Dear c-m-l:

I was supposed to write a text for your web publication months ago. Of course, when faced with the task of writing, the old habit of self distrust pushes to the foreground yet again, with a force that surprises even my insecure self. But this particular excuse feels unwarranted; or rather, I know I am insecure but this is too much even for me. So, dear c-m-l, I hope you will forgive this excess and bear with me as I try to figure out what it is that makes me so discomforted about writing about collaborative practices in Tijuana—the stated topic for the virtual exhibition you have so kindly entrusted me, and one which after six years of living in this region and participating in various collaborative endeavors I know quite well.

As it is time for disclosure, let me confess this: I am a reformed artist. Not a multi-media artist, nor a video or sound artist, but a seven-hour-a-day oil painter. As a teenager in the eighties, I was chosen among few to become a painter. Think Basquiat, or Schnable before the movies. In that macho world I felt a little like Joan of Arc readying for the lonely battles ahead; battles that, it was promised, would bring me closer to greatness, to that conversation with the history itself of painting, so desired and illuminating. Needless to say, the discourse’s coding is unrelentingly one-sided. Either the young artist speaks to painters past and they plainly do not answer; or painters past establish a supernatural conversation amongst themselves, through their exegetes, art historians, and critics, to which the artist can respond only through destruction. The young artist must raze or overcome the very image of the predecessor in order to continue the tradition. This is what Modernism requires and what Post-Modernism tried to oppose through citation. Nevertheless, whether Modernism is over or not, the relationship between originality, one-upmanship, and success remains firmly embedded, particularly in the art market.

Few things are so silly and exhausting as starring in a titan’s battle with say, Velázquez; yet my deeper complaint was not with this. The to-and-fro of dialogue; the putting forth of ideas to be tested together; the discomfort and elation of confronting an utterly different belief; the conflict that ensues; the resolution of differences; the yielding to another’s position; and the working together towards an agreed end does not happen, alone, in a studio. Or it happens, but in a very different way. In the studio the battle is with oneself—narcissism’s evil twin is self-hatred. Yet, I do love and respect painting still—few things give me as much pleasure as looking at other people’s paintings and grasping quickly, through years of putting paint to canvas, the intention of the body behind them.

Lucy Raven's and Ryan Harden Brown's Incident No. 21: MS Found in a Bottle installation at Incident Report in Hudson, New York took place from May 27–June 24, 2009, and is reprised here by responses to the project solicited by the artists. This MS continues an ongoing process of revision and exegesis on the sometimes infra-thin partition separating private space and the commons. With contributions from Incident Report, Lucas Knipscher, Clifford Borress, and Robert Fitterman.

It all started on Saturday 31st of May 2008, when more than eight hundred people walked from the inner city of Copenhagen to Christianshavn, under the parole: “THEY TEAR DOWN, WE BUILD UP!”

Halide Edip primary school, Ankara,TurkeyArtist and educator Arzu Ozkal presents Persistent Iteration, a two-channel video work in which Ozkal returned to her primary school in Ankara, Turkey, to record the process of class-room interpellation. Persistent Iteration marks Ozkal's own formation in the ritual repetition of speech and writing.

"We are part of Tijuana’s cultural community and we are opposed to the appointment of Virgilio Muñoz as the new director of CECUT (Cultural Center of Tijuana). We are opposed to his appointment because he doesn’t meet the requirements needed to lead CECUT today. As it has happened with many other institutions, his appointment is contaminated by political favors and isn’t based on the desire to choose a professional who is dedicated to culture and art.

“El proyecto de las morras is not an experiment. It opens the possibility of dialogue with women who live in confinement in a drug rehabilitation center. We, morras as well, employ our knowledge and our literary resources to construct a bridge with and for these women."