On repeating patterns

Back in 2009, when Herta Müller was awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature I fell in love with her. Not only for her moving way to use language in such a beautiful way that reading her just hurt, but because of her sharp sense for subverting everything around her. I remember one of those interviews after the award where she was asked the usual question a lottery winner gets: "What will you do with the prize?" nothing could have moved me more than her answer, not what she would do with the prize is important, but the rather interesting question is 'what will the prize do with her?'. And here I sit now, 14 years later, trying to answer the same question. Alas, not for being awarded with a Nobel, but rather with the German citizenship. A smaller deed. But a subversive one.

A deal with the devil

Not every day you get a chance to change the entirety of the things that make out for the core of your formal identity. But I just recently did. I made a deal with the devil, Jimmy. And I ran free. An interesting experience I never expected to go this way. Let me explain.

As some of you might know, until recently I had been pursuing getting the German citizenship. That is, before I just recently got it. That's my deal with the devil, the German devil. A Mephisto of sorts. And this devil, after taking their sweet, sweet time, decided to not only grant me my wish to make me German, but also asked me to chose if I wanted to remain who I was before, that is, if I wanted to change my name. I question I hadn't really entertained. Mephisto being a trickster, a mischievous and stubborn trickster at that , didn't ask to keep anything, not my name, not my Mexican nationality, sowing thus the seeds of doubt. Fucking bastard. And so I found myself asking the question: Should I change everything so nothing changes? I mean, after all I wouldn't become a different person just because of these 2 simply things, right?

Call me by my name

As a kid I so often fantasized with having other names, the mighty ones of my family lineage, the silly ones of popular media. And I settled for none, the name of my family a constant reminder of whose descendant I am, of those who were before me and made my existence possible.

Growing up in the somewhat messed up and artsy environment that was the Mexican underground of the 2000's I learnt to let go off my given names and adopted a new one, a self inflicted one with which to build an identity: Akume. That was for more that 10 years the war cry with which people would know me for my art, the name that would be called in my general direction in those long sweaty nights in the Real Under or the Uta or any of those places that offered hedonistic night in exchange for a sweet and slow death. And that single war cry name became my name, and then it stopped being a name and became just a name for my art, and then it vanished further to became a vestige relegated to my signature. And as a signature it stuck to me as a dear scar and as a reminder of who I chose to be when I was younger and of the price I paid for being me. A good friend of old days I left to start calling myself, again, Diego Barrera. A name I never really stopped to answer to.

A name that pays the bills

Akume was the name I started signing my documents with being a teenager. It was a nice name. An empowering name. So short and so dear. And I used to love signing with it. And as most of those early joys, it soon became a habit, a boring mechanical response to getting a piece of paperwork with a line at the bottom put under my nose: Name, signature, not the same, and all of them nonetheless me. I still remember this is how I signed my high school certificate, my first ID, my first passport, my first job contract, the contract for my first bank account, the contract for my first flat. The list of first times is long and intrinsically intertwined with my cherished signature, the legal proof of both my existence and my volition.

And what does this have to do with anything?

And what does this have to do with anything? I hear you ask. A good question indeed. What indeed?

I just changed my nationality some days ago. And with that I got the opportunity (maybe a once-in-a-lifetime one) to change my legal name to whatever I deemed fit. I could have adopted Akume, Franz Ferdinand, Hans Otto, Ralph Schumann, Hugo Müller, Uwe Kampf, or whatever really. And after all this pondering, after all that growing up I stuck to Diego Barrera. My given name. My precious name with which to honor my origins, the Mexican and the Spanish ones. A name that reminds everyone I not German, or at least not of German origins. A name that repeats the pattern of our ancestors and our line. But why? After all, no one in my family calls me by my name and I always know they mean me. To be honest, I don't know why, but it feels right to keep things as they are. In the end I could keep my name (all four of them) and gave up my signature (or rather, war forced to change it) to match my given name. Meaning that changing my nationality moved me away from Mexico and, paradoxically, closer to it.

And now I sit here just before Christmas pondering what next and where this journey will take me tomorrow. After all, when everything changes, nothing does. Or does it?

Fun Fact

No, I will not change this project's name to Art of Diego Barrera because that is just bullshit actionism.