la boca and marcel duchamp

a trip southward into la boca through parque lezama and on down through the ghetto, to arrive at what is, essentially, disneyland. theres all kins of warnings for tourists about going through la boca, do go there at night, dont carry any money, and dont carry around a camera. uh, ok. after a slightly sketchy walk through a dusty, residential and dog-filled barrio we got to caminito. which, for better or worse, has become one of the main symbols of BA. the immigrants were right there in the mouth of the port, and the story goes that they had so little money that they would beg, borrow or steal the paint used for coating the many ships that passed through to paint their corregated tin houses. so theyve mantained the colors on one street in particular, a tiny little street called caminito. and for a 2 block radius, it is a free-for-all outdoor fair, filled to the brim with tourists, hawkers, beggars and tango dancers. not necessarily our style.
so we went into the hyper-suave and new museum called PROA where they had a huge duchamp exhibit going on. the building itself looks like something that belongs on 5th avenue. this is directly opposite this first shot above of this rancid, rotting, stenchy inlet. the smell is that of your bathing suit left in a plastic bag after a day at the beach and then left in the car all the next day in the middle of summer. and the breeze is just blowing it in. the inlet is filled with tires and debris left over from years of neglect, but you do get to see these amazing half sunken barges (like in the 2nd shot). and from what we have heard, there is more work for the regeneration of the place, and to that end, theyve put this PROA museum down there, in hopes of raising the bar.
the duchamp exhibit was stunning. constant reproduction of his own work, in miniature, to create small versions of his work and a mini-museum that could be put up anywhere, to get around the entire gallery system, just brilliant. we saw reproductions of his work, both full sized and shrunken. the title of the show was, 'A WORK THAT IS NOT A WORK <>' found objects and a bicycle wheel mounted to a chair, a urinal on its side, a hat rack nailed to the floor. and of course, 'nude descending a staircase'. we walked out hypnotized and dazed and found this little statue of the mother and child, and then these 3 dudes having a nod against the wall...