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....
:-)
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