Book launch & Interview: Mexico 68/CU

Mexico 68/CU, Two-volume book by Heidrun Holzfeind

Donnerstag 20. Mail. 2010, 19Uhr

Book launch & Interview

During a 6 month residency in Mexico City in 2005, New York based artist Heidrun Holzfeind began her intimate investigations in the utopian ideals of the Mexican student movement of 1968 and the modernist architecture of the campus of the National University.
“It was a great experience to live through, kind of like being in love.” Carlos Sevilla

MEXICO 68
investigates the significance and impact of the ’68 student movement on Mexican society, politics and culture in general, and on the lives of the participants in particular. Conducted almost forty years after the fact, the 18 interviews with activists compiled in this volume offer a diverse range of personal accounts, political and social analysis as well as reflections on the events that took place during that mythic year. They document the visions and dreams of a generation that aspired to change an authoritarian political system and transform Mexican society.

CU (Mexico City, August 2006)
is a personal portrait of “Ciudad Universitaria”, the National University’s Mexico City campus. The carefully composed shots of exterior and interior views, architectural details, and eerily unpopulated hallways, class rooms and walkways highlight Holzfeind’s interest in aging modernist structures, the conceptualization of the campus as a modern “city” and the use of functionality in the Mexican modernization project.