SACO9 Now or never

SACO9 Now or Never 9th edition of SACO Contemporary Art Festival November 2020 - February 2021 EXHIBITIONS Uprooted Landscape as Insight Simone Cortezão (Brazil) | Jahir Jorquera (Chile) Ana Agorio (Uruguay) Curator: Francisca Caporali (Brazil) Curator: Dagmara Wyskiel (Poland) Chela Lira Art Gallery | Catholic University Imagen Gallery of the North Now or Never Windows Kotoaki Asano (Japan) Cristina Dorador (Chile) Paula Castillo (Chile - United States) Sebastián Rojas (Chile) Marisa Merlin (Italy) Graciela González (Bolivia) Remo Schnyder (Switzerland) Gastón Bailo (Argentina) Daniela Serna (Colombia) Fernando Montiel Klint (Mexico) Simon Van Parys (Belgium) Curador: Sebastián Rojas (Chile) Ernesto Walker (Mexico) Casa Azul Cultural Center Sitio Cero | Port of Antofagasta I Demand an Explanation!

The Last Island of Heaven Acaymo S. Cuesta (España) André Salva (Chile) Minera Escondida ISLA+ Foundation Art Gallery | Antofagasta Silence is Stronger Than Noise Treaty of Rhythm, Color and Pablo Saavedra Arévalo (Chile) Birdsongs Minera Escondida Foundation Jaewook Lee (South Korea-United States) Art Gallery | San Pedro de Atacama Sala 13 | Antofagasta Regional Museum TEAM director | Dagmara Wyskiel general producer | Christian Núñez management and outreach | Carlos Rendón communication officer | Iván Ávila webmaster | Juan Troncoso graphic design | Dagmara Wyskiel y Juan Troncoso administrative assistant | Roxana Hernández mediation coordinator | Gabriel Navia production assistant | Esteban Pinto video and audiovisual production | Iván Ávila y Luis Marín photographers | Sebastián Rojas, Luis Marín e Iván Ávila other photographs | Pedro Pablo Fuenzalida, Elia Gasparolo, Jahir Jorquera, Fabrice Michel, Esteban Pinto, Carlos Rendón, Santiago Rey, Pablo Saavedra Arévalo, Artur Souza, Simon Van Parys, Ernesto Walker, Dagmara Wyskiel, Photographs on pages 6-7, 8 and 45: Sebastián Rojas, Social Awakening in Antofagasta. art handling | Factoría Desierto EIRL JURADO Lia Colombino | Paraguay Enrique Rivera | Chile Fernando Sicco | Uruguay Yana Tamayo | Brazil Dagmara Wyskiel | Poland-Chile

ART MEDIATORS Gabriel Navia, Josseline Alfaro, Jordán Plaza y Ángelo Álvarez EDITORIAL TEAM director | Dagmara Wyskiel senior editor | Elisa Montesinos editors | Carlos Rendón e Iván Ávila translation | Elisa Montesinos and Matteo Fiori design | Christian Núñez SACO9 Festival was organized by SACO Cultural Corporation and presented by Escondida | BHP and the Regional Government and City Council of Antofagasta. Financed by the National Fund for Regional Development, FNDR 2% Culture, with the support of the Other Collaborating Institutions Program from the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. SACO adheres to the Law on Donations for Cultural Purposes.

We are thankful for the support of: Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, through its program «COINCIDENCIA», for cultural exchange between Switzerland and South America; Korea Foundation; Programme for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE); Francis Naranjo Foundation; Canarias Crea Program of the Canarian Government; Antofagasta Port Authority (EPA); Antofagasta International Terminal (ATI); Opazo Port Cranes; Minera Escondida Foundation; Balmaceda Young Art Antofagasta; Imagen Art Gallery; Casa Azul Cultural Center; Chela Lira Art Gallery, Institute for Archaeological Research and R.P. Gustavo Le Paige Museum of the Catholic University of the North; Antofagasta Regional Museum; La Tintorera Center for Art and Therapy in San Pedro de Atacama; AIEP Professional Institute; Antofagasta`s Municipal Corporation of Social Development.

Media partners: Universes in Universe, Artishock, Hipermédula, El Mostrador, Bío-Bío Radio, Arteinformado, Elige Cultura Program, El Regionalista, R2TV, AM Channel, Diafanis Magazine, Arte Norte, Culturizarte, Rondò Pilot Created and produced by SACO Cultural Corporation.

Copies: 300 Spanish edition 100 English edition www.proyectosaco.cl www.colectivosevende.cl Antofagasta | Chile | July 2021 ISBN: 978-956-404-010-3

NOW OR NEVER 9 Now is When. SACO9 Curatorial Text | Dagmara Wyskiel

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The Paradox of Awakening | SACO Team

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A Long and Intense Now | Yana Tamayo

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Turning Pages | Fernando Sicco

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Nobody Knows What Art Is | Enrique Rivera

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The Exhortation of Imminence | Lia Colombino

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Diary of an Artist Residency in Times of Pandemic (or How to Make Emergency Art) | Camila Lucero

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The Year of Change | Escondida | BHP

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MUSEUM WITHOUT MUSEUM

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Resistance Without a Shell | Dagmara Wyskiel

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Reaching Port | Elisa Montesinos

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Interviewing a Bird-Headed Man | Iván Ávila

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Casa Azul: The Living Room, the Backyard, the Stairs, the Bedroom | Dagmara Wyskiel

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Windows | Sebastián Rojas 94 The Frailties of the Body | Dagmara Wyskiel Rethinking in Order to Rebuild | Ana Agorio

