Year of the Diamond Dogs

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
Through December 22

Julio Cesar Morales
The Year of the Diamond Dogs
a Hallwalls Artist in Residence Project (HARP)

The Year of The Diamond Dogs is a sonic and visual landscape that evokes the dystopian future explored by Orwell’s novel 1984 and Bowie’s Diamond Dogs. In Morales’ work, peril, expectation, desire and disillusion create a field of tension. Working from a Latino perspective, Morales uses mutated sound samples of Diamond Dogs, language, typography, and idiosyncratic symbols from the Latin American urban landscape—such as the broken bottles that are often found embedded in the concrete atop walls to protect and define property boundaries—to create a dangerous topography that evokes issues of immigration, alienation, dystopia and surveillance.

The project includes multi-channel video, sculpture and sound with original music by Los Creamators and additional audio of the artist’s aunt singing obscure Mexican songs. Morales utilizes digital media in the broadest sense—as a printed mural, recorded sound, LED signs, video etc. His artistic practice can be described as employing the DJ’s method of remixing as a means to analyze the politics of culture.

[text of post edited from Hallwalls Web site. Image of artwork by Julio Cesar Morales from Hallwalls Web site.]