Live/Love Mexico City is an arts-driven organisation, founded by Franz de Paulo and Paty Carrera. The organisation celebrates the artistic and cultural resurgence of Mexico City and its creative communities. The successful author of Mental Morfosis, Franz de Paula’s work sold 2500 copies within six months of its release. A compilation of words and illustrations, de Paula encourages the reader to seek ‘reinvention’. At an event on the eve of Mexico Independence Day, BRIC Plus News sat down with Franz de Paula, to discuss his work, and the Live/Love Mexico City creative collaboration.
What would you site as a particular aspect in Mexican culture, and life in Mexico City, that inspired the creation of Live/Love Mexico City?
Mexico City is a huge cosmopolis, one of the biggest in the world and, as such, it hosts science, art, innovation and many talented creators who are always developing their skills and looking to breakthrough the establishment and the known world. The richness of our culture, our popular art and the combination with new technologies, make a very important platform where we are building the next generation’s lenguaje and setting the way we perceive ourselves into the rest of the world.
What is the space that you desire to create for Live/Love Mexico City beyond Latin American culture?
We want LiveLove to become a referent on what is really happening in the heart of our country, a vehicle for our contemporary culture to defy the misinformation going around about Mexico and its citizens. We believe in the power of our culture, our art and our creations. We want to let the world know that Mexico is the birthplace of great projects which enrich our world’s heritage.
Live/Love Mexico City is a formidable subcultural movement. What role do you believe art and design will play in the economic and cultural resurgence of Mexico within the Americas?
We are constructing our identity, generating new forms of expression and, in that sense, new ways to communicate with the rest of the world. We are now, more than ever, in touch with other cultures and that gives us the opportunity to share and spread who we are and create bridges between countries and economies. Mexico is a very rich country in many ways, not only economically, and this movement allows us to connect and find new market necessities which can be filled by our creativity. We are eager to grow and share and we find that, in this globalised world, we are all connected and there is a huge curiosity about our popular art and new forms of expression and culture.
