Art in the night

We love Buenos Aires, right? We love that small children and old couples stay out until the wee hours of the night. We love the springtime air and purple blossoms lining Nuevo de Julio. We love the immense beauty and striking skyline at every corner of the behemoth. Naturally, there are many sociopolitical problems lurking around as well, not to discredit a large array of social needs, but Saturday night's La Noche de los Museos singled out directly one reason to adore this city.

We love this city because it provides events like Museum Night. On Saterday the 15th of November the 5th Museum Night brought babbling bands of pedestrians, extranjeros, portenos, young and old, to frolic about the city from 7pm-2am. During this time public transportation was free, provided it was collecitvo running between the 130 some odd museums, galleries, and congressional buildings taking part. Art, anthropology, music, and film, were just some of the activities connecting the dots throughout Capital Federal, all centered around el centro de los Museos, on Av de los Italianos in Puerta Madera. At 21:00 the German Film "Metropolis" was screen with live musical accompaniment. The film is a 1920s silent film, I expected a beautiful, but classical rendition of the soundtrack, in keeping with the old spirit of silent film. Instead a band much like the 1970's Italian group "Goblin" rocked, funked, and jazzed the audience into climactic paralysis. It was beautiful, and fun. Later, DJs from popular clubs around the city put down their beats.

Not that late nightlife is anything new around here, the point is precisely this: the city put on a brilliant event, involving many aspects of the cities art, music, and anthropological culture, they made it accessible to everyone, made it easy for people to come and go, and it was free. Furthermore, it happened in the middle of the night and everyone went.

We love this city why? Go and figure it out for yourself...

The Night of the Museums! Chancha Vía Circuito!

Tonight is La Noche de los Museos, at:

Centro de Museos de Buenos Aires / Av. De los Italianos 851.

It is Free, museums all over the city are participating, but from 19:00 until 2:00, the festives will be grand at this location. Fritz Lang's Metropolis will be screen accompanied by live music, DJ's from around the city will be scratching until the wee hours. Dale!

The Platas

Yesterday I was in La Plata. Being lucky enough to have a housemate with periodic access to a vehicle we hit for the south, stopped in Quilmes, a small working class city on the coast of Rio Plata, and continued onward for La Plata. Quilmes has a dirty but pleasant coastline with restaurants and bars and a wharf in partial construction. One gets the sense there are very few yankies or gringos that take in the sun around these parts and so an adventure into strange, but possibly unsafe cultural transcendence would commence.

Down and Down, on to La Plata, the provincial capital of Buenos Aires. The city was larger than I had thought, which is only in comparison to friends having told me that it was smaller than they thought and quite walkable. There are around 550,000 inhabitants and the center has an impressive array of cultural edifices. A number of museums, an ecological reserve, and the neo-gothic Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepcion de La Plata. Five kilometers west of the city is a large park of trails, hiking, and grassy clearings amidst slightly forested areas. For the ease and closeness of the city it is a grand escape of the metropolis that is Buenos Aires, to explore another somewhat urban local, with a much more placid demeanor. It would be unkind as well not to mention the great friendliness of everyone we encountered along the way, from bici riders to futbol fanatics, we navigated the city by random acts of kindness.

When I first arrived in Buenos Aires, excuse my ignorance, I was confused by "the Platas." You mean to say that there is the city La Plata, but also, further south, Mar del Plata? Yes there is; it probably routed from a more mediocre grasp of Spanish, one that has been cleared up by now. Ha. Anyways, tomorrow is the final day of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival. The largest and most renowned film fest of South America, something for which I am banging my head for not having gone. So I you happen to be heading there, or are already there, by all means check it out, its cheap, and the cinema will be glorious.

Villa Mayo

It is no surprise to anyone who has traveled outside of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, that the city's flare, aura, and charm, are of a different nature than the rest of the country. It is also no surprise, that Buenos Aires is massive. Capital Federal is a right large landmass of barrio after barrio, but even beyond the center, areas outside are still considered part of the city. One beauty of the, I don't know...just one beautiful thing, is the vast difference between Buenos Aires, and what one might otherwise think of as Latina America culture and city space. What one might not know, is that you do not have to go very far to find it.

Villa Mayo is not a terribly popular area, certainly not amongst tourists, but if you have the ability to get out of Capital Federal, to the north west, the barrio along with surrounding areas is a bit more country, a bit more slow placed, a bit more tranquil and, just different. Argentines look different, they speak differently, and time goes differently. It is not particularly "traditional" in whatever sense that word is supposed to mean, as in rustic or colonial, or indigenous, it is simply life, in a very much non-Buenos Aires sort of demeanor, which if you have been around here for a while, is a very nice thing. Naturally, a certain level of exotification goes into what I am saying, as the differences and the attractions are in a certain way the result of lower economic stability and infrastructure, which tends to typify the type of South or Central American street side one might normally think of, but such a by-way offers visual stimulation of a different nature to strolling down Nuevo de Julio or Corrientes of Defensa. The point is, I suppose, that the grand differences between Buenos Aires, and more Latino influenced places is at times forgotten, no matter how well known, and you really don't have to go very far to be reminded

Super Tuesday

Cross cultural exchanges at times erode one's ability to be clever, and hence the title of this post is ever so clear, so so not clever, and so so straight forward. Tomorrow is election day in the U.S.A. and although we are all here: in Buenos Aires, or elsewhere in Argentina, or South America, or somewhere, it is, to quote Steven Colber from the Daily Show on the 2004 election "an electoral Hiroshima to make Armageddon seam like Yahtzee," or rather that was on the Bush-Dukakis campaign. For 2004 he simply claimed "it is the most important election of our lifetime." So tomorrow is that day that much of the world has been looking towards. We will all eagerly await for the Daily Show to show us just how funny politics are. Lately, with guests such as Michelle and Barack Obama, the election has been legitimately, or illegitimately presented to us, depending on the comic bent of John Stewart.

But in all seriousness, and I am not taking away from the intelligence or informed nature of the Daily Show, there certainly are better, and more complete news sources from which to observe the election from afar. Why is it that I am writing on the election anyways, assuming that South American Explorers members consist of a more diverse background than U.S. citizens? Something in the winds tells me the recent fluctuation of the Argentine Peso, or Bolivian anti-drug funds, or the ongoing crisis in the Congo for that matter tends to be in some way or another associated with the U.S. The trends in the Hong Kong financial market were dipping the other day, which also might have had something to do with this possible recession thing happening in the states (and please exploit the vagueness of that word recession as most U.S. mainstream media have also done). So, if ever there was a moment when the whole world were looking at the U.S.-which there has been-another one is right now, and as early voting problems in states like Colorado and Florida already have turned on the flashing lights, Obamas' lawyers gear up to insure a flagrant free voting arena tomorrow, Fox news is in pregame mode, Bradley is on alert, and the U.S. prepares for the possible first ever wartime party exchange in the big house.

All the U.S. citizens abroad have already, so we hope, cast their votes and tomorrow will be a long day of speculation and observation, three to six hours ahead of the mark, which might make for a long night. If you need a place to observe election coverage here in Buenos Aires, The Sacramento at El Salvador 5729 will have television coverage from 9pm on, coming from CNN world. If you need conservative coverage you can find it on Fox News, if you are looking for an independent media perspective Democracynow will be doing a five hour special coverage of the results at www.democracynow.com

critical mass today!

at 4pm at obelisco. Dale