Montez Press Radio:
A Word Misheard is a Thing Remade

June 2024–December 2024

Tune into the A Word Misheard is a Thing Remade channel on the Montez Press Radio website.

Montez Press Radio (MPR) is an experimental broadcasting and performance platform. Founded in 2018 with the goal of fostering greater discourse and interaction between artists, writers, and thinkers through the medium of radio, MPR invites different corners of the art world to connect with each other in person and on air—a place where media finally meets flesh. We’re drawn to art that exists in the unexpected, the authenticity of sharing without a script, the sounds of ideas in the making, conversation that forgets there’s an audience.

For the residency at Canal Projects, MPR invites collaborators with research based practices to produce serial radio programming about assimilation gone wrong, perfect mistranslations, and convenient misinterpretation. A reminder that a thing misheard is a thing remade.

MPR is taking the opportunity of this residency to cultivate in-person interactions around their programs, a change of pace from the virtual nature of their regular radio shows. In the library, visitors encounter a listening lounge with iPods loaded with past MPR programs that relate to the theme of mistranslations and misinterpretations.

Sub-residencies:

Walk with the Devil with Fabiola Talavera

Rave New World with Michelle LHOOQ

Random Man Editions featuring Maya Ben David

Special Programs:

Walk with the Devil: MPR Live from Canal Projects with Fabiola Talavera„ Patrick Charpenel, Ignacio Gatica, Hueso Records and DJ MPeach, July 11, 2024.

The American Anthology of Flat Music with C. Spencer Yeh and Alec Sturgis, July 22, 2024.

Rave New World: Singapore + The Last Year of Darkness—A Screening on Asia's Rising Rave Scenes with Michelle Lhooq, October 24, 2024.

…stay tuned, more being announced soon!

Fabiola Talavera is a Mexico City-based independent curator, writer, archivist, cultural producer and a program curator, alongside Leah Whitman-Salkin, of Montez Press Radio’s Mexico City broadcasts. Her series Walk with the Devil will focus on the assimilation processes of first generation Latin American artists and cultural workers living in New York City. The title refers to what Cuban critic Gerardo Mosquera would describe as the often-fruitful pact made when historically colonized cultures digest the culture of colonizers. During her time in New York, through weekly broadcasted radio shows hosting a series of different guests, she will create an audio journal that questions what is recognized as Latin American in hegemonic cultural hubs, what it means to metaphorically speak English with these accents, how artistic production has been affected by contemporary art languages and political inclusion practices, the labels and stereotypes attached to this diaspora, and if there is such a thing as a cohesive identity when living in a highly globalized world.

Michelle Lhooq is an LA-based journalist and a writer focused on music, psychedelia, counterculture, and spirituality. Her series Rave New World, based on her newsletter of the same name, will look at the movement of rave culture from its origin in Detroit to the furthest reaches of the globe, asking what its legacy can offer in varying national, political, social contexts. Her contributions will span the duration of MPR’s residency as she spends 2024 traveling to underground parties and psychedelic gatherings in places like Detroit, rural Texas, New York City, Berlin, and Budapest.

RANDOM MAN EDITIONS materializes and distributes an array of uncategorizable gems culled from the depths of the web and clipped from the furthest branches of the visual culture tree. Promoting the overlooked, underrepresented, the hybridized and the fringe, our publications are collaborations between artist, publisher and friends and are not limited to any specific media or forms.

Research

Dancing in the Devil’s Den

by Fabiola Talavera, August 2024

“Walk with the Devil” is the title of an ongoing investigation about contemporary Latin American artists, musicians, writers & other cultural practitioners currently living in the West. The title makes homage to “Caminar con el Diablo”, the book of essays about art and globalization by Cuban curator and critic Gerardo Mosquera, which describes the often-fruitful pact made when historically colonized cultures assimilate the culture of colonizers. Within the framework of Montez Press Radio’s residency “A word misheard is a thing remade” at Canal Projects I was able to spend a couple of weeks in New York City meeting people of this diaspora to discuss their processes of relocation, how has their practices and perceptions changed, and how they feel about the labels and stereotypes often attached to their identities.

Studio Visits

I ventured out to Brooklyn most days, where I found most artists’ studios are located in warehouse spaces, cooperative buildings and ample apartments shared among many. The visits were all conducted in Spanish. Although having this language in common, the accents, expressions and social conventions of each one denoted our distinct backgrounds and became part of our conversations.

Naomi Treistman created ceramic musical instruments and used the anthropomorphized figure of a house to reflect her ever-moving nature since she had left Peru.

Studio visit with Naomi Treistman. Photo Courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

Ignacio Gatica, Chilean artist who relocated to New York City in 2017, worked on a video about the financial district of Santiago de Chile, popularly known as “Sanhattan” and modeled after the big apple.

Studio visit with Ignacio Gatica. Photo courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

Mexican painter Maria Fragoso portrayed the faces of people around her and expressed through allegoric details the complex relationships she had formed in the past years in the US.

Studio visit with María Fragoso. Photo courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

Site Visits

A notable exhibition I got to see was “Amerika” at CARA by the Venezuelan Javier Téllez, which commissioned a film starring migrant non-actors in a fiction that emulated Charlie Chaplin’s comical social commentary.

View of “Javier Téllez: Amerika”, Center for Art, Research and Alliances, NYC. Photo courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

People from all over South America congregated for a sound performance at the Lower East Side outpost of Peruvian gallery Revolver for the inauguration of “Sanctuaries of Fire”, a survey of Latin-American emerging artists by the curator from Domincan Republic, Dulcina Abreu.

View of “Sanctuaries of Fire”, Revolver Galería. NYC. Photo courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

The most poignant impressions were made at the solo exhibition of Habana-born Carlos Martiel’s at Museo del Barrio, a show that outlined the visceral endurance performances he has put his body through to pose questions about colonialism, migration and race.

View of “Cuerpo: Carlos Martiel”, El Museo del Barrio, NYC. Photo courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

Live Gathering: Walk with the Devil: MPR Live from Canal Projects

The research culminated in a day program at Canal Projects on the 11th of July, which was broadcasted live through Montez Press Radio. While guests arrived and mingled around the exhibition of Mexican artist, Fernando Palma, the speakers played Compilation 1 by Hueso Records. These six DIY recordings were found by Chilean artist Iván Navarro and made during the most obscure period of the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). Only circulated in reduced local contexts, musicians such as Pinochet Boys, Cleopatras, Índice de Desempleo, Electrodomésticos, Banda Pequeño Vicio and Álvaro Peña embodied the spirit of those times.

Later on in the evening, a talk ensued between Museo del Barrio’s Director Patrick Charpenel and Ignacio Gatica in which I acted as a moderator. Gatica reflected on his practice, which examines neo-liberal economic models, changing urban landscapes, and how language and symbols play a role in the assimilation of Western thought. Charpenel explained the differences between running a museum in Mexico City and in New York, the origins of Museo del Barrio from the civil-rights movement, the term “Latinx” and the expansion of Museo del Barrio’s Triennial into other geographies.

“Walk with the Devil” July 11th event as part of Montez Press Radio’s residency “A Word Misheard is a Thing Remade”, Canal Projects, NYC. Photo courtesy of Fabiola Talavera.

To close the night, a DJ set titled “La Joyería” by Venezuelan producer MPeach got the audience moving with high-energy dance beats and traditional rhythms from Venezuela, The Caribbean, Latin America and Africa.