Patricio Maya

        writer & cultural critic
                                   

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Selected Articles

Why do Hipsters grow Mullets?

The American hinterlands have become precious because they are fading. They are fading because that's the way of the country; the way of development, growth, expansion, late capitalism, whatever you want to call it.

It's Always Quiet in the End 

I see her walking slowly, eyes on the floor, like she usually does. She's holding the German poetry anthology in her hands. Her old brain, I tell myself, is thinking about the same poems I was thinking about a few days ago. 

Tambellini's Lanterna Magica

Perhaps remaining out of the mainstream for decades had instilled in Aldo Tambellini a young artist's zest for creation. Perhaps it was something else. That's what I wanted to trace down: the source of his almost religious commitment to art.  

Power Fashion Awards

We're awarding fashion innovators in world politics. Male dresses, platform shoes, religious robes, military uniforms, medieval jewelry, printed shirts and all sorts of ridiculous hats, bandanas, feathers, pins, twigs and swords have been taken into account.



 A Cocaine Moratorium

If numbers do nothing for you, please close your eyes for a minute and visualize a field full of decapitated bodies. That's what drugs are doing to Mexico on a daily basis. There's no shedding our part of the blame.

From the Immigration Trenches

One day Victor, the main cook, came to work late. This is what he said: "A cop stopped me while driving on La Brea because he thought I looked suspicious. And I didn't have a drivers license so he took my Honda Civic away."

Terry Smith

As straight-forward as the images in America's Finest Kids are, a lot is up to the viewer. This is true about all art experiences, but more so in this case. Smith's photos showcase a very particular kind of homo-eroticism: older eyes lusting after the young male body.

 Almagul Menlibayeva

Atavism is the recurrence in a plant or an animal of certain primitive characteristics that were present in an ancestor but have not occurred in intermediate generations. Menlibayeva invokes her ancient self. She looks for it around the Kazakh steppe.

Roberto Artl: Mad Toy

After having made it through hell, Silvio gets kicked out of the Air Force for being "too much of a thinker." He tries to kill himself but fails. Then he meets a good hearted parking attendant who lets him into his plan to rob a rich man's house with the maid's help. 

Zhang Huan

One day in 1992, Zhang Huan, a student attending a university in Beijing, went for a bike ride. As he rode around, he stumbled upon a mannequin’s leg: A woman’s leg. No body, no arms, no other leg. Something about the strange object caught his eye. 

La Sera 

Along with Best Coast and the Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls make up the holy trinity of surf punk pop-noise: a new wave of female bands that's no less than kept American garage rock alive for the last couple of years or so. .

American Idiot 

American Idiot, directed by Michael Mayer, sounds great and looks dazzling, but fails at something essential: it lacks a heart. Or, rather, it has a fake heart. It pretends to be an edgy punk rock musical with edgy punk rock themes.  

Books by P. Maya 

E-pamphlet about dissident bloggers Ai Weiwei, Yoani Sánchez, Hossein Derakhshan and their relationship to the Chinese, Cuban and Iranian dictatorships. 

Poetry and translation journal, Stanford University. Featured poets: Faisal Siddiqui, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Patricio Maya, Fady Joudah and Millicent Borges Accardi. 

Photography book by Steven Rubin. In-depth essay by P.Maya. Publisher: drkrm gallery.