Ex Situ Canis Latrans
Tlahuelpuchi, 2021
Materials:
Car parts from; Juarez, New Mexico, and the LA highway. Welding rods, Karla’s pants, Allison’s lil t-shirt and nest, lint from Rossen’s house, black and white zip ties, horn tips, dragon skin silicone smeared by Morgan, styrofoam from the many Uber eats orders in Mexico, styrofoam after having seen Huma Bhabha in NYC, styrofoam of someone who bought a new TV, and dropped the packaging on the desert that meets Mount Cristo Rey. Sergios tire, twine, stainless steel zip ties, rabbit pelts, golf balls
Tlahuelpuchi genesis story:
Tlahuelpuchi is a vampire born before linear time, when blood sacrifice was a ritual that gave pulse to the cosmos, and jade pearls dangled on the chest of those said to rule the center of the universe. Tlahuelpuchi was born to the people who sweep quetzal feathers with makeshift brooms.
Tlahuelpuchi is a solitary vampire that haunts the rural towns of southern Mexico, she reads Quevedo and Vargas Llosa, makes her own resin copal incense, and raises condors as pets to help consume the food scraps she leaves behind.
Of whatever humanity she has left, her remorseful moral conscience only allows her to hunt and devour those that cause harm. Her only true real sin is stealing cloves from food stalls to rub the gums of her mouth when new fangs perforate her jaw.
Tlahuelpuchi takes pleasure in having a body without an expiration date, but during bouts of depression and anxiety brought on by her own immortality, she cuts her own tongue to taste her blood containing a current of old chthonic wisdom and to speak and be consoled by the voices that came before her.
She hunts by cutting her finger to draw out blood, placing it on the ground, and feeding her blood to a rhizomatic network of mycelium that spreads for hundreds of kilometers all over the soil. In this simbiosis, the mycelium in turn leads her to where it feels Tlahuelpuchi’s victim’s feet pressing above its system of tangled tendrils above the ground. Once the prey is isolated by the mycelium, she turns into a bat to use echolocation and fly over the swooshing canopy of trees concealing its prey. Moments before the skin of her victim raptures and the blood vessels turn into a current of bloodletting that falls down to the ground for the mycelium to also feast in. Tlathuelpuchi turns into mist; to quickly, and privately without any recording, enmesh its catch.
Hearing over an old radio on a house a few kilometers away, the news that Mexico only sends “its bad hombres, its rapists, and individuals that commit crimes to America”. Tlahuelpuchi decides to head to the USA, under the impression that her prey, “those that cause harm” have moved up north.
She travels up north protecting herself from the desert sun by hiding under car fenders until reaching Ciudad Juarez, she's faced with a barrier, that in order to enter a space, as a vampire, she must be invited in. So she hires a Coyote to smuggle her in.
This newly hired Coyote, never having smuggled a vampire himself, asks his cousin for advice. His cousin, Estela works at the maquila packing medical supplies into styrofoam and then to cardboard boxes. Estela has the brilliant idea of putting Tlahuelpuchi’s bat form inside the styrofoam of one of the boxes, but fearing that they might get caught by the x-rays that scan the semi trailers’ freight, she forgoes the idea. But Tlahuelpuchi then suggests that she can turn into mist, and easily fit into the small styrofoam box.
Tlahuelpuchi then becomes a fine mist, and transforms into what looks like a vaping cloud a millennial might have ebbed out of his mouth. The Coyote uses both of his hands to gather the fine mist and places it inside the styrofoam. Here, fine columns of mist tangle, knot and disappear as Tlathuelpuchi is nothing but a specter self contained inside the styrofoam.
Bound for El Paso carrying Tlathuelpuchi snug tight in pallets of medical supplies wrapped in plastic, the eighteen wheeler leaving the maquila just before 10 p.m., is met on the opposite side of the road by the white school buses having just picked up all those night shift workers about to clock in inside the same maquila.
The bus picks up the workers who live on the outskirts of Juarez, where the roads are unpaved, and the electricity only runs for a couple of hours each day. The people inside the bus are all chatting, excited to see one another, others with lunch boxes neatly seated at their laps are quietly praying for the sons and daughters that leave the house knowing they won't be back until six.
