la Medusa Fogata

So.. "me he puesto al día" - I've finally got around to working on the edit of la Medusa Fogata... for a reminder of the background at Playa Docas take a look back a good few posts: here.

For the music I took a snippet from this song, "No hay Nadie como tú" by Calle 13.  Emma and James were using this song as a study tool when I arrived in Valparaíso, and we listened to it so many times that in my mind it will always be linked to our adventures in Valparaíso.  This particular section seemed relevant, both in the lyrics linking to the imagery of the greedy fire, and with the very different romantic tone of the chorus linking in with Em & James who are one of the most solid couples I know! :-)
The full video can be seen here, take a look it's wicked!

When we began the stop-motion shoot I was thinking particularly about how with artwork it is important to find a balance between consumption and creation.  At this point at Playa Docas I was aware that I was doing a lot of consuming without yet processing or creating.  I was taking hundreds of photos and video snips, building up a library that I am now starting to use in editing.  Em and James and I were chatting about how in creative terms it is possible to:
1.  take in take in take in, until a point of saturation where there is so much material that it is overwhelming and you don't know where to start in making
or
2.  to do the opposite, make and make and make without ever refreshing the library, until you reach a point of repetitive staleness.

As I wrote back at the beginning of the month, in the collaborative process of creating the stop-motion the imagery began to take on many different layers of symbolism, and led us to conversations about consumerism and behavioural patterns in capitalist systems, also contemporary connection or disconnection to the natural world.  But returning to the initial trigger of creative balance, here is another  relevant quote from Clarissa Pinkola Estés:

Wolves lead immensely creative lives.  They make dozens of choices every day, decide this way or that, estimate how far, concentrate on their prey, calculate the chances, seize opportunity, react powerfully to accomplish their goals.  Their abilities to find the hidden, to coalesce intention, to focus on the desired outcome and to act in their own behalf to gain it, are the exact characteristics required for creative follow through in humans.

            To create one must be able to respond.  Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction that arise within us, and to put these together in a unique response, expression, or message that carries moment, passion, and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing or being.

P.316 Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with Wolves, Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman, Rider 1992

Wolves: Lobos

Here are two images of wolves drawn in Valparaíso: the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus and the 'lobos del mar' sea wolves.  Returning to the symbolism of Clarissa Pinkola Estés' writing on the female psyche, here she explains why she chose the wolf:

 Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics:  keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion.  Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength.  They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates and their pack.  They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.

            Yet  both have been hounded, harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.  They have been the targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish environs of the psyche, extincting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind.  The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar.  

P.2 Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with Wolves, Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman, Rider 1992

Back to city life in Santiago...

Last Saturday a big group of us returned to Santiago, getting into the city around midnight... it was fun traveling as a pack... the bus stations instantly become more fun, we were drinking beers in a Fuente (where luckily we reconnected with Kristina and Panda) and every time we cheered all the local folk in the bar raised their glasses too... muy buena onda!

"Where there is education there is no class distinction." 

These few days are ones of catching up with video editing from before the residency (hence my new favourite Spanish expression - "ponerme al día" which translates directly as "to put me on the day", meaning to catch up) and catching up on sleep... (including letting my skin heal - the lack of sleep and continual drinking combo resulted in a bit of a spotty chin explosion, eugh!)

I'm holding off on more museum visits until I've got up to date with work, but as there are still a few residency friends around I've been out and about too making use of the metro.... we celebrated Kristina's birthday Sunday night and last night went out Salsa-ing until the wee hours.   Kindly Angelica (one of my room mates from the residency) put me in touch with her sister who lives right in the centre of Santiago, so I'm lucky enough to be staying in the trendy Bella Vista area.  What with staying in during the day working on the computer and having bought a Blip card (tube and bus equivalent of an Oyster card in London) and signed up to a couple of local YogaLuka classes (yoga classes for just £1.40 per hour!) I'm starting to feel just like a local city worker.  (There's even a London Cafe with tube logo and all!)

"Your life is all that you have achieved."

Finally, here are a couple of links I've enjoyed today:

1. A link from Jorge at Curatoria Forense to an article (in Spanish) about our residency.

2. A music video (with English subtitles) from Puerto Rican band Calle 13 that Emma and James introduced me to back in Valparaíso - I came across this video today while I was searching for a track to use in an edit and really love the animated mural in this, and the links which highlight similiarities between all the different folk of Latin America going about their daily lives - brilliant!

Enjoy! 

:-)

Day 12: aftermath & departure

Woah!  What an ending... a roller coaster of emotions!

We were dancing and chatting away through our despedidia (leaving party) when all of a sudden came a huge shock... two of our fellow beloved residents were thrown off of the residency by the brother of the organiser.  Separate to any ongoing disagreement between the couple and the family of the house was the shock of a decision made entirely outside of the communal way of working in the group that we were used to over the week, and the craziness of the hour at which it happened - 2am.

After the urgent issue of where the two would spend the night was settled we all sat around, re-woken from our drowsiness by the adrenaline triggered by the disruption, and discussed the situation for hours.

