The Tijuana Convention & Visitors Bureau offers $500 to the best video birthday card for Tijuana’s 119th birthday. The deadline is July 9th by midnight. Submit your video to the Tijuana Birthday group on YouTube. Judges will announce the winner on Tijuana’s official birthday, July 11th.

Rules:

• Videos should be between 60 to 90 seconds in length
• Video must reference Tijuana’s 119 years and its birthday
• Video must include images, icons, or visual references to Tijuana
• Videos can be in Spanish or English or both
• Video must include text promoting “TijuanaOnline.org” at end
• Video must not be vulgar, offensive, negative, or in bad taste
• Submit your 60-90 seconds video no later than July 9th

A few weeks ago, the progressive Tijuana magazine ZETA published a candid interview with Pepe Mogt (Fussible). In the interview, he expresses his outrage that fellow Nortec Collective member Roberto Mendoza (Panóptica) individually trademarked the name “Nortec” as his own:

Nortec isn’t something between just the five of us. Nortec is part of the same people of Tijuana that made it possible to define the sound and its own cultural movement. Nortec is a sound. Nortec isn’t a brand, nor is it something that belongs to one person alone, or a specific group of people. At least to those of us in the collective it’s ours in the musical sense, but Nortec came from many people that gave an aesthetic and musical life to this movement; and if we have to mention names, we’d say Torolab, Acamonchi, Ángeles Moreno and an uncountable group of others. (Translation of Pepe Mogt’s comments in ZETA)

Mogt describes the name Nortec as an abbreviation of “Norteño Techno.” He clarifies that the collective registered the name “Nortec Collective” for international distribution, but says he’s unsure of the legalities in Mexico. He says this all came out of nowhere; he was notified on paper and hadn’t yet spoken to Mendoza.

Another collective member, P.G. Beas (Hiperboreal), blogged about the controversy. He confirms the group had no plans to tour in 2008 as each member works on individual or duo projects.

I haven’t the least idea of Robert Mendoza’s plans with his band named Nortec Panóptica Orchestra. The use of the name Nortec like this pisses us off; it’s already disingenuous that a band that isn’t the Nortec Collective uses the name Nortec. It’s obvious that no one in the collective knew that Robert Mendoza would register the name Nortec in Mexico as his own. This would seem obvious, but in some news it wasn’t made clear. Another thing that would seem obvious, but I’d like to underline it, is that we have said a thousand times that without Tijuana, Nortec simply wouldn’t exist. It would be nothing. (Translation of P.G. Beas’ blog post)

Bloggers (BeamTV, Xeelee) clearly agree with the anti-Mendoza sentiment, using words that just don’t have the same ring in English :)

Take a look at a high-definition version to see all the detail. It’s pretty amazing how much activity you can see. Looking at this makes me wish I’d been shooting time-lapse videos of every scene I’ve shot in Tijuana.

Here’s the conversation:

(It’s not exactly an award-winning performance by yours truly, but I thought it was worth a posting for posterity’s sake.)

Much has progressed since this recording. Google has joined the effort to streamline updates, and those who have been updating the county maps will now be contributing directly to our Google map. In addition, a site from Governor Schwarzenegger, calfires.com, has embedded the map directly. Local CBS is linking to the map. Wired bloggers Michael Calore and Kevin Poulsen reported on KPBS’ use of Twitter and Google maps.

(Special props to Joe Spurr for pushing the use of Twitter and Google maps.)

KPBS News is using Twitter to post up-to-the-minute information as it comes in:

Check out this Google map for fire perimeter, evacuation shelters and residential evacuations:

My family in Escondido was evacuated but, thankfully, their homes are fine. Here are some of my brother’s pics:

Taken on the evening of 10/21/07. We were forced to evacuate the next morning. Escondido, CA. — Smokey Sunset, originally uploaded by prgibbs.

About 3:30AM looking southeast from Old San Pasqual. This is a very short distance from our house. Escondido, CA. — Fire!, originally uploaded by prgibbs.

An easterly view of our home just prior to our evactuation at approximately 6:30AM on 10/22/07. Escondido, CA. — Evacuation #1, originally uploaded by prgibbs.

About 7:30AM on 10/22/07 looking south on Orange Ave., Escondido, CA. — Orange Ave., originally uploaded by prgibbs.

About 8:30AM on 10/22/07. Looking southeast from my parent’s yard. This is a full color photo, not sepia. Escondido, CA. — Smokey Sky, originally uploaded by prgibbs.

Shortly after 9:00AM, we received another evacation notice. Me posing before we hit the road…again. Escondido, CA. — Evactuation #2, originally uploaded by prgibbs.

