Selected by curator Priamo Lozada to represent the new Mexican electronic production, Colectivo Nortec is an attempt to interpret the cultural hybridism of Tijuana, a city that receives crowds of American teenagers on weekends with cheap and available booze, sex and drugs. “The foundation of Colectivo Nortec is the digitized reconstruction of urbanity with aesthetical intentions”, say creators such as Fussible (Pepe Mogt), the first one to sample norteña music in search of a local element to his electronic projects. The fusion generated the urban contemporary sound that became an aesthetical phenomenon and inspired graphic artists, fashion designers and filmmakers to “go beyond the cultural vacuum and approach the contrasting realities of a place that is neither First nor Third World, neither Mexican nor American, with the objective to transform the weirdness of Tijuana into art”, according to Josh Tyarangiel from “Time” magazine.
artists
Works
Curator's text
Nortec Collective
Nortec: a contraction of “north” and “techno”, this expression gives name to the sonority created by artists from Tijuana, Mexico, by the mix of electronic music with regional traditional rhythms, such as the norteña (accordions, tubas, drums) and the tambora (variations on polkas and waltzes brought by Germans to Mexico in the 19th century). It also designates the visual counterpart of the fusion, video images that reinterpret aspects of the city, a temple of cheap fun on the border with the United States. Nortec Collective: a performance in which Nortec DJs and VJs manipulate live sonorities and images produced according this concept, invoking a spirit in a similar way to the catharsis in raves, but full of aesthetic intentions. Or, in the creators’ words: “The ‘nortecña idea’ has two channels: visual images and sound images. Due to both factors, the fun explodes and the feet do not stop dancing.” Colectivo Nortec: musicians, bands, projects, designers and artists involved in the creation of Nortec images and sounds: Bostich, Fussible, Clorofila, Ángeles Moreno, Mashaka.
As defined by the creators of the movement, Nortec is an example of a new artistic discipline, arisen from the perspective of digital sound and image deconstruction and construction. “We are in the middle of a change in the art conception regarding the perception of music and visual arts, thanks to digital technology. Electronic musicians are the heart of this new musical understanding. The art of sound manipulation reflected on the visual area and gave rise to VJs who follow the same artistic drive as DJs and electronic musicians in cutting and reconstructing pre-recorded material. A clear example of this art-technology dialectics is Colectivo Nortec, which includes a musical part based on the digital mixing of traditional sounds with computer noises, and a visual part in which images of the city are reinvented in visual compositions modified by computer and a video mixer.”
To the sound of the nervous “nortecño beat”, these images subvert the documental technique to translate the vibration and the surreal architecture of salons, streets and plants of Tijuana. The first ones produced under the nortecño concept are in charge of the Clorofila project by the graphic designers Torres and Verdín, organizers of the exhibition of 50 Mexican and foreign artists that presented the newborn Nortec Visual in June, 2000. In the same month, the fusion of sound and visual trends of the movement crystallized in Nortec City, the launching party of the CD “Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 1” (which arrived in the United States at the beginning of 2003) and in the first Colectivo Nortec show. In the Brazilian version of the performance, two DJs and one VJ command the audio and video mixers.
Selected by curator Priamo Lozada to represent the new Mexican electronic production, Colectivo Nortec is an attempt to interpret the cultural hybridism of Tijuana, a city that receives crowds of American teenagers on weekends with cheap and available booze, sex and drugs. “The foundation of Colectivo Nortec is the digitized reconstruction of urbanity with aesthetical intentions”, say creators such as Fussible (Pepe Mogt), the first one to sample norteña music in search of a local element to his electronic projects. The fusion generated the urban contemporary sound that became an aesthetical phenomenon and inspired graphic artists, fashion designers and filmmakers to “go beyond the cultural vacuum and approach the contrasting realities of a place that is neither First nor Third World, neither Mexican nor American, with the objective to transform the weirdness of Tijuana into art”, according to Josh Tyarangiel from “Time” magazine.
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "14º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica Videobrasil": de 22 de setembro de 2003 a 19 de outubro de 2003, p. 267, São Paulo, SP, 2003.