Journey in Mexico ~ Chapter Two ~ Joe Fur Long

Hurtling south through the Yucatan peninsula was one of the most liberating and exciting moments of my life. In the newly christened ´Jetta/Badboy´ clocking 100kph through lush tropic scenery with all the fun, weirdness, solitude and of course rinse-out comforts of the Caribbean disappearing fast behind in the wing mirror, a sense of the epic nature of what lays ahead of us started to become apparent.

Being a GÜERRO (not gringo luckily) driving in Mexico is not for the fainthearted. You stick out - even in a beaten up VW that looked local but also, to be honest, as if it had been stolen in an 80s US cop drama. Rule 1, the actual cops are crooked. Easily payable in a tight situation, but can make your life living hell if they want. Normally 3 days without food in a shared jail cell for any minor offense or inabililty to pay comes as standard, but also car impoundment and drugs planting for extortion are not unheard of. This federal police system is divided into Municipal, Federal and Army forces. The latter two are not really too much of a problem as they are only looking for drugs and firearms (unless you have drugs or firearms both of which we were not packing) and really don’t care about much else. The ´Pinche Pendejos´ (fucking cheeky dickheads) are the municipal – underpaid, under-regulated local lads and dads who are as corrupt as their municipality allows them to be, but of course without a decent income to support a family there are always the perks of the job to be had from most situations. It’s the fault of the state itself, corruption breeding corruption breeding corruption from the dust upwards. Not to mention road-tripping here comes with a subtle unease of the vulnerability of it all. That if for whatever reason you breakdown in the middle of bandit country you are essentially as easy to robbed or be messed with as a comatosed K-head with his head in a multirig bassbin, and as most people walking by are machete-laden you don’t really want that. However, being hombres with cahones as muy grande as us cabrones happened to be smuggling, we gave little thought to these background elements and ploughed on, blaring old skool Jungle and Rage Against the Machine merrily, stopping for more tacos, taking in the scenery and enjoying the vibes of what we soon dubbed ´Actual Mexico´.

The destination was Chiapas, a three day drive from Tulum around Guatamala featuring the jungle ruins of King Pakal´s Palenque Kingdom and the Zapatista strongholds which have been publicly fighting to retain the right to their extremely fertile (and beautiful) land since 1994. The villages themselves are not villages, they are occupied zones which are developing their own educational systems and have their own hierarchy and local government . We were able to visit and see one of these near Palenque with the help of the most jokes-hustlers you can ever hope to meet, the one and only Amador Rosales (Rose Lover). Very interesting position to be in but after offering one of my drawings in a gesture of solidarity and good-faith, I was welcomed enough at least to stay outside the main compound and see it for myself. The word struggle means different things in this part of the world. The proud residents are truly showing that another way is possible but of course slow – signified by the use of a snail with a balaclava in many of the murals adorning the zone. Mad respect basically and a really humbling experience to actually see the lengths these people are prepared to go to stand up for the right to be heard - ´We wear masks so that we can be seen´.

Back in the car with new found understanding of where we were we decided to go off the beaten track to see the preserved murals of Bonampak. They are astoundingly dark with depicting stories that was the forefront of the understanding that the Mayans were not as peaceful and as utopian as once thought. Fingertip-less captives awaiting certain sacrifice and the hierarchies involved are there for all to see. Great experience and my first chance to see REAL mayan paintings. We could have returned back along the roads we came (yawn) but opted in the end to go where we´d been advised not to by most of the Lonely Planet crew, down along the border with Guatamala and Central America, where basically all of the drugs trafficked into Mexico cross over. Again, actual Mexico.

The road along the Guatemalan border was filled with clouds so thick we did not always take in the military roadblocks littering the winding roads ahead until we were literally bumping over them. The tropical rain slamming against the windscreen didn’t help either. Highly suspicious but also just curious army youth sticking their noses and assault rifles in our faces became commonplace as we inched further. To be honest they were nice, just a little confused as to why we were there if not to run heavy loads of coke. It´s definitely not your average tourist route. I recall we only really got the heebyjeebies when we started to run out of gas, realizing there was no Pemex´s around (Mexico´s state owned petroleum monster). ¿What do you do in the clouds along one of the world´s most prolific drug borders without gas and no phone signal? Luckily, we didn’t have to find out... We were blessed enough to buy some fuel from some entrepreneurial 7 year olds who were so surprised to see us weirdos there you´d think they were refuelling a UFO. It was a potentially harrowing experience, to say the least, but one that leaves you wondering what really all the fuss is about. Yeah it’s a bit sketchy not what you would imagine, the locals were just getting on as in the rest of the state, just highly isolated by rumour and activities which they have very little part in. Sadly these horror stories mean foreigners don’t risk it and venture to see the harsh reality of life for the impoverished locals here. Maybe some would actually better understand how costly the cheap nose candy actually is, even for those not involved in the trade. The clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the streets unwound meaning we could go more than 40k once more. We were en route to San Cristobal de las Casas.

