El cuarto mundo | English catalog of 14 Bienal de Artes Mediales

El cuarto mundo was a sculpture created by Chilean artist Carlos Ortúzar (19351985) and installed in 1972 on the north patio of the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center. In its first version, the work represented a warning against the distinction between the "first, second and third worlds". This division expanded the effects of the industrial revolution to a global scale and affected all beings on Earth, assuming them to be consumer goods or raw materials.

After its disappearance in 1973, the work was revived to form the axis of the 14th Biennial of Media Arts, an orientation mechanism to journey through imbalance with constant movement and multi-stability.

The convergence of ideas, arts, trades, culture, science, politics, technology and collective action that marked the initial existence of this sculpture was reactivated in the 14th Biennial to explore other ways of existence. We seek to reactivate this work for the 21st century, aware of the integration of digital technologies in a large part of social processes, the infoxication produced by media saturation and the overexploitation of ecosystemic entities, now reduced to resources and services.

Photography by Armindo Cardoso, 1972, Colección Biblioteca Nacional

UMBRAL makes the invisible visible, addressing the noise pollution that affects cetaceans in the ocean. UMBRAL results from the transfer of a portion of the sea to the center of the city, the starting point of a sensory journey that seeks to open new perspectives on oceanic biodiversity, an unfathomable, practically unknown space.

The installation aims to show what is beyond the reach of our senses, translating the acoustic pollution caused by human technologies that invade the oceans into a sensorial experience. Through this sound and visual portal, Denise LiraRatinoff seeks to awaken a trans-species consciousness, where the human and the cetacean meet on a shared plane of the same matter; salt and darkness as common territory. It is not only a common territory; it is the forms of our similar bodies. The work is proposed as an immersive metaphor that reveals how our perception is being flooded by images and sounds coming from the mass media without fully conveying what is happening in non-human worlds. The electromagnetic signals and data that invade, from a subtle materiality, the sense of orientation, provoke a reorganization of the psychogeography shared by us and the great mammals of the sea.

The song of the cetaceans sounds like a lament. A flash of light and the darkness that follows evoke the experience of insecurity and death. The sea expands the third landscape into the space of the abyss, which demands that we sharpen our senses to perceive it. The song and the ocean in movement become a hypnotic mass, placing us on the edge of a habitat that is being destroyed by human ambition.

"Cetaceans are warm-blooded mammals that breathe through a pair of lungs, have hair at least at some stage of their life cycle, and feed on milk during the first few months of life." (MERI Foundation)

Scientific Allies: Dr. Francisco Javier Soto Silva, Dra. Susannah Buchan, Fundación MERI, Plastic Oceans.

# noise pollution, cetaceans, awareness, interspecies, Alexander von Humboldt

Denise Lira-Ratinoff (1977) Interdisciplinary Artist with a Master of Fine Arts in Photography, Savannah College of Art & Design, United States. She currently lives and works in Chile, the USA and Germany. Her work explores the connections and relationships between humanity and nature by creating installations that seek to evidence and establish symmetries, closeness and proximity between the two. Her work is a combination of photography, video, sound, organic materials and plastic waste deployed in space with the purpose of awakening each of the senses of the physical perception of our environment to activate immaterial levels of perception. In the last decade she has stood out for her experience in exposing the environmental problems of the ocean through art.

Collaborators: Patricio Aguilar for co-direction and life path. Claudio Di Girólamo, Antonio Ríos, Edson Aguilar, Christian Crosgrove, Daniel Vinagre, Daniel Dávila, Jorge Díaz, Jaime Alarcón, José Miguel Vera, Carlos Medina, Andrea Byrd, Soledad Aguila, Nicole Ellena, Valentina Wong, Manuela Espiñeira, Aldair Vásquez, Yhonny Martínez, Iván Miranda, Francisco Melivilu Fuentes, Karime Maureira, Lucas Gnecco, Italo Basso, Guillermo Feuerhake, Jorge Brantmayer, Margarita Mandujano, Christian Naranjo Fernando Pérez, Gloria Cortés, Paula Honorato, María de los Angeles Marchant, Cecilia Chellew, Department of Communications, Sanitation team and Security team. Catalina Ossa, Enrique Rivera, Catalina Valdés, Eugenio González, Florencia Aspee, Benjamín Matte.

