Lara and I took advantage of an amazing spring day to walk the National Mall. We started at the MLK monument with no specific agenda, but we managed to see the Jefferson Memorial, a Huichol bead VW at the Museum of the American Indian and the Picasso sketches exhibit at the National Gallery of Art.
Not a bad stroll, all in all. And another reason it’s great to live in D.C.
Our friends Anita and Emma are visiting from Mexico City, giving us a perfect excuse to have a great Ethopian meal at Etete and then jump on the Metro to see the Hirshhorn Museum turned into haunting, beautiful “liquid architecture” via artist Doug Aitken’s “Song 1.”
Digital projectors toss the work onto the Hirshhorn’s walls while traffic, pedestrians, mopeds and bikes drift through the scene, mashing up real life and art. Last night, we had an extra bonus: a full moon. Various versions of “If I Only Had Eyes for You” drive the work, which features fragments of stories, themes, ideas. The result is mesmerizing.
If you’re in D.C., I highly recommend you check this out. It runs till May 13 from sunset till midnight …
Here’s a clip where the artist explains what he’s up to …
It’s hard to believe the concrete chaos of Mexico City was once a large system of lakes and canals. At Xochimilco, it’s possible to get a taste of what things once were. Trajineras, boats reminiscent of Venetian gondolas, line the docks, waiting to take tourists out to see the floating gardens that lounge throughout the canal system.
Lara, Anita, Emma and I arrived too late to get a daylight view of the gardens, but we did have time to wander around and watch tourist-packed trajineras drift in to the embarcaderos (docks). We were there for something slightly different.
Performance artist Klaudia Vidal had arranged to take two of the trajineras out for a nighttime performance commemorating Dia de Los Muertos. We listened to the musicians play Son Jarocho music dockside for a while and then boarded a pair of trajineras that had been lashed together. Klaudia and the band took up most of one boat while the audience watched from the other.
The boatman used a long pole to propel us through the blackness while Klaudia and the musicians gave a frenzied performance. ¡Qué increíble! My Spanish sucks (i.e. I’m limited to present and present-progressive tenses and have a vocabulary of a few hundred words), but I was able to glean that La Muerta was warning us life is short and to make sure we enjoy it while we can. It was a wonderful mix of music, poetry and performance art.