Eloisa Cartonera

Struggling to keep up with a blog here. There's something about working at internet cafes on shared computers that makes keeping a blog exceedingly difficult. That and I can't post photos - not that I've been taking very many.

Finally made it to Eloisa Cartonera yesterday. It's a social, comunity, art project in Buenos Aires, but appears to exist in other parts of South America. The cartoneros are men, women and children who scour the city collecting cardboard which can be sold to cash to factories and recycling centers outside of the city. There's a fair bit of documentation about cartoneras online, if you want to learn more.

Eloisa Cartonera works differently. They buy the cardboard (I think at a higher rate than the recycling centers - my Spanish isn't good enough to totally understand the website). The cardboard is recycled into book covers for written works donated by authors. Sometimes the authors donate the sole publishing rights of the piece. The covers are all hand painted and unique and you could really spend hours in the little studio, checking out the different volumes. They also have blank notebooks and a few other, more professionally printed items. I'm a bit scant on a all of the details, but it's an interesting website even if you don't know Spanish.

I was awesome and only had a 100 peso bill to pay for the books we were buying. The poor woman couldn't find change and had to go somewhere on her bike to get change for me. Usually I'm careful about breaking large bills, but just missed it this time. They were so nice though and invited us to paint book covers with them, and with some nudging, I painted a pretty hideous one. My friend's was much nicer, probably because she put some thought into it. I have photos, and will try to post them somewhere along the way.

Anyway, it's a great organization doing positive work in the community through art, books and recycling.

t-shirts on argentinian women

I love myself. -a sparkly black and gold tank top with very flourished lettering, on a very, very pregnant woman, accompanied by her husband. Puerto Madero, 12 Oct.

I usually date 10s. -on a fashionable, early 30-something woman. Peurto Madero, 12 Oct. (I guess she sometimes settles for an 8 or a 9.)

transmission from argentina

The blog is up and running again! Most excellent.

I arrived in Buenos Aires last Friday. I guess that was October 3? Since then I've been exploring the city center on foot, taking Spanish language lessons and eating too many empanadas. Buenos Aires is a city paved with alfajores.

Have found a great little gallery showing artists' books (libros de artistas) already though. Wussmann is an interesting spot, with a large gallery in the front, a fine stationary shop beyond the gallery and a small press room with a platen and some other press beyond the shop. Downstairs is a little bookshop with artists' monographs etc, and upstairs is an area devoted exclusively to libros de artistas. It's not an exceedingly large space, but its super comfortable and there's plenty of work by Argentine artists to go through. I only made had time for one or two books before running off to class, so I didn't look at very much. I spent most of my time with The Lottery Project, a book by an Argentine artist living and working in Scotland. The artist, Ral Veroni, prints drawings and imagery onto his losing lottery tickets. There's a very long text in the beginning about why he plays the lottery in all of these different countries (a statement about funding for the arts) and the book must have been made up of at least 80-100 discarded tickets.

There is much, much more to catch up on, but I don't quite have the same luxury of time and internet connections to write my day away like I did in Japan. Little nuggets here and there will have to suffice. Photos will eventually happen, although I really haven't taken too many yet as I was completely consumed with Spanish lessons last week.