If you plan to travel to Argentina and want a deep dive into the food and all that entails, you must contact Kevin Vaughn. For your pre-trip prep you can read his zine Matambre, and then while you are in Buenos Aires have him introduce you to the food and the people connected to it by booking his professional, no bull-shit, fringe tours at Devour Buenos Aires.
Kevin graciously asked me to translate a guest piece for Matambre written by Nadin Petrone about Galería Boston. Buenos Aires is full of Galerías and I am obsessed with walking through them. So this piece was a joy to translate and to learn more about one of the most frequented (for empanadas) yet overlooked architectural oddities and beauties of Buenos Aires. Nadin Petrone's photography is another must for anyone interested in Buenos Aires, check her IG, and read my translation of the piece on empanadas and the eclectic Galería Boston over at Matambre Mag.
Overlooked modernism and empanadas in the middle of Downtown
"My go-to place on Florida Street is the Galería Boston. As in many other old commercial galleries nearby, time stopped over 50 years ago. Some entrances are camouflaged among the more flashy windows of neighboring stores, leaving these large spaces forgotten, which penetrate the blocks and used to be populated by various stores. Just in the kilometer that the pedestrian street covers, there are 17 galleries and many more in the surrounding streets.
Just a few meters away, nearly right across the street, is the undisputed star of the block: the famous Galería Güemes, which astounds with its Art Nouveau style and its marble and bronze from the beginning of the twentieth century. In addition to its purely architectural attraction, it has the added flavor of a picturesque and somewhat improbable anecdote: it was the home of the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his pet, a seal pup that lived in the bathtub of his apartment.
In contrast, the Galería Boston, with its more modest charms, has yet to be discovered by many. Almost all of the interchangeable characters on the grooved letter-board at the entrance have fallen off. This board once displayed the stores' names on each of its three levels. Today, most of them have been vacant for years and nothing seems very inviting to passers-by.
It was inaugurated in the early 1960s, and its most valuable attribute, consisting of three large murals with figures in low relief, goes unnoticed. The author is a multifaceted Argentine artist named Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó, known as "Carybé," a nickname he picked up in Brazil, where he was more prolific and recognized than in his homeland.
As an analogy with the DNA of the City of Buenos Aires, "La Güemes," reminiscent of European constructions, coexists with "La Boston," which, despite its Saxon name and its modern architecture, celebrates the Latin American essence on its walls.
Despite its artistic heritage, many visit the Galería Boston for some highly praised empanadas made using a recipe from the province of Catamarca. La Cocina is located on the central floor and has long ceased to be an open secret among workers in the area, thanks in part to the renewed boom of vintage bars and cafés on social media. "
Debut by the renowned actor and later director John Cassavetes. What drew me to watch Shadows is that Cassavetes funded his own work with the change he earned from his acting gigs. This embryonic film has a knack for human tension that blossoms from a pursuit of desire and journey. At this intersection the complot blossoms into a full-blown cinematic feature that rummages through the complexity of human emotion.
It is a two-week rambling that highlights the marginalized blood trio of two brothers and a sister, each uniquely forging the waters of their own life journey, but intentionally connected to the business and affairs that each has in an uncompromising and endearing, and at times obnoxious, manner. It is a portrayal of urban existence and the complex race relations of a New York City thumping to the syncopation of a Beat Generation on the rise.
At a party, Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a young African-American girl with a light complexion, meets Tony (Anthony Ray), a somewhat callow white musician, and they begin a romance. Lelia thinks she's in love, but Tony is surprised when he meets her older brother, Hugh (Hugh Hurd), and realizes she's black. Hugh is an unsuccessful singer with a hostile attitude, while Lelia's other sibling, Ben (Ben Carruthers), is trying to make it as a trumpet player when he isn't getting into trouble.
Release date: November 11, 1959 (USA)
Director: John Cassavetes
Cinematography: Erich Kollmar
Music composed by: Shafi Hadi, Jack Ackerman, Charles Mingus
Distributed by: British Lion Films
Edited by: Len Appelson; Maurice McEndree; Wray Bevins
These past 2.5 weeks were spent translating two pieces for the hkwm.blog that you can find below. The first is a write-up on the Spanish edition of the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism-Feminism (HKWF) by Ana Miranda Mora. It is adequate to say that this is a clear example of why I continue to pursue work in translation. The apparent discrepancies between language and culture push me to scrutinize my language and perceptions of our world. Particularly these two pieces led me to overhaul my often coagulated viewpoints leaving me to consider my social and cultural privileges in the structurally unjust global systems we live in today.
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Abstract
‘‘Sólo pedimos un poco de orden para protegernos del caos.’’[1]
–Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari
Papelitos con numeritos son gobernantes de facto en instituciones y establecimientos que intentan ejercer la organización. La máquina expendedora es un centinela en sus puertas y los espacios contiguos a este sistema de turnos procuran– antes que nada– ordenar a la gente. ¿Y si los despojo de su entorno natural y los suspendo en otro espacio donde las personas pueden contemplarlos? ¿ Es acaso absurdo trasladar los números a otros espacios y sugerirles un valor simbólico distinto? Esta obra intenta responder éstas preguntas. Durante los últimos tres años he ido guardando esporádicamente algunos numeritos en vez de entregarlos a su juicio final en el pincha papel. Este montaje les brinda a ellos una última morada para que reflexionemos sobre nuestra obediencia colectiva a un ritual que, en muchos casos, es una estructura de lo absurdo y por otro lado es ejecutado como un rito innato. Así nos detenemos a considerar su valor estético y ontológico en vez de su utilidad efímera. Fuera de serie y orden, puestos en una discontinuidad íntima- quizá nos inviten a reflexionar sobre la ceremonia que mantenemos con estos numeritos. Nos invitan a repensar eso que ‘nos protege del caos’. ¿Quién sigue?
[1] En Deleuze Gilles y Guattari, Félix, ¿Qué es la filosofía? Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona, 2001, traducción de Thomas Kauf.
