In its first edition, AKI AORA invited artists and speakers to participate, the invited artists were John Arnold (EU), Blake Shaw (EU), Paloma Contreras Lomas (MEX, Bikini Wax), Jacob Kirkegaard (DK), Sally Montes (MEX), Baby Vulture (MEX) and as the invited guest speaker, Robin Kahn (EU). The live performances were by Baby Vulture (MEX), Superpoze (FR), and Damian Romero (MX).
The beach gives back what we leave behind. Working with plastic collected along the shoreline, Baby Vulture transforms debris into souvenir — each discarded fragment cleaned, handled, offered. From her booth she passes these objects to visitors the way any seaside vendor might, except what she sells is our own waste, returned with care. A gentle transaction that asks what we take home, what we leave behind, and who — or what — bears the cost.
He’ll be closing out Aki Aora 2017 with a musical celebration in a location that cannot be topped. We have chosen Papaya Playa as our closing venue due to their focuses on many key areas, such as solar energy, water treatment and recycling, gardening and plantations, local sourcing, fair trade, responsible construction, material recycling, and community involvement to reach sustainability and social responsibility objectives. Baby Vulture With a fine art pedigree and tastes ranging far beyond the average DJ, Baby Vulture carves her own worlds and stories from the interplay of her disparate influences.Superpoze (Live)Having risen quickly in the Caen electro scene, Superpoze has kept busy touring, running his own label and releasing his debut album. Here he will be presenting a live performance of his increasingly melodic sound.Damian RomeroOne of our closing night DJs, Damián has been committed to the promotion of contemporary music and the digital arts in Mexico for more than a decade. As the driving force and creative director behind Mutek.mx, he is a keen eared and deft musical selector.
Robin Kahn (1961, based in New York City) was invited as a special guest because of her artivism and trajectory which continues to inspire emerging artists and women working in the arts.
She spoke about her Documenta 13 project where she invited women refugees from Western Sahara in order to raise social awareness of their impossible circumstances and at the same time to celebrate their strength and unique ability to organise themselves in complex social feministic structures, which allow them to survive.
Sally Montes (1981, based in Mexico City) decided to work with the local Mayan radio as a communicational tool to create a bridge between the exhibition's events and the local Mayan community. The mobile radio stations allow visitors to experience the ephemerality of language as a poetic performative element within the installation.
When the last tourist leaves and the cenote exhales, something shifts. The slap of plastic sandals fade, the gurgle of snorkels disappears, and the water returns to itself.
Sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard descended into the Yucatan's sacred cenotes after dark, capturing the acoustic life that emerges only in their absence — the drip and resonance of limestone walls, the flutter of wings, the surface tension of a world undisturbed.
These recordings are not documentation. They are an act of listening on behalf of the non-human inhabitants who share this place, unheard, every night.
Achiote Cenote: An exploration of the mystical and material symbolism of both Achiote and Cenote on Maya terms. The conceptual dinner was set out to intertwine in taste and in implementation both qualities of Achiote as a spice and as a pigment in the very specific location of the Cenote with its implied magic through the transference of color, ritual and sacrifice where both spiritual and physical nourishment collide. At first John Arnold (1975, based in Berlin) built a pirate style color laboratory to explore the pigment form of achiote where he invited guests also to participate in the experience of the color. Natural objects like the cups and bowls inspired by traditional Mayan vessels and even the napkins were printed there. During the dinner the artist took the visitors on a very special journey, which created an unforgettable experiences of nature, light, sound and taste.
Walter Benjamin allegedly delivered his famous lecture “The Author as Producer” at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris on April 27th, 1934. The Institution itself has since remained a matter of dispute regarding its existence and purpose. Some claim that the Institute never actually existed, that it was merely a fiction created by Benjamin, while others claimed that it was actually an espionage organization controlled by the Soviet Union. Regardless, what we know is that today it does in fact exist, at the very least as a lived fiction, and has been operational at AKI AORA for the last two weeks. The purpose of the Institute is to carry out artistic research on the formation of the contemporary forces of fascism that are seizing hold of power today, and develop poetic means for how these organizations can be combatted. On January 21st, one day after the inauguration of Donald Trump, Blake Shaw and Bikini Wax (Paloma Contreras & José Rodrigo García) delivered an audio-visual performance that combined elements of the lecture format and video art to explain the products of their research, and to deliver to the audience the tools they have developed.
