🌎 ESPAÑOL // ENGLISH
Cristian Franco: The Manna Machine (2016-2017)
In 2007, Jaime Maussan introduced the “Metepec Being,” a creature he claimed was the missing link between humans and extraterrestrial life. The episode turned out to be a combination of a young taxidermist’s experiment, an energetic media legitimization campaign, and the popular need for a convenient creed.
Using a similar strategy, Ser de Metepec Records is a record label that releases cult materials on vinyl and makes them “available to the most refined and demanding ears in the world” through the internet: a fabrication of imaginary bands, invented reviews, and nonexistent music. This LP collection is one of the projects presented in The Manna Machine, an exhibition by artist Cristian Franco (Tecate, 1980). The show assembles false prophets, nostalgia for adolescent rebellion, and the paraphernalia of border punk culture.
Bearers of stigmata, messiahs of obscenity, meta-terrestrial street criers, and Mexican politicians from the 1990s make up an “army of salvation,” aligned like an illustration of fides quaerens intellectum—faith seeking understanding—but at the cost of deception and manipulation. Drawing on the patterns of sensationalist culture, Franco articulates this need for a convenient creed through a critical compendium of sociological observations that flirt with the absurd, accompanied by youthful poetry and bad company. Among that company is Daniel Guzmán, sketching an apt soundtrack for the exhibition.