This interview wasn’t done sitting down — it was done while walking. We set off from Espacio Candela, crossed through El Raval, wandered past the Sunday market in Sant Antoni, and ended up surrounded by books at Terranova bookstore. It was in motion that the conversation with José Miguel del Pozo López, aka Mividarápida, came together — just like his work: with rhythm, without a script, with street.
His answers aren’t trying to please. He talks about his adolescence in San Felipe, about growing up among books and comics, about a practice where the street and the academy don’t intersect — they clash. “They never dialogue,” he says. “And in that clash, the work appears.”
There’s humor, noise, memory, trauma, and folded paper no one asked permission to bend. There are soundtracks for healing and drawings as trenches. Each answer is another clue to understanding the machine he set in motion.
What follows is no ordinary interview.
It’s part of MÁKINA LATINA.
¡Krk! ¡Bang! ¡Sssshhh!
1. What was the first thing you imagined when you thought of ‘MÁKINA LATINA’? Was there an image, a noise, a word that ignited everything?
I thought about the music of my adolescence in San Felipe, Venezuela; the matinees and the JOG motorcycles.
2. How would you describe your relationship to books? Did you grow up surrounded by ordered pages or in chaotic libraries?
When I was a child, my mother did a hemerographic survey and took me to the public library in San Felipe. There were always books in my house because my mother and father are historians, but my relationship with books is based on that memory. I grew up among books, those of my family and those I began to collect and choose, especially comics and books with images.
3. There is a lot of street references in your work, but also a lot of intense reading. How do the academy and the street dialogue in your practice?
They never dialogue, they always confront each other and it is in this confrontation that the work appears.
4. In ‘MÁKINA LATINA’ there is a very free mixture of literature, drawing, noise, mistakes and affection. How do you decide when a piece is "finished" in the midst of so much chaos?
I think they are never finished, they mutate. For example, I first made the floating hammers in my studio in Caracas, and they were a rather accidental appearance that stayed there for ten years until ‘MÁKINA LATINA’, where they appeared as something natural and coherent, as an integral part of the installation. I work with my memory and my work is the space where some traumatic events of my life are (partially) resolved. In this sense, the installation is very personal, as those who know me can attest. The work is finished when it is finished, in the meantime we continue.
5. What writers, artists or bands have been on your mind lately?
I just read a book by Miranda July that blew my mind, and I just started one by Clemens J. Setz and Dalia de la Cerda that I'm sure is going to cost me money, and that's fine. My friend KUIZZ has a project called ‘Kuizzitas’, which I think is the most coherent and exciting thing that is happening with drawing in Venezuela; among the foreigners I like the Tsuge brothers from Japan and Pazienza from Italy, to name a few; Julie Doucet, Tara Booth, Lika Nüssli, Cristina Daura; in Venezuela everything was invented by Gabriela "Realenga" Garcia. As for music, at the moment I'm listening to a lot of Broadcast and Dean Blunt for emotional health; an album called ‘dear psilocybin’ by Zelooperz & Real Bad Man and ‘Fantasmas’ by Juanrutina; a lot of ambient music and forest sounds for mental health; and I'm making some playlists for someone I like, but we won't talk about that.
6. What does "editing" mean to you in these times of overinformation? Is it a political, aesthetic, vital act?
Editing is everything, I think it's very important to do it and to take these actions into a wider space of action, for example the political and vital level. It is necessary to edit, a lot, a lot.
7. If you had to use an onomatopoeia to describe your work: What would it be?
8. What would you like to happen to this exhibition when you are no longer in the room?
That people visit it and enjoy it.
9. What role does speed (mividarápida) play in the way you create?
I work very quickly, but I take my time to get the results I want.
10. How do you imagine the public will move within the installation? See it from a distance, touch it, scratch it, intervene?
I imagine a spectator who is not just a spectator, but perhaps a little too much.
(Please don't steal my books).
11. How do you see the future of self-publishing and "mákinas latinas" in this increasingly virtual world?
I think the world will be a fair world, because there are people who believe in what they do with their hands, without expecting so much in return. I don't know many mákinas latinas and I don't know if I can speak for them ;)
12. If you had to create a soundtrack for ‘MÁKINA LATINA’, which songs or genres would you include?
https://www.nts.live/shows/rachel-grace-almeida/episodes/rachel-grace-almeida-15th-february-2025