The truck carrying Tlahuelpuchi arrives on the other side at 1 a.m, before the corrugated doors of the warehouse roll open, before the men who are supposed to unload the cargo at 5 a.m., and before the wives of those men that wake up to make them breakfast with groggy eyes and lagañas dry on their face. The women, cranky but with loving support, see them drive out of the driveway and onto an empty highway that leads to a warehouse filled with too many incandescent lights.
Around 4 a.m, Tlahuelpuchi edges herself out of the latched door of the trailer as a fine and hazy film of pearly mist, so dense it immediately falls down to the ground. She spreads out as nothing but colorless vapor into the empty solace of the desert. Wisps of herself rise up into the morning night sky that will soon be shrouded by the sun. At this hour, the star speckled sky is reserved for those who clean subways and office buildings ahead of the bustle of cars and sounds of coffee dripping into containers they will soon clean out of the way.
Tlahuelpuchi is a solitary vampire that haunts the rural towns of southern Mexico, she reads Quevedo and Vargas Llosa, makes her own resin copal incense, and raises condors as pets to help consume the food scraps she leaves behind.
Of whatever humanity she has left, her remorseful moral conscience only allows her to hunt and devour those that cause harm. Her only true real sin is stealing cloves from food stalls to rub the gums of her mouth when new fangs perforate her jaw.
Tlahuelpuchi takes pleasure in having a body without an expiration date, but during bouts of depression and anxiety brought on by her own immortality, she cuts her own tongue to taste her blood containing a current of old chthonic wisdom and to speak and be consoled by the voices that came before her.
She hunts by cutting her finger to draw out blood, placing it on the ground, and feeding her blood to a rhizomatic network of mycelium that spreads for hundreds of kilometers all over the soil. In this simbiosis, the mycelium in turn leads her to where it feels Tlahuelpuchi’s victim’s feet pressing above its system of tangled tendrils above the ground. Once the prey is isolated by the mycelium, she turns into a bat to use echolocation and fly over the swooshing canopy of trees concealing its prey. Moments before the skin of her victim raptures and the blood vessels turn into a current of bloodletting that falls down to the ground for the mycelium to also feast in. Tlathuelpuchi turns into mist; to quickly, and privately without any recording, enmesh its catch.
Hearing over an old radio on a house a few kilometers away, the news that Mexico only sends “its bad hombres, its rapists, and individuals that commit crimes to America”. Tlahuelpuchi decides to head to the USA, under the impression that her prey, “those that cause harm” have moved up north.
She travels up north protecting herself from the desert sun by hiding under car fenders until reaching Ciudad Juarez, she's faced with a barrier, that in order to enter a space, as a vampire, she must be invited in. So she hires a Coyote to smuggle her in.
This newly hired Coyote, never having smuggled a vampire himself, asks his cousin for advice. His cousin, Estela works at the maquila packing medical supplies into styrofoam and then to cardboard boxes. Estela has the brilliant idea of putting Tlahuelpuchi’s bat form inside the styrofoam of one of the boxes, but fearing that they might get caught by the x-rays that scan the semi trailers’ freight, she forgoes the idea. But Tlahuelpuchi then suggests that she can turn into mist, and easily fit into the small styrofoam box.
Tlahuelpuchi then becomes a fine mist, and transforms into what looks like a vaping cloud a millennial might have ebbed out of his mouth. The Coyote uses both of his hands to gather the fine mist and places it inside the styrofoam. Here, fine columns of mist tangle, knot and disappear as Tlathuelpuchi is nothing but a specter self contained inside the styrofoam.
Bound for El Paso carrying Tlathuelpuchi snug tight in pallets of medical supplies wrapped in plastic, the eighteen wheeler leaving the maquila just before 10 p.m., is met on the opposite side of the road by the white school buses having just picked up all those night shift workers about to clock in inside the same maquila.