San Cristobal de las Casas is magical and I encourage anybody to go there if they can at least once in their lifetime. I also encourage you to try living there. It truly has a sense of worlds colliding, with the indigenous nature of Chiapas in full visibility contrasted by the ever growing tourism and highlife enjoyed by its richer residents. It´s cheap too. It was time to settle and we decided to stay a month, planning to leave after New Year.

I needed to find my place here, and quick, because I hadn’t painted for a good while and wanted to get back in the swing of things. Painting murals in hostels for accommodation I realized here was much easier than I previously thought in Tulum, and my style seemed to impress many of the owners I spoke to - which was a big confidence boost . I managed to wangle a mural for what ended up to be 2 weeks worth of free accommodation in a hostel called De Ja Vu, on a beautiful wooden wall in the centre of this vibrant hostel/café/bar/venue which was definitely on the up and a hub of activity locally and with the travellers. Having been around so many ruins and after my time in La Zona Maya I wanted to see how well I could combine my skills with the incomparable style of the Mayans, and picked a piece from one of the stalae (carvings) from Yaxchilan, near Bonampak. It depicts Lady Xook, on the bottom right of the panel, in the hallucinatory stage of the bloodletting ritual. She conjures before her a vision of a Teotihuacan serpent. The god coming out of his mouth is the god of corn and so I combined a study of this in my style: a huge corn cob growing out of an agave, the plant that blesses the land with tequila and mezcal. Peering out are eyes thorough a Zapatista balaclava hole to bring the history into the modern day, two cultures of Chiapas in one, in colour. I was thrilled, it was my first colour mural and also in Chiapas which was fast becoming one of my favourite places on earth.

A real ambition of mine, to have a solo show in Mexico, was realized in these mountains. After rolling through the many bars, stores and music related hangouts of the town I got a tip about a place called ´El Paliacate´ (The bandana) which as well as hosting music events, political and resistance related events and talks in the city also had a gallery space. This ex-occupation turned legitimate cultural space was the perfect setting and I was ecstatic to hear they had an opening for a week over Christmas and New Year that needed to be filled. After agreeing the dates I set to work, realizing that this self organized show would need a hell of a lot of self organizing, being there without the rest of the Minesweeper famalam. Day to day I found the places to buy my stuff (London needs more Papellerias!!), learned the essential words (tape, boards, frames, glue, prints, paint brushes etc) and slowly orientated myself around the town trying to find all the necessities. I´ll admit I have an issue with streets when they are blocks, it seems simple, but all the corners seemed the same. I got lost more times than I can remember which was slightly frustrating as it coincided with the sporadic opening hours of all the tiendas over the Christmas period. You are going against the grain here trying to organize an art gallery in a place where most guerros are tourists and not really doing much else apart from enjoying themselves or political activities outside of the city, not running into the same photocopies place three times in a day looking for a scanner. The locals celebrate a month long party ´Virgin de Guadalupe festival´ on the run-up to Christmas with fireworks, parades and costumes on show every day creating a surreal setting for my haphazard project, and it was really fun to be doing Minesweeper style shows with all this new energy around me. It helps when you have a crew though and missed the camaraderie of the Undercurrents Gallery. I designed the poster and got to work promoting while also selling my hand-drawn baseball hats (gorras) around the town as I went. This mixed with the mural for my bed meant I was finally self-sufficient in Chiapas, a great feeling, that gave me lots of confidence for the future missions.

