Picture: René Peñaloza Galván, Rogelio Sosa and Iván Edeza
The first encounter may have been, at least this is the recollection I have, a conversation in the Salón México; we talked about music and one of us slipped the name Captain Beefheart, we shared this taste and linked it with other common interests.
This is how I met René, introduced by our mutual friend Paulina del Paso, who, at that time and later on, would compose more complicities and collaborations. I specially recall El Mirador, a snack stall built from foil which sold “tortas” on the street, which was confiscated by the delegation’s authorities and recovered on Paulina and René’s initiative (as Los Miniplugs collective). This reconfiguration was aimed at serving curatorship and artistic proposals, a space converted for the sake of contemporary art. El Mirador was installed in the Glorieta Metro Insurgentes and stayed there a year with the projects of various invited artists. María José Cuevas’ design invited the passers-by to approach and discover the art pieces through peepholes places at various heights. It was inaugurated in February 2005 with the Road Movie project, a collaboration between Rogelio Sosa and me. When René decided to follow his studies in filmmaking at the New York University, Alex Dorfsman was invited to join the project, who received the baton.
I attended as public to it installation for the IV Sound Art Festival. Sonic Habitat (2002) at the Ex Teresa Arte Actual. We ran into each other during a trip to Chiapas (2006) when the Laboratorio Curatorial 060 (Curators’ Lab) invited Paulina and René to make the documentary of the project Frontera. Esbozo para la creación de una sociedad del futuro (Frontier. A draft for the creation of a society of the future. I invited him to write on the scene of audiovisual improvisation and the noise linked to Casa Vecina (the Neighbor’s House), in a first version titled What we simultaneously talk and don’t talk about when we talk about noise. After a bit of discussion on the contents, he edited it and decided to change it to Noise Music: a non-linear practice (Música noise: una práctica no lineal), published in 2011 in the Provisional identity (Identidad provisional) memoir. First delivery. In August 2009 we knew about his involvement as one of the 200 guistar players who played A Crimson Grail, a Rhys Chatham piece performed at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. On early 2007, he shared with us his contribution with Jan St. Werner, half of Mouse on Mars.
The visits to his apartment in Mexico City were listening and conversation sessions. René offered a very fine whiskey while we talked about music, films, literature, comics… we exchanged albums, books or digital files, we shared and copied films. This way I met filmmakers, writers, photographers, got interested in Tropicalism… Such space, always set by his generosity in sharing his collection, a good map of the diversity of interests and tastes, was enhanced by the knowledge and sense of humor that was always present in the sessions; as when I asked him about his girlfriend and he said that ‘we decided to give us a sabbatical life’ or his small teases when he asked if the best translation of gentrification would be fresificación (becoming sort of snobby). René would tell some anecdote on those times when he lived in Austin, we would listen to some of his favorites: Belle & Sebastian, The Clash, Ramones, he suggested to pay attention to and follow M.I.A. and selected some Tex-Mex or the weirdest Hip Hop from around the world, to end up eating tacos at El Huequito de Ayuntamiento or El Borrego Viudo. His generosity with knowledge and the materials he collected seemed to me as a family trait when I met Lupita, his mother, and Beto, his father, who are very enthusiastic about sharing.
A couple of times we shared some curious finding, like a vinyl albums’ sale in what used to be an album store in Balderas street. We found many copies of Glenn Branca’s The Ascention at a price of $10.00 Mexican pesos. Together we went through the boxes of vinyl recordings vendors who placed their stalls at the corner of Avenida Juárez and Balderas. Following his advice I subscribed to the Wire magazine, and as an invitation he gave me one of the collections accompanying some issues.
In November 2008 we had the opportunity to do our rituals, this time in the form of long walks. Returning from a trip I stopped at NY and stayed in his apartment in Williamsburg. We dedicated my stay to visit album and book stores, some of which he had visited one or two days earlier. He took me to eat at some places he had discovered and back in the apartment we listened to his most recen acquisitions. Showed me the electric jarana (Mexican small guitar) and the donkey jaw he used to play the punk-son in Bachelor Sound Machín, along with our friends Alejandro Almanza and José Luis Cortés . of course, he gave me the CD-R they had edited as a present.
We saw each other once more on December 2009, in Mexico City, to go to a Lebanese restaurant. We then went to my apartment to listen to the vinyl albums of the Antología del Son en México, we talked about our preferences between the “huasteco” or “jarocho” son (traditional music), I gave him a couple of vinyl albums which I had two copies, one of Mono Blanco that I acquired factory sealed, and I copied the first CD of Los Cojolites for him, which he had been searching for a long time. At that time we looked for an excuse for a possible collaboration, make a playlist with the saddest songs, and we thought togheter which would be the best version of My Funny Valentine for such list.
The non-linearity and impulsiveness of these anecdotes makes me recall some chats on the notions of reality and documentary, on F for Fake, Kiarostami’s Close Up, or on Stan Brakhage’s experiments… all in all so fresh that they make me think over and over that the etymology of René is reborn… and Esteban Zarco’s phrase with which he signed his emails, ‘There is more video than life’.
Iván Edeza
2020
