filipek

el que nace pa maceta no sale del corredor...

André Filipek-Magaña

May 6th — May 21st, 2017

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Hey,

Here is an update.

So without realizing it necessarily, I have been thinking a lot about the respectability politics associated with the brand of an “American” company that manufactures and sells “American-Made” goods.

My cousin recently graduated from Chico State with an engineering degree and is going to move back home to work for Gillig, LLC. — the country’s largest bus manufacturer based in the U.S. He says he’d rather get out of college and actually have a job unlike many of his peers. He always knew he could get the job because my uncle, his father, is in a management position there, and has been for the better part of 15 years.

I’ve sort of followed my cousin’s life over time. I know that he wanted to go to UC Berkeley, do aerospace engineering...

I think a lot about what it means to compromise, and if that’s even really such a bad thing. I know he was always very much an outsider in his social groups. It seems like that’s changed now, or rather, that the outsider dynamic changes when you grow up and meet people who share your interests. I also know, however, that he’d let himself be discouraged easily. That being said, it was never a bad discouragement. His grades in school weren’t stellar.

Maybe he is just more realistic.

I wonder how much I’m projecting this stuff onto him.

My uncle says it’s a good job. He’s always trying to get me to move home and work there.

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André Filipek-Magaña (b.1992, San Francisco) is an artist based in New York. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, recently at Amor (Mexico City), Yeah Maybe (Minneapolis), FalseFront (Portland) and Stadelschule (Frankfurt). His writing has been published by CRITpaper, SPEP, and Amur Initiatives . He was the founder and director of HQHQ in Portland, OR (2013-2015).

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