The week of the show soon arrived and 3 days before I hit up the venue about painting a mural before the show. I was to be painting the same day as my new muralist friend Armando, a great guy who told me a great deal about the city and the project he was living in - ´Wapani´. We decided to combine our themes, him focusing on Zapatista imagery and written messages and me on my new idea I had been toying with for the last days. It was based on a sketch I had been working on about the situation I mentioned in the last chapter about the student disappearances. A quote I had heard, ´They did not bury students, they buried seeds´ was the basis of the piece. A silent rebellious tree, with the Zapatista skull eyes staring through a balaclava growing from a flaming grave. The floor in the piece was littered with bloody corn cobs, symbolizing the grim situation with Monsanto. I included also memorial candles for the dead students, as well as 1000 peso bills highlighting the corruption behind all of these deaths the country is sadly renowned for. From the blood grow shoots, getting ever larger until finally they become the tree itself. A huge machine gun like the ones brandished here by the Municipal police forces leans against the trunk. The tree I decided needed a positive message as well as these deep themes. Flowering between the leaves I put all the modern forms of non-violent resistance that would be needed for any kind of positive and peaceful continuation from this scene: cameras, smart phones filming equipment, laptops, paintbrushes and musical instruments to share and plan these messages of change that the nation was crying for. It also features shining lightbulbs to signify the need for new ideas in times like this rather than tired methods which allow people to fall into the traps the police hope for during direct action, usually ending in arrest which, in Mexico, I can assure you it is not fun. I decided to name the piece ´The Tree of Modern Resistance´ and was met with great respect by the many visitors to the venue over these days. I consider it to be one of my favourite works, not only for the position it had in this politically minded city, but for its subject matter. I could see I was progressing in the direction of socially minded illustration as well as surrealism. I had also learnt the ability to put it in mural form again after Tulum, which I had been worrying might have been a bit of a fluke. The people around understood its significance without needing an explanation: that's the root of illustration in my opinion - and something I had always struggled with before Mexico.

With the mural in place, the accommodation piece finished and a new rent taken in a shared house at the top of the hill in the centre of town, all that was needed, was to arrange the works for the show. I collected and printed my favourite drawings from the Tulum sessions as well as some new ones and mixed them with my portfolio of UK work that I was carrying with me through Mexico. I wrote up a written explanation of the Minesweeper project as well as my own story and got it translated into Spanish and printed. I mounted the pieces and arranged my canvas for the Live Art I wished to do during the show like I do in England. The last flyers were thrown around town and the music line up confirmed (hiphop-ragga-latin-dubwisefunk). The stage was set, the missions completed. I sat down in a woolly sweaty heap with my well-earned mezcal and free baguette and waited (hoping) for the public to arrive…

To be continued...

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,

butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building,

write a sonnet, balance accounts,

build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying,

take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,

solve equations, analyze a new problem,

pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal,

fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects."

Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love"

Minesweeper Magazine ~ Issue Third ~ May 2015

Here we are : the THIRD ISSUE of The Minesweeper Collective Magazine !
And it evolves : more arts & craft reviews, past & future events, & also a great adventure !
If you have submissions, contact us : internsweep@gmail.com
We are waiting for you ! To read the magazine, click here!

Minesweeper Magazine ~ Issue Second ~ April 2015

This is the second issue of the Minesweeper Magazine !
events, screen-printing, arts & so much more…
Great stories about the vessel & the crew, events, screen-printing, arts & so much more…
Have a look & be involved !
With – inter alia – Alternative Press, The Musée du dessin et de l’estampe originale (Gravelines, France), The Birds Nest, kids love ink,Number3London & so many people…

Journey in Mexico ~ chap 1 ~ Joe Fur Long

A false sense of Paradise.

Arriving alone in Mexico with little else but spare clothes and pens on September 1^st 2015 was quite a shock from the human and stress overload that has been life in London squatland for the last few years, especially the fact that I didn’t speak any Spanish and look about as foreign as you can possibly coming from the British Isles (ginger beard, blue eyes, London swagger, skanking to salsa, you get the idea…). 

 

Upon arriving in western paradise I realized quickly that sticking out in this way is perfect for attracting the wrong attention, and even though there are of course huge benefits to learning from experience a whole lot of things go mysteriously wrong fast when you get close to a few of the experienced locals of Tulum and learning the Caribbean version of streetwise is a hairy experience. With the intention of coming to this land and smashing it artistically in every way, living and renting rather than youth hostels and moving ever 5 days, as well as promoting the epic Minesweeper Collective was a great talking point though, and before long, once I got used to the attention and had my rented bamboo house looking fresh, I stuck my neck out to see what I could hustle up in this quaint mosquito shit party village.

