art proposal

The Hubbard Street Murals, originally painted in the early 1970s, were organized by Art Institute graduate Ricardo Alonzo, who received permission from Northwest Railway to intervene on a mile- long stretch of concrete embankment between Ogden Avenue and Halsted on Hubbard Street. The project continued for eight years, before eventually losing funding in 1979. José Gamaliel González, along with Oscar Moya, created a multi-panel work titled La Raza de oro on the corner of Sangamon and Hubbard depicting various pre-Columbian and Indigenous motifs and scenes. In 2000, the Union Pacific Railroad began repairing and reinforcing the aging train embankment, and in the process destroyed or degraded much of the art work. Mindful of the original work’s importance, a new mural project was initiated. And while, on the surface, the new murals maintained some of the original themes (wildlife, en- dangered species, ethnicity, and Chicago history), they are totally anemic and devoid of criticality regarding the urgency of social struggle, environmental justice, and Chicago’s sordid, racist, past and contemporary treatment of its disenfranchised populations. Below are a few images showcasing the remnants of La Raza de oro as they exist today.

Proposal to Commission Chicanx Science Fiction Author and Artist Ernest Hogan to Produce a Recombinatory Aztechno Upgrade to the Murals of Hubbard Street

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Who is Ernest Hogan?

Contemporary speculative fiction writer Ernest Hogan works at the intersections of pop-culture, mass media, cyberpunk, Afrofuturism, and counterculture. Between 1990 and 2001 Hogan published three novels, as well a host of short stories, essays, and illustrations in a variety of alternative and mainstream science fiction magazines. High Aztech (1992), his best-known book, takes place on August 6th, 2045—the hundred-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. In the novel Mexico ascends to global power after an unspecified catastrophe befalls the United States. Aztecan ways of being, religious beliefs, and modes of dress ascend in equal measure, taking on new importance as they are interpreted through futuristic and cyberpunk sensibilities. Mexico City is renamed Tenochtitlan. Fashionable socialites and economic elites get plastic surgery to appear more Indigenous. Anglo maids are the ultimate symbol of privilege.

Despite Hogan’s Chicano ethnic and cultural identity, High Aztech offers no naïve endorsement of Mexico as a nation- state, present or future. Tenochtitlan in 2045 is rife with the familiar patterns and characteristics of accelerated post- industrial capitalism, which are more entrenched than ever. It is a future intensely defined by ubiquitous militarization, religious fanaticism, terrorist networks, vast garbage dumps, and mass media as a tool of social control. Of the many themes Hogan addresses in High Aztech, the complexity and impossibility of a simple return to the pre-colonial past is crucial. The extinguished Aztec, a symbol of past trauma rippling through the contemporary moment, haunts the future in search of cultural belonging, restitution, and recognition.

Looking beyond institutionally sanctioned publications such as novels, literary anthologies, and magazines, Hogan’s blog Mondo Ernesto, updated regularly since 2009, features a trove of various short texts, digitally altered drawings, and other materials revolving around Chicanx counterculture and sci-fi futurity. In the months leading up to an exhibition and performance at a Sector 2337 (June 2015), a local Chicago gallery, I engaged in a series of conversations with Hogan in the hopes of finding ways to share his work. Eventually, I curated several exhibitions (Sector 2337, Harold Washington College, and the Black Oak House in Philadelphia) consisting of drawings culled from Hogan’s large collection of sketchbooks dating back to the 1980s. Continuing this project, I propose Hogan be commissioned to produce a series of murals based on his sketchbooks, as well as the themes of technology, Chicanxfuturism, cyberpunk, and psychedelic counterculture.

Below are a few pages taken from Hogan’s prolific journaling practice followed by digital mock-ups illustrating what these sketches might look like scaled up and installed along the train embankment on Hubbard Street, where they would mingle with the remnants of murals from the 1970s and the newer murals of the early 2000s.

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