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[Damián Ortega: Alias]

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[Mexico City]

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I tried to organize my own career

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working as a cartoonist
in the leftist newspaper.

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I survived, doing these cartoons
for many years.

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It was fun, but it was very demanding.

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I started to mix art and comics.

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I used an alias doing my cartoons

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

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who did the cartoons and the artworks.

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I was completely divided in
my own understanding of myself.

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

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Alias Editorial is an ambitious project--

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a new experience--

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because it's translated to another language.

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

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our own context,
in Mexico City.

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Gabriel Orozco gave me the original
Marcel Duchamp interview,

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

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My English was worse than it is now--

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

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

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At the end, I had the complete book translated,

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with a lot of jokes in the translation.

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

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

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who lives in the Colonia Roma or something.

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This, Cildo Meireles to Lawrence Weiner--

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also to do this translation.

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He liked very much the idea,

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and he proposed to do the cover.

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That was really great.

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

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

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We used to share information through photocopies,
through books.

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

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and bring some books back
about international artists.

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

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