The vibe here was very unusual split between local indigenous Mayans and the new population of this very young community, turfed out of their land by big money developers and false promises of future work and security, excited by or ignoring the waves of international travelers arriving form the south for one last party before flying back from the hellish resort hole of Cancun, crossed with the wealth of the cocaine trade passing through to the resorts of the north. I blended in as a slightly apart joker, chatting in horrific Spanish who spent most evenings in the bars never stating exactly where he lived or who he knew there. Its not the best look though and after a sneaky robbing from a little local worm and genuinely getting my life threatened by a coke-fuelled Columbian madman with no one around who knew me, I decided to get back to the reasons why I came here and stop trying to fit in with this random selection of drunks, nutters and genuinely nice but fast leaving foreigners.

Scene set lets get back to the art. Using the alone time to explore new styles, from shading to subject matter was what I imagined was I decided going to be the best I could get out of the situation not seeing much of an art scene in the area.

I had fun, confronting new problems such as un stroppable sweat drips falling on my work, tropical thunderstorms knocking out power and flooding the house, the terrible relationship between humidity and paper, all the while hanging about and feeding up my new adopted black cat Kiwi who was without doubt my best mate in Tulum. Don’t forget I’m on the on the Caribbean coastline. Spending half the day with cocktails in the sea and on the clear white sandy beaches created some distractions, however having it so unbelievably large in this gangster fashion actually became normal so as the weeks rolled on with growing discipline some real new pieces started bouncing off this laid back life after the grim drudgery of my last year in London. I was a month in, rolling around daily in flip-flops and swimming shorts with cocktails in the sun and drawing all night relaxed the situation and gave me time to make some moves. I made it down to Belize which was hilarious as well on the way getting me to my first mural, for accommodation in Bacalar, a lagoon formally overrun by pirates near the border and away from glam fashionable drug abuse of north Caribbean Quintana Roo. Now winding down a three story staircase in a guesthouse called Casa China is a new resident 10 metre Chinese dragon which looks rude if I say so myself.

For those reading who are wondering who it is telling you this random story and why its in the new format of public exposure from Minesweeper, my name's Joe, I’m 27, I’m one of the co-founders of the Minesweeper project and spent a year and a half on the renovations of the boat from 2012 and setting up the Undercurrents Gallery with the crew at the Birds Nest. I’ve been churning out obscure illustration under the name of JOEFUR for ten years now and have been pushing Live Art on the underground occupation and party scene for longer than I expected I would be, moving into festival madness with Happy Slap Boutique Body Art Performance at Boomtown Fair and drawing designs for cash in many corners of the UK party and Live Music scene. All this as well as Crack Festival in Rome for the last 6 years I’m trying to continue the internationally residency part of the Minesweeper Project after having guests such as Le Cagibi from France, Cane Morto from Italy and La Rata Rey and Lucia Revilla Silva from Mexico City – its these guys who invited my to Mexico – and trying to encourage others to do the same. I’m now focusing on combining what I see as modern surrealism with socio-political illustration. Travelling and art production are intertwined, leading to an explosion of inspiration and ability from being the new guy in town on a mission with no ties. This is what I needed. This is why I’m here. And it’s going pretty well so far from this mountain I’m currently writing from in January 2015.

Anyway back to October. The Tulum mural was a defining moment in my journey in, and eventually out of the Caribbean. The opportunity came from a beautiful girl and great friend managing to convince her boss to give the seemingly slightly deranged but confident new local English artist party head the random two metre wall space outside their bar in the center of town, in the doorway from Europe, US and Australia to North Latin America. The place where the cheapest flights land, the weirdest of tourists and loners mix, and the highflyers lounge buying up all in sight. Of course this is how I saw it, see saw it as a space that needed filling and gave me free reign to so what I like as long as I finished it.

