Brilliant!
This fourth day of the residency was a very
slow start hang-over morning (after breakfast I still felt drunk from drinking
til 7am so had to go back to bed – but it was worth it for all the chat,
particularly learning that we have a
Mexican Lucha Libre star in our midst , Rocky otherwise known as Alfonso!)
So after my second lot of sleep and a delicious lentil and chorizo lunch I
began to feel back to mormal and I was gifted a huge grin when Felipe showed us
the naked graffiti video from São Paolo
with folk spray painting their silhouettes onto metro train carriages –
fantastic!
Love and Security from A.activities on Vimeo.
Our afternoon was spent basking in the sun
and enjoying hair-of-the-dog-beers by the edge of a nearby river. Most folk huddled into a tiny patch of shade
under one shrub-like tree, but a few of us ignored the surface dirtiness of the
water and got in. Best choice ever -
relaxing, calming & refreshing!
So this was a day of gorgeous surroundings
and interesting conversations – Chatting with Raquel on the bus ride home from
the river about studying art at university in Argentina I learned that there
public universities are free for everyone, even foreigners. We talked of how it is study art at uni in
Argentina and the UK and what the career path is like when you leave. I was explaining about our current norm of
unpaid or expenses-only internships and the habit of working for free to build
a portfolio, bringing us back to Jorge’s topic of the need to implement and
adhere to a standardized minimum pricing system for artistic works. As far as I know we don’t have such a guide
in the UK, but it would seem to be necessary, because otherwise we are all
perpetuating an unfair system that allows large companies and rich institutions
to take advantage of individual artists struggling to establish themselves at
the beginning of their careers. Raquel
and I also spoke of the balance that each of us artists needs to find between
paid work and soul-work and were interested to notice that most of us here on
the residency gain our incomes through a different route than their
contemporary art practice.
Having had this conversation earlier in the
day it was really interesting to then hear the discussion at the Neighbourhood
meeting in Coibungo around university and the struggle many youngsters have in
accessing higher education because of the distance of their rural location from
the universities, the expense of transport and the high cost of the fees. Apparently the time-tables of Chilean courses
are not flexible to allow students to work if necessary, so the cost falls on
the parents, and for the majority of the families in Coibungo one adult’s wage
would be less than what would be needed to put one child through university,
let alone two or more. The conclusion is that the majority of youngsters finish
their studies after secondary school and start to work straight away. I was struck here by the similarity between
the Chilean and British higher education system. Our university fees have risen hugely over
the last years to a point where it is unlikely your student loan will cover
everything, and even if it does it is likely you will end up with a lifetime
debt. I wonder is it already noticeable
that fewer students are accessing higher education, or if students are going to
start going abroad more to study, for example to Sweden where it is free for
everyone including foreigners, like in Argentina.
Another aspect of this community visit was
our stop-off in the Plaza los Heroes where we learned a little about the War of
Saltpeter between Chile, Bolivia and Peru.
I was ashamed as a Brit to learn about the British influence in this
conflict. Apparently Britain financed
the Chilean soldiers, who had previously had no serious dispute with either
Bolivia or Peru. I was shocked to hear
that apparently most of the detrimental foreign interventions in South America
over the last couple of centuries were not from Spain or the U.S. as I’d
previously thought, but rather Britain.
Ilze asked me the apt question are we taught about these conflicts in
school and my reply was of course no. It
is shameful to think that we are so ignorant about so many of the invasive and
aggressive acts that Britain has been involved in around the world. I was reminded of the shame I felt two back
in 2010 when I visited Belize and learned of our country’s horrendous
intrusions there, where the local Garifuna language was literally beaten out of
the local people and is only starting to recover and revive today.
As a British person it seems necessary for
me to apologize for the arrogance of some of our ancestors and the atrocities
they committed. Having studied theories
of the cultural conscious and subconscious with Kids Company I am aware that
none of us can ever entirely disassociate ourselves from these aspects our
countries history, however much we may be disgusted and ashamed by them. I can only hope that by being aware of how
our country behaved in the past we Brits can each in our own way strive in the
present for equality, humility and inclusion, whether that be through our
artwork, our work as educators, or within our families, friends and
communities.
The point Jorge made about the Christian
colonization taking old indigenous rituals and adapting them into Christian
ceremonies had me thinking of how exactly the same thing happened within the
Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland also where ancient visceral energetic
pagan rituals were adapted into ‘clean’ and rigid Christian practices. It is interesting to observe the resurgence
of paganism in the UK over the last decade or so as more and more people reject
the political control of organized religion and opt instead for their own
spiritual practice, formed from wide reading, deep thinking and a personal understanding
of what it means to be connected to the earth and one another. A significant distinction between this type
of spiritual practice and organized religion is that here the belief and
motivation seems to come from within, rather than being imposed by an external
source, giving the individual far more personal agency and demanding more
personal responsibility.
Returning to our Casona I got chatting with
Pablo about his workshops with children and in return shared some of my students’
work from our animation workshops at the Kids Company. I was impressed by the brilliant and
imaginative designs that his students had come up with when set the task of
making ergonomic objects to be worn from the neck up. I was also hugely inspired by his personal
project “Mestiza todos somos creadores” which seemed to have some parallels
with what I am aiming for in my current work.
He and friends spent two years visiting in-the-moment creators (folk
without formal training but creating and making) and documenting the artists
and their products.
(I feel happy to finally be finding my
tongue to talk more freely! The first
few days have felt a little tough with the language and my shyness about
talking in large groups, but I am finally starting to settle in and can feel
that I am learning huge volumes already language wise and about the Latin
American art world.)
I’m also excited to be feeling the
beginnings of an idea brewing that I talked to Cristina about and hopefully it
looks like we might be able to do a collaboration at the weekend, fingers
crossed. ;-)
Yay! Happy days
J
Thank you world, feeling very grateful to be surrounded by such inspiring folk!
xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment