Damián Ortega: Alias | Art21 "Extended Play"

[Damián Ortega: Alias]

[Mexico City]

I tried to organize my own career

working as a cartoonist
in the leftist newspaper.

I survived, doing these cartoons
for many years.

It was fun, but it was very demanding.

I started to mix art and comics.

I used an alias doing my cartoons

because I don't feel it's
the same personality

who did the cartoons and the artworks.

I was completely divided in
my own understanding of myself.

But, it was a first approach
to my idea of the Alias books.

Alias Editorial is an ambitious project--

a new experience--

because it's translated to another language.

It's appropriation of knowledge
adapted to our own life,

our own context,
in Mexico City.

Gabriel Orozco gave me the original
Marcel Duchamp interview,

and he said, "You must read every page
of this book, because you will love it."

My English was worse than it is now--

and I tried to read,
but I can't understand very well.

I asked a friend of mine if he can
translate a little bit to Spanish.

At the end, I had the complete book translated,

with a lot of jokes in the translation.

It's beautiful, because at the end
it's Duchamp completely out of context--

it decontextualized him,
and becomes like a Mexican guy [LAUGHS]

who lives in the Colonia Roma or something.

This, Cildo Meireles to Lawrence Weiner--

also to do this translation.

He liked very much the idea,

and he proposed to do the cover.

That was really great.

My generation didn't have any of this information
about contemporary art.

It was a time when we don't have internet,
we don't have cell phones.

We used to share information through photocopies,
through books.

One of us can fly to Europe,
or to U.S. or South America,

and bring some books back
about international artists.

Appropriation is a statement because
it gives the chance to recontextualize knowledge.

At the end, every country gives some
special way of thinking.