This was an opportunity to let it all out, and a lot had buit up inside me about the state of this part of the world. I wanted to capture what I thought about the whole affair. The fact that the heavily defeated population of the local Mayans have been isolated from their deserved land by another wave of foreign interest, the fact that everything from a sacred waterhole to an ancient ruin has been sold off and exploited to the point where its original beauty only serves to contrast the ugly nature of its new surroundings. The overpowering presence of Americana from the Chevrolet, Coca-Cola selling purified (not mineral) to buying an island nearly for the a modern plantation for the production of cane sugar for the new Coca-Cola Life, to the 7/11 pumping out hotdogs and Lucky Strikes at all hours to the sale of corn production (corn being the fundamental grain of the whole of Meso-American civilization) to Monsanto by the new government. The fact that many of the local or travelling ‘alternative’ population were not focusing or doing anything collectively to challenge any of this, no boycotts instead lapping it up mystified by cheap cocaine, out of place hallucinogenics and blonde girls with 3 day time limits. The way that music is the pulse of everything, good and bad, for business and pleasure as well as being the fun mask shielding the reality of this rape scene from those who have the most potential to influence it. I also wanted to bust some gritty UK urban line-styles too because it had been a while so I excitedly and gratefully got to work.

The most profound moment of my trip so far was when after 5 days of cautious brushwork, again dealing with the storms, mosquitoes and skin melting heat, (attracting praise, confusion and the occasional bout of hostility from the never ending flow of passers by) was when, nearing its completion groups of the local Mayan builders, most of whom cannot read or write Spanish and are isolated from all that is around them except the construction sites and jungle fringes of my neighborhood, started to stare and point to the subject matter I’d carefully chosen, as well as the Mayan symbol meaning “It happened like this…” that was the pretext to the stories in the unburnt codex’s that I had hoped would grab their attention. They were looking a me and back at the piece, going close and touching it, stopping work and debating with each other in Mayan dialect then slapping me on the back and shaking my hand. Some just stared from across the street what they were thinking was a mystery to me, but they were though. It meant more than any other who stopped that week, I realized then the sheer power of the mural in this country – the fact that all barriers, language, class, and race are surpassed by the stroke of a brush and the respect of the piece as something more than a cool image or decoration for a dubious development project. A real statement for all to enjoy, discuss and believe in, and not be replaced. This was what I need to happen for me, and the big fish in a small pond that was created from this achievement started to enjoy a hell of a lot of royal treatment, with pretty much all you can imagine from a tropical part paradise falling at his feet.

An exhibition came form this, a collective show called “No More Plastic !” pointing out the savage destruction of the reefs and delicate ecosystems of the Caribbean by the slob trash nature of the rapidly growing society who live as well as holiday there. Representing Minesweeper in these environments showed me the fortune we have in London and even though so many liberties are being taken away from us there is so much still left that can be using to connect and unite creatives and communities. With the additional confidence arising from this, finally a conscious group dynamic like what we aim for at Undercurrents (as well as my last rental payment ending and high season of US tourists coming around to fill the beaches and send the prices skyrocketing) I knew my newfound small-town fame and comfort had to come to an end. My good friend Raf who I live with in London had recently arrived to escape the vacuum too, after nailing it with web design in Soho and we decided to buy a car, a 1989 VW Jetta with a new engine for 15000 pesos from a mechanic called Carlos who owed a local wizard I knew a favour. Having someone I could trust around changed everything, and made my personal achievements of my two months alone there resonate more realizing I had never been alone before now. Its not about bodies around you, its about those who know you and can notice your previous habits and limits changing, revealing these details to yourself in unspoken ways I can’t express in words.

Meanwhile, an alarming story in the news was filtering through the country. 43 students from the state of Guerrero had gone missing following a demonstration. In a country with a famous modern phenomenon of disappearances, fingers where pointing at local governors, mothers were crying in despair and faces were being covered as a new wave of direct action was gripping this historically revolutionary, yet heavily nullified and repressed nation. One morning I awoke to find out a piece of bone had been found in the local Guerrero rubbish bins, and details had emerged from the local cartel of a collection of young men had been handed over to them for disposal by the local municipal police force under the orders of the local governor on the night of the demonstration. “Its going to be a new revolution guey” a drinking companion explained to me that night while keeping half an eye on the gaggle of French girls who had just fallen into the bar. “It terrible news”, I said. He looked at me with half a smile and an expression that could only be ‘Is it?’. “Things need to change here amigo… Now everyone’s watching…” . I realized I was here in interesting times, and soon after I packed my bags said my goodbyes was on my way east to who knows what…

To be continued...

Minesweeper Magazine ~ First Issue ~ March 2015