We are here at Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City with Arcangel Constantini. How many HTML wrestling matches have you been organized so far?
In 2000 I started Infomera in Spain with Vicente Matallana of LAAGENCIA. At first, it was not a one to one battle, it actually started out as a collective intervention of a website. The focus was primarily on Latino-American artists, but later on we opened it to the rest of the world.

So originally the idea was more basic, where you had many artists manipulate html pages on one server?
Yes, that was the point. All I did was just create a user name and password for that specific server, and then I sent it to lots of different people and email-list.

So it was more like a server online where anybody who got the password could be part of?
The idea was to create this website that was ephemeral, not in a conceptual way, but ephemeral because you would have a lot of people intervening for a temporary period of time. What we found was that it was usually one or two people on the server at once. So as it organically took on this one-to-one structure Infomera became a sort of combative event. We still gave out the username and passwords to everybody so anyone could get on the server and throw some tomatoes at them.

How did that work out, did anybody abuse the free server?
Yeah, well during one of the first battles between SuperBad and Redsmoke, we had some hacker who was going into the server and deleting all their files. So for the first round they lost all their files.

Did you ever find out who did it?
No, never. [laughing]

Is that when you decided to change the way you conducted these battles?
Yeah, that’s when we had to change the matches to allow only the participants access to the server, but the other participants involved are allowed to participate even when they aren’t battling.

Do you see this as a positive thing or negative thing? The idea was originally very open to all, and I assume you were hoping for a very utopian type of online anarchy, but because of that one incident it somehow has to be more rules?
Yeah, it’s a conflict, because of that one person. I do have to say that it was fun when the deleting first begun but after a while it wasn’t any good.

Was that at all interesting to you?
Yeah, it was interesting because it came across as his form of expression. [laughing]

Even though it was sort of destructive?
Destructive, yeah. This sort of thing happens.

How did you come up with this idea? What was the concept behind this Infomera HTML Wrestling?
The idea was to create an ephemeral project for the Internet. The name of the website is the combination of two ideas "informacion" (Spanish: information) and "efimera" (Spanish: ephemeral; feminine version). I deal a lot with the isis and tropos process with objects and I was hoping to create a metaphor of this on the web.

Infomera.net is a process that happens on the web, two artists confront each other in a context elaborated as a metaphor within a specific period of time. Infomera.net is a conceptual performance/happening elaborated as a ludic expression that demonstrates the diffusion and execution of the technique between the confronting artists. It’s not really a fight; it’s more of a collective expression between two people, an event of user/artist expectations and unique situation's.

Do you think the wrestling part of it has something to do with you being Mexican? Do you think if you would’ve been born in say Germany that you might have used a different analogy?
Yeah, Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling) is totally different than boxing (Wiki: Lucha Libre). Because boxing is more like a real fight: It’s about power and the punch! But wrestling is like a collaboration between two performers in order to create an interesting spectacle. It does contain the competitive aspect of a sport, but more importantly, to compete you really have become a singular act.

There’s also certain levels of choreography involved in the sport.
Yes, more so in Lucha Libre, it’s almost all choreographed movements and jumps -it’s not just about strength.

You are a digital artist yourself as well. When did you start working with digital format?
In the 80’s with Commodores and Amigas.

I remember the piece in which you modify an Atari. Tell us a little bit about that.
That piece’s name is called Atari Noise. I did it in ‘99 and it has been exhibited in different festivals. At the Interferences Festival 2001 in Belfort France, I got the first place for that piece. But going back to when I started making digital work. My introduction to Atari was very weird because at that time the Mexican borders were restricting imported goods from America, especially electronic goods. You could buy them on the black market but was very expensive and dangerous. During my mother’s trip to New York she got us an Atari. But when she returned to Mexico they took it from her at customs. So at my house we only receive the joy stick and the two games that are included with the Atari. We eventually had to bribe the officers at the customs department to get the console back. There were really no games in Mexico at the time so after a month of playing these two games all day long we became really obsessed. You’re supposed to turn off the console to change the cartridges, but in the hurry to change them, I would just pull the game out without turning it off. Often times these colored stripes [which can be seen in Atari Noise] would appear on the screen. I used to just leave those stripes on the tv as decoration in my room. I was about 10 years old at the time.

So you started young?
I think that definitely influenced me! [laughs]

I guess you can say that Atari Noise is about 20 some years in the making then.

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