement but I do mean it, because laws, constitutions, rights, etc., were not signed/created with everyone in mind. These systems were flawed from the beginning, and people today still fight for the rights that supposedly everyone has. They do not take ‘minorities’ into account because society is hierarchical, and it has always been this way. They exploit, kill and care less about the people who actually keep society running and ‘making it work’ in the first place.
It is a beautiful thing to see all of the people in Mexico volunteering to help each other after the natural disaster because it shows community and that people still care. Mexican people know that the government isn’t there to help, and in this case I feel like everyone is considering how lucky they are to be alive, to be capable of helping, also knowing that they would want the help if it was them who were most affected by the disaster.
These acts of genuinely caring catches people’s attention on a small, as well as global scale. It is great that many people have been able to donate to the victims of recent natural disasters because of exposure through social media as well; I feel like this builds international community but how can we push it further? We have to find a way for more people to find points of relation to push forward together for everyone’s best interest, not just people with money, political, or even drug power.
In the book ‘No is not not enough, resisting the new shock politics and creating the world we need’ Naoimi Klein speaks of the kindness of the people living in the disaster and grassroot organisations helping each other. However she paints a horrifying trend of governments and corporations using disasters as a means to exploit peoples insecurity and fear and impose laws and actions that otherwise would never be accepted by the public. For instance increased privatisation of public services in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
I am currently in Nepal which has also suffered from disastrous earthquakes in 2015. The government received billions in aid from foreign donations yet most of it never reached the people. A lot of food and supplies that had been donated were stored in the airport where they eventually when out of date. Similar ignorance to the peoples needs came from the government during the recent floods. Again it is the people at the ground and non governmental organisations that seem to be the driving force for positive action.
I worked before with the idea of entropy in a psychological sense. Having all these inner forces in oneself that moves you towards chaos.. self destructive tendencies, anxiety etc.. and at the same time having an inner striving for growth and the effort required to push against this ‘entropy’ and evolve as an individual..
I understand entropy not as just the deterioration of things but as how existence expands itself, in that sense, chaos not as mere destruction but as life force which becomes stronger, as paradigm shifts, so does chaos, so does memory.
I think maybe I do think in the same way as well, but I cant put my finger on it. More than chaos, for me parallel subjectivities and modes of knowing and seeing exist simultaneously, to create existence, or act as a way to comprehend and understand. I’d love to see more of your work, as well as know if you have any particular visual and textual references that have helped you along the way.
Chaos as the force for action and its inevitable link to entropy is such an interesting thought. I find it hard to understand it outside the idea of entropy though, almost as if the constant cycle of chaos and then action can only end in total destruction. I’m curious as to how you read it as a forward movement, without looking at it as a sort of doomed reality which we keep attempting to forestall.
In my own practice when I started looking at archives, a statement of Hal Foster really stuck, where he says that an archive is created as a means to preserve what we deem as essential, in the face of ultimate doom. I see a parallel between archiving (or rather, preservation) and action, as possibly two sides of how we tend to deal with the reality of crisis around us.