Juan Daniel Machin-Mastromatteo, Information Research
Tales from the Writing Crypt (read as internal monologue). 1. At 5,000 words: this is a chapter, I must have at least 10,000. 2. At 10,000: I still need to finish all sections, then I will make sure it is 12,000 at most. 3. Almost finished. Wordcount? 14,500. Will they accept this? Where did I put the darned guidelines? Oh, I still haven’t written that section on (put your topic here).
Between 2002 and 2005 I managed to bring together a group of students from various schools of the Central University of Venezuela in a rather heterogeneous group, but with the common interest of writing literature. The first years we had no visible name or voice, but it was in 2005 that we really made university hear about ourselves, we found we could register the group as a group of university extension, which we did. With this request we could request the use of the auditoriums and halls of the Faculty of Humanities, pay for a few hours. We did some presentations on these places, also in the open areas of the University, in the classrooms we made our literary meetings and on the Internet we found a way to communicate and disseminate our writings. 2005 was our golden age, but at the end of that year, the group disappears and today in 2009 the site where the magazine was will be closed as Yahoo Geocities service changes and becomes a paid service, so I post t his invaluable material on my blog to rest and inspire. Let this be a reminder of something we accomplished and to be as well a tribute to the Canibalización Aleatoria (Random Cannibalization Group) and all the poets who were part of it. Sometimes I feel nostalgia for the time we spent together, all that we did and also the material produced, its quality fills me with pride, although I would like the group to continue to exist, but I know time and distance are factors difficult to overcome. Without further ado I present the 5 numbers of the Venezuelan Experimental Literary Magazine Canibalízate. Enjoy them. (Only in Spanish, sorry).
I made this video for a presentation assignment about leadership on a Human Resource Management course. It is intended also as a homage to Steve Jobs, wishing him to get better and return to Apple to continue develop and presenting amazing products. The list of the footage used is at the end of the video.
I read these poems of mine -in english- on October 7th 2008 at the Oslo University College in a Literary Evening.
This video has spanish subtitles and its Youtube webpage has the english texts.
I first read the poem Prelude by the Venezuelan poet José Antonio Ramos
Sucre and after that I read some of mine.
Enjoy.
One of the two arts in which I believed not to have the ability to obtain a decent result is the plastic arts, as well as with music, the technology has made me surpass my frustration. These designs were made to illustrate the literary magazine “Canibalízate”, which had five numbers in 2005.
– Biography of an actress in flames –
– Bond –
– Ice Cannibal –
– Stilized cannibal –
– Faces –
– Carrousel –
– Dirty ice –
– The Sacred Family –
– To kill you and smile –
– Desert and train-
– Spiral stair-
– Cubic flowers –
– Photo –
– Chewing gum –
– Gloves –
– Monday racing meet –
– Smoke –
– The time –
– Killer automatic door –
– Fashion –
– Vitral –
– Flower vitral –
– Cannibal world’s navigation chart-
– Ying Yang –
– Selfportrait 001 –
– Selfportrait 002 –
– Selfportrait 003 –
– Selfportrait 004 –
This is the first trailer of my proyect of a movie “Caracas Zero Zero”.
Enjoy.
I have to confess that the music is one of the Arts in which I thought that I couldn’t get into, after my traumatic experiences as a boy, trying to learn to play violin, “cuatro”, flute and piano; only I wanted the piano, and nobody wanted me to want it, in short, I could not love it. I consider that in the case of music and I, it has happened exactly just like with painting or design: the technology has managed to alleviate another one of my frustrations, releasing to me of the musical trauma. These tracks were made like original music for the animated tutorials, working for the Pedro Grases Library of the Metropolitan University, since we had the problem that we wanted to put music into them, but with the subject of copyrights, there were two solutions: classical music or original music, you can see what I decided. I made some of the tracks with the collaboration of Donovan Figueroa, friend, poet, musician and fellow librarian. I will put out some more soon as I continue “composing”.
Perhaps I claim it for being the first of the arts in which I entered, perhaps I say it because it really is the truth, who knows? I believe that the supreme artistic expression part from words, when naming an object we create it and we make it ours. In painting the word exists, beyond the title of a work, the message although elusive it is of a tacit, invisible form, like the rest of the arts, the work waits his spectator to arrive, to complete itself and to be simultaneously equal and nevertheless different, when it deconstructs itself in the gallery and returns to be constructed in the mind and the unconscious of the spectator. In music, the word is that accumulation of emotions evoked by seductive notes entering our ears and being codified by our brain. Many musical sorts use poetry to indicate a message in a more explicit form. Literature… what could say of it that it has been said? Let us look for a way to express ourselves, a way impulsive, creative, full of emotion and at the same time without it, a Literature without rules or critic. If the word manages to move some feeling, or impel an action, it has already fulfilled its assignment.
I always liked films, I remember I had a Lego toy with its camera and I played that I was the director. Now I can play in a more serious way, I want to integrate all my artistic knowledge in the works I could make in film. In 2005 I acquired my camera and I put myself to work, although the art irremediably is relegated to the free hours of our time, you will find some advances in my experimentation here. Caracas Zero Zero is born as an idea that must be expressed by audio-visual means by necessity, it is the perspective of the city like an element in the individual life, like it has been historically in Venezuelan Literature, I show this subject as the city as a disease, the violent city, the neon commercial fences and senseless television advertisement that invades our space, contaminating to us.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies.
An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.
From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde. The Portrait of Dorian Gray.
Juantífico 