Platica Y Poetics S4E1 w/ Rita La ‘Golondrina’ Ortiz

The smell of lingering PEMEX gas fumes, fresh masa on comals, along with echoes of traffic horns resonated in the studio as my interview began to take flight. I had the honor of interviewing La Golondrina, Rita Ortiz, a multidisciplinary artist whose work transcends genre and boarders. I opened with a poetic offering, by reading Coral Bracho’s Desde esta luz, a piece whose sensory lyricism, spiritual depth, and metaphysical textures echo and parallels Rita’s artistic voice. Bracho’s dreamlike language and delicate attention to presence helped set the tone for what would become a layered exploration of film, poetry, memory, and voice. After watching the short film and hearing about how the idea came about for Aldebaran, Rita’s haunting cinepoem, left me navigating a dreamlike liminal space, between the astral and the ancestral. She balances visual silence with poetic narration using symbolism of máscaras, or masks. It was moving how the film invites us to confront what lies behind and beyond identity and the subconscious. Rita described her process as one that honors rhythm, mystery, and visual invocation. It was a treat to hear her sing, Paloma, joining in spirit as her spirit took flight toward emotion. The folkloric depth in her voice carries memory like plumas de ganzo, down feathers, both soft and heavy. As she read from Boleador de Zapatos, and El Buen Morir we both took part in sharing how Mexico is so enriched with visual and olfactory visual language, and how poetry becomes an altar, word offering of smells, sounds, and ritual. La Golondrina, a name representative of transmigration, memory, and return is rooted in the crossing of demarcated boarders, spiritual, and linguistic. Every thread in her practice expands the possibilities of how art can heal, hold, and set free.