UPDATE: Film critic and curator of Film School Confidential, Beth Accomando, posted a brief review of each film. Of Crayola Monologues, she says:

You can’t get any more low budget than photographing crayons, but Gibbs proves that clever writing and a strong creative vision are worth far more than a big budget. This film is playful and humorous but with a biting social message. The film makes us do a double take as it points out how seemingly trivial things–like the names of colors on crayons–can reflect bigger social issues.

General Admission: $10
Students, Seniors, Military: $6
For more information: 858-422-5564

Primo set Nathan! I’m a photographer based in New Zealand putting together an exhibition on the topic. If you’d like to have some of your images included please check my website & let me know…

A few months after submitting some photos, the project started coming to life. Here are a few images from Geoff as the collage was coming together.

Mosaic V1!
For the Santos Cafe ‘mini-exhib’ I’ve been producing the shots onto various thickness PVC blocks at 100mm square. With the limited wall space at this venue I am only able to produce a mosaic of around 50 images though the main exhib will feature the rest of the group. There’s been a few late nights as it’s quite labour intensive but it’s looking sweet!

Will update more pics as it progresses…

Thanks again for all your shots & stories!

Originally uploaded by sole intentions.

Mosaic V1 contd…
Originally uploaded by sole intentions.

Mosaic V1 contd…
Originally uploaded by sole intentions.

See if you can spot this one of mine nestled in there. It’s one of my personal favorites, and ranks as #4 for interestingness (800 views, 11 favorites, 6 comments) of my photos on Flickr (also see #1, #2, #3). It also is holding steady at around #235 on Flickr’s Explore for the most interesting photos uploaded on December 5, 2006 (see all photos of mine that made Explore pages)

Read more about the exhibition and Geoff Budd in the article Exhibition with plenty of sole, check out the exhibition flyer (PDF), and if you’re near Auckland, New Zealand, the opening is this Tuesday Jan. 30 at Satellite Gallery from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

So, I went ahead and uploaded everything to YouTube, Google Video, and added self-hosted Flash versions here on the site. I added copy/paste embed code to give bloggers as many options as I possibly can to make it portable (a huge improvement over the quad-option WindowsMedia / Quicktime / Hi / Low choices that launch a popup window). I also adjusted the wording on the links in the header, re-ordered the sidebar, and added Related Posts to the bottom of each blog entry.

While the updates aren’t revolutionary, it does feel like a milestone. The videos are out there, really out there, with searchable transcripts on Google and everything. I was always hesitant about giving the videos away to places like YouTube, but in the end, the value of visibility is worth more than the $0 status quo while it sits on the shelf. And if the videos start going nuts on YouTube and Google, both have there’s always the option to charge if that made sense further down the line.

Check out Color Studies for a version of me two years ago talking about my work.

You should definitely check out their website. Once you get past the horizontal navigation, it’s a rich experience worth a lot of exploring. The exhibition opens May 21st and runs through September 3, 2006 at both the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Downtown and La Jolla.

Tijuana is a new cultural hot spot. Influential publications in the United States, Europe, and Mexico have recognized the city as a vibrant site of innovation in the arts. Journalists, scholars, and critics alike celebrate Tijuana’s diversity of artistic production from art made with traditional media, such as, painting and printmaking to installation and conceptual art; from photography to digitally derived images; from street-level video to ambitious feature films; from utopian architectural proposals to streamlined and economic housing design. As the city’s newest art weekly recently announced, “Tijuana moves –and it’s everywhere.”

This exhibition will document the recent explosion of artistic experimentation in Tijuana, and will also explore the subtle shift in focus from art about the border experience to art that takes advantage of a new type of accelerated urbanism being pioneered in developing cities around the world.

Here’s an interview from KPBS These Days about the exhibition.

At Balboa Park in San Diego, tens of thousands gathered to remember those who have died crossing the border and celebrate their unity. At the corner of Juniper and Sixth, a small group of people waving flags started calling others to march. People started to follow, and the police quickly stepped in to try and stop the crowd. The group chanted “Si se puede” and walked past the police and began to march through the city. The police worked quickly to clear a path, blocking streets as if it were a planned parade. Organizers of the rally ran to the front of the line, but were unsuccessful in dissuading the crowd’s action.

The organizers and police decided to guide the crowd to City Hall. The group ignored several blockades and twisted their own path through the city. At the entrances to the highways, police were standing with bags of riot cuffs at the ready. Once the crowd reached the closed and vacant City Hall, they turned through the Horton Plaza entrance and looped back to rejoin the tail of the crowd, heading back to Balboa Park.

Throughout the impromptu march, the participants remained calm and peaceful. In the end, the same officer who pleaded with one of the leaders to turn around shook hands and thanked him for managing to lead them back around safely and peacefully. Those at the front of the march were young and passionate. While the group was unorganized, they worked together and followed each other’s lead. There were no egos or celebrities leading the group. It was clear that a newfound confidence, strength and power emerged tonight.