FOREVER CHILE, CHILOE CINE, EAD Construcciones, YAGAN Films, Kiné imágenes, VGL, ENDEMICO magazine, Gyro Films and JPF Cine.

2019 © Instalación UMBRAL. All Rights Reserved.

HD video of zenithal images, projected on 3000 kg of salt on a 9 x 5 m 11'30" backing Audio 5.1 © Denise Lira-Ratinoff Co-Dirección © Patricio Aguilar Díaz Co-Dirección 2019 © Instalación UMBRAL. All Rights Reserved.

Against The Drought of Signs is a video installation of abstract narratives that tells the story of the ways in which a forest grows, an endless cinema. Two people stare at a screen where the shadows and the "film" created by the foliage of the trees filtering the sun's rays are projected. The sounds of the forest are combined with the voice of the Mapuche poet Leonel Lienlaf reciting Ka wün (Transformation), verses dedicated to the reciprocity between his people and the trees.

Forest dwellers from different times and places on Earth communicate, relying on translation as a form of transformation. This connection is materialized in a trilingual fanzine (Mapudungun, Spanish and English) of the medieval Welsh poem Kat Godeu (The Battle of Trees), taken from the Book of Taliesin, which deals with the metamorphosis of an army into a multitude of trees and plants.

This installation explores the living conditions in the Pehuenche region of the Andean mountain range as a result of the artist's residency at Bosque Pehuén of the Mar Adentro Foundation. Faced with the promotion of the forestry industry and the colonial ordering of the territory that violates the socio-ecological dynamics, the artist wonders, from where can images of the forest emerge to close the colonial and extractivist tradition of the landscape? Which visual approaches can replace the tourist, scientific and anthropocentric gaze of the forest?

Etienne de France suggests mimesis (a term derived from the Greek μίμησις, which is close to the notion of imitating and representing) as a renewed form of engagement with the forest. He thus integrates language as the subject matter of his work; storytelling, but also communication beyond signs and between different forms of life. Mimesis evokes an analogy between the forest and cinema, motivated by the link of both places with light. The forest is shown as an expanded cinema, with multiple narrative layers, stories of encounters and translations, stories of destruction and of emancipated futures.

Collaborators: Pedro Olivari, Juan Pablo Vergara, Amaury Arboun, Carlos Arias, Rémi Nonne, Estudio Pedro Silva, Leonel Lienlaf, Diego Milos, Maya Errázuriz, Cuartocuarto.

This work was made possible thanks to the contribution of the Mar Adentro Foundation Residency Program.

# pehuén, Ka wün, transformation, Kat Godeu, El combate de los arbustos, conservation, deforestation, translation, cinema

Etienne de France (Paris, 1984) holds a B.A. in Art History and Archaeology and a B.A. in Visual Arts from the Iceland Academy of Art, Reykjavik. He currently lives and works in Paris. Through a multidisciplinary work, he explores the relationship between natural and cultural landscapes, using audiovisual, poetic and performative media.

Video installation Two 180 x 320 cm Two-HD color video screens Five-channel audio, 13’31’’ 2019

Ka wün

Leonel Lienlaf

Kiñe aliwen Ñi newen ñi newenuwi Aliwenuwen inche Ng¨man ina ñi chaninemew Ñi folilmew Kiñe epe lalechi güñüm Umgtumekey ñi rowmew Kürüf lelitufilu Ñi patrigülmaetew ñi müpü

Transformación

Leonel Lienlaf

La vida del árbol invadió mi vida Comencé a sentirme árbol Y entendí su tristeza. Empecé a llorar Por mis hojas, mis raíces Mientras un ave se dormía en ramas Esperando que el viento Dispersara sus alas Yo me sentía árbol porque el árbol era mi vida

(The life of the tree invaded my life I began to feel like a tree And I understood its sadness. I began to cry For my leaves, my roots While a bird fell asleep on the branches Waiting for the wind To ruffle its wings I felt like a tree because the tree was my life)

Against The Drought of Signs (2019) HD color video, five-channel audio, 13’31’’