We were brought back again to the point of how we conduct ourselves in groups, and the importance of openly discussing any issues that have an impact on the group.  We also recognised that in certain circumstances (such as an encounter with the police) that it is not possible to act as a group, but that except in these extreme cases it is an essential part of working communally to include everyone in any discussions  Which also involves listening no matter how angry one might be.

One thing that delighted me during these long hours of chat was the discovery that Pablo knows Chilean sign language and we swapped the British alphabet for the Chilean one.  He'd learnt his at group workshops with the exhibition Canto Visual here in Santiago in January of this year.  He showed me an excellent music video produced during the workshops by dance troupe Nerven and Zellen:

Puré de Papas, Lengua de Señas Chilena from nerven&zellen on Vimeo.

So here, with the help of the lovely Katia, I say my goodbyes to Villa Alegre with the signs:

Love, Affection and Kisses :-)

Thank you to Ilze, Jorge, Alicia, Monica (in the photo below with one of the necklaces made during our weaving workshops!) Jorge Senior and all of the staff at la Casona.

Thank you also to the three neighbourhood groups, the Jefas, those of Valle, and those of Coibunga, for sharing the experiences of this residency with us... it has been brilliant!

Big love, 

:-)

Day 11: final day final night

22nd Feb: With the three neighbourhood gatherings over (and the rhythms of the Cafe-con-piernas still vibrating in our bones) today was a day of relaxation and reflection and beginning to think about moving on from the residency.

With the converstaions from Coibunga still fresh in my mind, I had the urge to make my own markings of a "crop-circle".  I'd also wanted to play with the adobe mixture that Raquel had created, so combined the two desires and began to make some marks on the outside wall alongside where Pablo was working on his text-based mural.

The adobe had the texture of glue, and my final gesture at the end of the mark-making was to add some more fallen petals, one for each person on the residency, to one of the inner circles of the image.  

Making the circles was repetitive, as the adobe need multiple layers in some places because of the wall's tendency to crumble and fall away with the weight of the mixture.  As well as adding adobe I also deliberatly cut away parts of the wall.  I was reflecting on how we construct our boundaries and identities, as individuals and as groups, and how it is important to leave entrances and open spaces for the flow of  experience and exchange.

The process reminded me of a performance that Felipe had done the previous day, repetitively scrubbing the top of a wooden barrel with a rock covered in sandpaper, whose rasping noise conflicted with the music playing in the background. In our conversation afterwards about cyclical (or spiral-al) and lineal behaviours in life I was delighted to come to a slightly new perspective over this when Felipe spoke of not having to be just the one or the other, the two can co-exist.... interesting, a subtle difference in perspective, but something in the conversation touched me.

One sensation throughout the making of my  adobe 'crop circle' was that I was uncomfortable about having infringed perhaps on Pablo's space.  I never checked in with Pablo (not sure why?) but interestingly I woke up the next morning (after minimal sleep as a result of all the upheaval of the leaving party) with it clear in my mind that I needed to remove the image.  When I went to do so, half of the mud had already fallen in the drying, and I only had to brush the wall gently for the rest to fall.  The wall was left marked, but smooth.

I was left to reflect on the impression that each one of us leaves in a place or in a community or on individuals as we part and move away from one another onwards on our paths.

And this has been one of the most interesting aspects of this residency with Curatoria Forense, in the opportunities it has offered each of us artists to form friendships that have the potential to develop in ways that we cannot predict at this stage, but that will certainly lead to future exchanges and collaborations whose seeds were sewn in these 12 intense days in Villa Alegre....

..... fascinating! 

:-)

Day 10: volleyball, see-saw surfing, cueca & cafe-con-piernas!

21st Feb: A night of games and one helluvalot of dancing!....

Following on from a day of women's weaving circle at la Casona.... Raquel, Kristina, Angelica and I weaving jewellery while chatting and reflecting on the strong relationships we've formed throughout the residency and the joy of the shared conversations.  Raquel joked that it has been something spiritual and after the laughter we agreed that in actual fact she was right, it has been. 

So in the evening we headed as a group to the Valle community, equipped with fliers, a volleyball and Rocket's brilliant and ever-useful amplifier. Our first encounter with the notorious wall (the focus of our collaboration with this group of neighbours) came when Angelica, Raquel, Katia and I had to scale it to pass to the other side to distribute fliers - a pretty comical sight (an fun experience!) as Aaron, Rocket and a ladder helped us cross.  

We each took a stack of fliers and handed them out to folk in the street knocking on doors and inviting the folk to join us at the "once comunitaria" (community gathering) on the other side of the wall in Valle.  The reaction of the first lot of neighbours Angelica and I handed fliers to was above all one of confusion and lack of understanding, but once we had Rocket and Aaron ahead of us shouting out the invitation of the amplifier as well, the reactions became more animated and folk seemed excited and keen to join.  This was promising, as the intention of the gathering was to initiate the beginnings of communication between the communities on wither side of the dividing wall.

