Melbourne en Tijuana

This is Tijuana!
presents
Thursday 18 September 2008 TIJUANA REMIX
Launching the THIS IS TIJUANA! sessions focusing on Melbourne collaborations with the most cutting-edge music scenes of Latin America, is the Australian premiere screening of ‘Tijuana Remix’ (Dir. Annika Seiffert, 2002). This documentary focuses on electronic music, stencils, digital architecture all coming out of the cultural laboratory known as Tijuana, the notorious Mexican city divided by a Berlin-wall from San Diego. “There's no other place in the world where two different systems collapse against each other as hard as they do here,” wrote Newsweek, proclaiming it one of “the world's new culture Meccas”.
At the forefront of the Tijuana scene is Nortec Collective, who embody a movement of electronic musicians, architects and visual manipulators, and tour the world’s most prestigious music and cultural festivals. Whilst in Melbourne to perform at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2006, Nortec invited Melbourne-based artist saca la mois DJ!! to showcase a slice of the Melbourne scene in their hometown. The rest is history. Four Australians and dozens of Tijuana-based artists participated in the first Melbourne/Tijuana Convergence from 21-23 June 2007, setting in motion a platform for continual Melbourne-Tijuana collaborations.
Visual artists from all sides of the border will be represented. Cha3 aka Jorge Verdin's work is digitally wall-papered all over the venue, with The Professional Savage mixing projections of video clips, stills and sampled imagery and exploiting the extensive digital facilities at Horse Bazaar. The nor-tec sounds of the streets, radio, and parties of Tijuana being mixed and delivered by resident DJs S oup and saca la mois DJ!!
Details: Event starts 8pm. ‘Tijuana Remix’ screens at 9pm. Also featuring a Q&A session with Jorge Verdin (Nortec Collective) projected on the big screen, LIVE via the web.
For more information / music / interviews, contact us here via myspace
Melbourne in Tijuana Convergence 2007
(21 June - 23 June 2007)
review by Roberto Navarro published in monthly cultural magazine tijuaNEO – The pulse of the border (July 2007):
Melbourne in Tijuana – The vindication of Australia
Once again artists had to come to save the reputation of a country. By chance a group of young Australian artists came to our country, to our city, just days after on an important TV show a small group of Australian geniuses played with the flag of our Republic. Invited by the Maquila Collective, from here in Tijuana, the Uber Lingua Collective of Australia exhibited their work in various cultural spaces.
The event was called “Melbourne in Tijuana”, as according to Alejandro Zakarias and Octavio Castellanos, the similarities between the cities are enormous. It was this similarity and the intention of contributing to the establishment of artist networks that motivated the organizers to present the Australian artists together with those from Tijuana. A three day event, from 21 to 23 of June, featuring different artistic manifestations. The Maquila Collective emphasized urban art, with a strong focus over the three days on art created with stencils - a technique utilized by many urban artists.
The big party began at the ICBC (Cultural Institute of Baja California), outside, on the grass, a luscious night featuring DJs, contemporary dance and stencil, and also there was Kafi, of the well-known graffiti crew HEM.
On Friday the Cecut (Cultural Centre of Tijuana) was host to the Melbournites, with video, music and more stencils, finally on Saturday night at the Multikulti the Australian DJs gave us a lesson in electronic music. With furious beats, raw ones tearing at the already deteriorated walls of the historic cinema. That night, besides stencils and DJs, the local artists Daniel Ruanova, Julio Orozco and Alejandro Zakarias set up installations in different parts of the venue. It was unusual to see the box office of Orozco welcoming us where there once had been a box office, his blue image behind the glass like a ghost that only listens to the call of the magician Orozco. On the left wing, Ruanova blocked the stairs with a text projected on to a white sheet, a text, now, alive, full of rage, written more than a century ago when Porfirio Diaz was the dictator. In the back of the ex-cinema, at the entrance to the old projection rooms, Zakarias hung up water balloons. A Roberto, not me but another who is an artist, said to me this is beauty in its purest form.
Without ulterior motives, without the pretentiousness of officialdom, solely respecting art, the Maquila Collective invited their Australian friends to visit Tijuana - with the only objective being to generate the ties of exchange between those from there and those from here. Neither a festival or an exhibition, Melbourne in Tijuana was a encounter of artists, of friends. A unique encounter, perhaps unrepeatable, but always remembered.
PHOTO: Melbourne in Multikulti, once upon a time it was a cinema, got burnt down, and is now one of Tijuana's most unique cultural venues...