RAMIRO CAIRO

Ramiro Cairo is the designer and creator of Los Boludos. He works as an artist and musician in San Francisco, California. Previously he lived in Brooklyn, New York and London, England. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971, where he grew up, studied, and worked until 2011.

As a young boy, he used to take apart his toys to see how they looked inside and how they worked. Many times, he couldn't put them back together into their original state and they no longer worked. With this spirit of curiosity, in 2003, he and a friend created the brand "Doméstico - design on designs" where he focused on making objects of design using household goods that no longer functioned. For example, some of the designs included: mirrors made with the front faces of old television sets, lamps made with old computer circuit boards, tables made with TV cabinets, etc.

LOS BOLUDOS

Los Boludos are characters designed and handcrafted with original vacuum tubes from old black and white televisions. Each Boludo is handcrafted and numbered by the designer. The eyes are small rubber springs originally found under the keys in old computer keyboards. The nose and mouth come from manufacturing parts for clothing and accessories.

THE STORY OF LOS BOLUDOS

Pioneers of a forgotten technology, displaced by modernity, Los Boludos lay dormant in the bowels of old black and white television that was last switched off in the year 1980. These strange, curious and amusing creatures are outcasts of the technological world but are determined to find out just where it is they belong.

Los Boludos are among us and have come to stay!

VACUUM TUBES

Vacuum tubes are used for, among other things, amplifying video or audio signals in an electronic circuit, by controlling the movement of electrons within it. In old black and white televisions, there are a variety of vacuum tubes that work together in a circuit. This valvular system was first used for televisions and radios, but later they were replaced by transistors that eventually gave rise to color televisions.

THE WORD "BOLUDO"

The word "Boludo" is slang from the city of Buenos Aires. It's often used as a filler word in sentences directed towards someone. The phrase most often heard is, "Che, boludo, ...," always found at the beginning of a sentence, as in, "Che, boludo, did you hear what happened yesterday?" A person might be called a "boludo" if they're considered slow-witted, foolish, or stupid. Anyone can call themselves a "boludo" or "boluda" when they've behaved badly, when they've been slow to act or, for example, when someone else has tricked them.

"Boludo" was always a word used among men of all ages, but around the 1980s, young women began to also call each other "boluda."

The characters Los Boludos are so named ironically, as the author considers them to be the pioneers of a technology that gave rise to another technology, but that was forgotten and displaced. Los Boludos would say, "So many years of giving our best, and now what? No one listens to us. What boludos we are, right?"