As it turned out though, no one from that side joined us.  Shame.

But the most important was that the kids from the Valle side who joined in playing volleyball across the wall were delighted and hugely happy when our group gifted them the ball and the court-marker (a clever construction by Felipe to distribute flour from an adapted coke bottle).  I believe for them the wall had changed in its function entirely, from a barrier to a central marker in a shared community game.

We had a great night anyhow with the neighbours that did join from the Valle, eating delicious sausage from the barbecue and learning Chilean typical folk dance cueca, where the idea is you are a hen and a cockerel, and the hen leads the dance, always hiding coquettishly behind her napkin until the final steps, when they walk off arm in arm together.  I had my turn with Panda good enough to whisper the steps and directions to me throughout the dance.

Other discoveries of the night were that see-saw surfing to good music is massively fun!

"Cafe-con-piernas" are the Chilean equivalent of our strip clubs!

This is where we headed after we left the barbecue....  and along with the two girls working and the boss we were the only folk there, so had the dance floor ... and the pole to ourselves.  Three of our girls put on some astonishing shows on the pole and the girls working got to have a lot of fun with one of our lads!  We danced the night away, finishing up dancing around a bonfire back at la Casona to welcome the morning sunshine in!  

Precious! :-)

Day 9: Coibunga and Crop-circles

February 20th: A day spent in front of the computer, writing writing writing...

... until the night and the second visit to the neighbourhood group of Coibunga who had identified collecting their local oral history in a permanent format as their priority..

I was hugely impressed by Pablo's demonstration of how to create a time-line documentation of the stories whilst they were being recounted by the locals.  The purpose of the demonstration was to give the neighbours a clear and simple approach to collecting their stories for themselves, without the intervention  of outsiders. 

For me this struck me as one of the most important points of the residency, and although at first it was a surprise to hear Jorge and Ilze say we would not be aiming to produce a specific piece of work at any point in the residency, it soon made sense that what is more important for them in community collaboration is the sharing of alternative perspectives and knowledge, and offering examples of approaches to resolve issues that the neighbours can choose to implement or not as and when they chose.  So the intention is to equip the neighbours in a sustainable manner rather than offer single pieces of artwork, perhaps along the lines of the proverb:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Over the course of the meeting in Coibunga many stories were told: of local history and personal family stories and also many myths and legends and tales of witches and unexplained local phenomenon such as unseen babies crying in the night (apparently over history there have been many babies left to die by single mothers who would have been shunned by the community had they known of her pregnancy, so these unidentified cries may be linked to these).  My interest was aroused by the strong belief amongst the community of Coibunga in the validity of these tales.  Coming from Scotland where tales of witches and mystical phenomena are common, I was interested to listen to the tales recounted here and the sense, or lack of it, folk made of them.

What a surprise it was also to hear that there are crop circles here in Coibunga in Villa Alegre... I had always though crop circles to be a phenomenon specific to Wiltshire in the UK, but apparently they began to appear here over 20 years ago.  Here they occur in fields as discolourations of grass, always with diameters of either 9m or 18m (odd!) and with growths of unusually large mushrooms around their rim... how unusual.  Apparently there are also crop circles in Canada and Mexico... where else I wonder?

Local Chilean theories about why the circles might appear are:

1. People (the cynical option)

2. Aliens (the extremist, I'd say)

3. Pachamama - Mother Earth creating the marks herself as a form of communication of some sort to us, perhaps about the damage we are wreaking on earth.  In this way we could see the circles as warnings of a  sort.  Personally of all the theories I prefer this one and am curious to investigate the similarities and differences between the way the circles manifest in each country.....?

So with the image above (a photo taken in a fountain in Línares, layered with sketches inspired by crop circles)  I was reflecting on how two distinct objects or bodies meet.... for example, the digital drawing with the photograph, or we human beings with mother earth, or we international artists on the residency with the local neighbours of the Juntos de Vecinos in Villa Alegre.  How do we join together, how do we influence one another, how do we create something new and different for both parts, and what do we learn from the experience to carry into the future....?

Questions, questions....?? 

And explorations....

:-)

Petal Pebble Dance

A stop-motion and time-lapse combo, using fallen petals and leaves with pebbles gathered in the grounds of la Casona Solareiga during the art residency organised by Curatoria Forense in Villa Alegre, Chile.  The accompanying song snippet "Gracias a la Vida" (Thank you life) was recorded during the karaoke session of our meeting with the Juntos de Vecinos Jefas.  Thanks ladies!

I hope the piece captures some of the joy of the dance of relationships and shared experiences of our residency days, and the tranquility of the surroundings of la Casona. 

:-)

Olas y Ojas

ojas and olas...

leaves and waves...

(two words I love the feel of in Spanish)

Perhaps these two images from Villa Alegre communicate some of the peace and tranquility of the days  we've shared over the last couple of weeks on the residency (the nights are another matter altogether - brilliantly party-furious!).  

By day it has felt like living in a dream-land.

:-)