Maya Hackers WikiLab
Contents
Overview
Introduction
Maya Hackers is a bundle of projects by Guatemalan artist David Marín at the interphase between art, culture and social design. The projects concentrate in Mayan culture and explore the ways in which ancient cultural elements can be "Re-injected" into Guatemalan culture, as part of the process of transformation that is taking place in the country.
The name comes from the article: Maya Hackers and the Cyberspatialized Nation State, by American sociologist Diane Nelson, where she notes that the transformation of the country stirred up by indigenous organisations proceeds by Re programming the collective imagery, to change the imposed view that the indigenous culture is backward, obsolete, useless, and incompatible with science and technology.
The Maya Hackers projects propose a futuristic view of Mayan culture, to break off with the strong stereotype that indigenous cultures are something from the past. In the same way the evolution of our body is stored in our DNA, many ancient cultural memes remain alive in contemporary culture. If those cultural memes have survived to this day, is because they play a role in the integrity and identity of social groups, and learning how to use them instead of rejecting them expands our view as human beings.
Age of Wonderland
The Maya Hackers project was presented at the 2014 Dutch Design Week as part of the Age of Wonderland event, organised by the dutch institutions HIVOS and Baltan Labs
The Seed Projects
The idea behind the different projects is that they must be like seeds, containing the means to grow and propagate. To consider this "sustainability" of a project is to couple it somehow to the economy, the fine point in the design is who is going to pay for it. The projects described below are at different stages of development, some are just ideas, and some have gone trough prototyping and testing. This Wiki is intended for personal use only and collects sketches of ideas that may be totally irrelevant. Project II Link
The Mirror of Winal
The Oracle of the 20 Nawales. This pack of cards and instruction booklet based on the Cholq´ij Mayan Calendar can be used to explore different variations of an idea, triggered by the influences attributed to the energy of each one of the 20 nawales.
The 2012 beta and only version consists of 260 packs. You can order one from Amazon Here