The bus picks up the workers who live on the outskirts of Juarez, where the roads are unpaved, and the electricity only runs for a couple of hours each day. The people inside the bus are all chatting, excited to see one another, others with lunch boxes neatly seated at their laps are quietly praying for the sons and daughters that leave the house knowing they won't be back until six.
The truck carrying Tlahuelpuchi arrives on the other side at 1 a.m, before the corrugated doors of the warehouse roll open, before the men who are supposed to unload the cargo at 5 a.m., and before the wives of those men that wake up to make them breakfast with groggy eyes and lagañas dry on their face. The women, cranky but with loving support, see them drive out of the driveway and onto an empty highway that leads to a warehouse filled with too many incandescent lights.
Around 4 a.m, Tlahuelpuchi edges herself out of the latched door of the trailer as a fine and hazy film of pearly mist, so dense it immediately falls down to the ground. She spreads out as nothing but colorless vapor into the empty solace of the desert. Wisps of herself rise up into the morning night sky that will soon be shrouded by the sun. At this hour, the star speckled sky is reserved for those who clean subways and office buildings ahead of the bustle of cars and sounds of coffee dripping into containers they will soon clean out of the way.
A Being Mistakenly Called “La Nave de Kylo Ren”, 2021
Materials:
Cannibalized goat leg, horn tips, white and black zip ties, two black t-shirts, rabbit pelt, motorcycle part of a man with an inflated ego driving too fast on a sharp turn on Mcnutt Rd. Blue disposable shaving stick, black twine that Gabrielle braided, welding rod, white car part laying next to a palm tree while Karla and I were on route to get boba. That was the day I told her of the white gay from Tiktok that choked on boba and how much I loved the work of Teresa Margolles and Ivana Basic. Pigmented dragon skin silicone, sandrock with motor oil that I found next to a Family Dollar that leads to the border wall and then to Anapra in Juarez Mx. White shell of a boom box the day we went to Jalisco Bar and got so drunk we had to pee in between two cars because we wouldn’t make it home
47” x 25“ x 16”
LiL STORY FOR “La Nave“
A being mistakenly called “La Nave de Kylo Ren” by the sons of farmers acting as watchmen late in the night, looking over their father’s yielding pecan trees that are ready for picking.
“La Nave” is it’s diminutive name given to it as people watch it float using its shield: a car fender to water skip like a flat stone atop El Rio Florido when it’s full. It's goat hoof enthusiastically sticking out, breaking the stillness of the water.
“La nave de Kylo Ren” eats small snails that it picks up with its pincer-like horns. To catch them, first it flings itself up to the sky then twitches its lil mirror to find the angle of reflection where the sun makes their dry trails of mucus secretions visible. Once the mirror gives way to their trails, the repurposed air conditioning motor that kept a 1994 Chevrolet Corsica cool, now inside of “La Nave” to make it hoover, stops its thrust to fall directly into the bushes that course along the dry river bed.
It rummages with its pincers to look through the bushes to find the snails. Its mass rattling the frightened birds resting on its branches and the farmers that divert water from the river to their crops.
When the earth and Halley's comet are at their closest moment of convergence. The tiny particles of dust from the comet's tail are pulled by the Earth's body. Their presence produces an immune deficiency to “La Nave de Kylo Ren“ that spurs it to thirst for blood.
In these most recent foreign and domestic governing celestial cycles, “La Nave” is triggered to hunt for the blood of men with pointy boots by chasing their; truck trails, empty beer bottles left on the side of dirt roads, and corridos blasting at the time of the hour when quail return to burrow into the protection of branches and when foxes come out of their dens at the time of crepusculum.
It snatches its prey with its pincers by slashing the cotton button down shirt as the flesh is cut open in between the lungs to hold up its victim by the sternum. Anointing itself with the thick mercurial blood falling into its mouth orifice. It's fur drenched and furling with the sweat and blood of its catch.
It does this while its hoof throbs inside its flailing victim, releasing a chemical anesthetic and blood thinner through the secretion of a thick mucus. The mucus also gives brain altering hallucinations that ease the body of pain and give way to pleasure as the heart pulsates from this world to the next.