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Uprooted | Francisca Caporali

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ISLA+: Questioning the (Un) Reality of the Pandemic | Dagmara Wyskiel and Iván Ávila Listening in Lickanantay | Dagmara Wyskiel

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I Demand an Explanation! | Rodolfo Andaur

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SCHOOL WITHOUT SCHOOL 133 Touch | Carlos Rendón

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Conceptual Examples for Finding Art in Waste and Contracts | Carlos Rendón 132 Masterful Micro-Reflections | Carlos Rendón

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Micro-Curating | Dagmara Wyskiel

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It’s Not Really Necessary for Museums and Galleries to Continue in Their Respectable Labors | Elisa Montesinos 140 Micro-Curating Unit 1: Curating From the Margins | Carlos Rendón

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The Lights of Art Turned On | Elisa Montesinos

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Micro-Curating Unit 2: Invaluable Presence | Carlos Rendón 152 The Language of Birds | Carlos Rendón

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The Images We Consume and Project | Natalia Leal, Claudio Alarcón and Sebastián Rojas

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Shadows in Quillagua | Carlos Rendón

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Revealing Silence and Sound | Iván Ávila 166 Mediating Absence | Gabriel Navia and Carlos Rendón

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Anchoring Educational Offerings: School Without School at the Port | Carlos Rendón

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The New Role of Art in Today’s Mass Information Labyrinth | Elisa Montesinos

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RESIDENCES/ TERRITORY A Note From Antofagasta, Chile | Jaewook Lee

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The Death of Memory | SACO Team 190 What the Tourists Don’t See | Elisa Montesinos

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Lithium for Bipolar Disorder | Fabrice Michel

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That Which Gives Life, Kills | Elisa Montesinos

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Magua | Simone Cortezão 198 The World’s Longest Train | Jahir Jorquera A Flower in the Crater | Dagmara Wyskiel

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Desert Readings | Michael Hirschbichler and Guillaume Othenin-Girard 208 The Resurrection of Matter | Iván Ávila

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Residence at the Residence | Elisa Montesinos

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Diary of an Oblivion | Felipe Muñoz

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Delusion | Jordán Plaza

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A Trap for Time | Elia Gasparolo and Santiago Rey 222 At Night, It’s Bird, Moth, Wind or Silence | Elisa Montesinos 226 Pandemic Residency | Simon Van Parys 230

SACO CORPORATION: From Contemporary Art Week to Biennale

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NOW OR NEVER

NOW IS WHEN SACO9 CURATORIAL TEXT | Dagmara Wyskiel In 2018, with Origin and Myth, we were questioning the monopoly of official histories, inquiring into the right of subjectivity when looking at the past; in 2019 we turned our heads 180 degrees in search of Destiny, to see if, even though our compasses no longer worked, it would be possible to foresee something about the future through science, intuition, or common sense. In this, the final edition of SACO in festival format, we come to a stop at the third element on the timeline, the most ideal and immeasurable, but at the same time, the only one that is real and concrete. The times demand that we open our eyes to look at the here and now.

As we think about the present it has already become the past. It lies at that point along the coordinates of time where everything happens, and away from this place absolutely nothing does. It is a point with no dimensions: neither height nor width, neither depth nor duration. Everything in front appears as a blur, while everything behind is like a series of images in various states of decomposition. We don’t exist in the past, nor in the future. In the lapse between the two, we build worlds that will disappear along with us. Each beginning carries with it an end. Suspended between the temples of collective memory, built out of accumulated experience on the one hand, and expectations of what’s to come on the other, it would seem as though we are losing the only thing that is certain. You can only be certain about what you experience. That which is not present is the same as that which does not exist. It is at this moment that things are happening, words are being spoken, airplanes are coming in for a landing, children are being born. Only between one blink of an eye and the next are we able to touch, hear, see, taste, smell. We are sure that we are alive at this moment. That we are. That we exist. Living immersed in the now draws us closer to the world of the animals –they don’t create stories or worry about what tomorrow will be like. The present moment is like the spark of a fuse, which travels along the wick from beginning to end, marking the time we have left. As we watch it advance, we know that we are alive. One’s own body in the past isn’t the same as it is now, but rather it belongs to someone much younger. As for the future, we remember that the spark keeps advancing, but we still have this moment that we can take hold of right now. Nothing else.

As your gaze slides along black, abstract shapes that, when combined together, comprise concepts that in turn develop into ideas, on the screen of your mind a sort of channel surfing through memories, associations and ideas has begun. You are reading. This is reality. Nothing else exists. Today you can give something to someone, experience a breakthrough, or eat an ice cream. The present is eternal.

It has no beginning or end. Now is when.

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THE PARADOX OF AWAKENING | SACO Team Crises present a tremendous opportunity to analyze the future from different points of view, with the hope of not making the same mistakes again. Paradoxes that we hadn’t seen before become clear as soon as that normalcy that so many insist on talking about, as if it were some sort of oasis (or mirage) that we must reach for safety, begins to blur.

Since October 2019, the nationwide popular uprising has caused us to reflect on society in all its aspects: our own private lives and personal matters, human relationships, politics, labor systems and the economy. In the case of SACO, it meant getting back to thinking about art as part of the social fabric of our territories. On top of that is the enormous impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, which has crossed all physical, mental and spiritual boundaries in a way that forces us to reflect on what we want for our lives and societies. Like the way the popular uprising changed art, ways of speaking and symbolizing, or how certain artistic actions reached out to the masses, how groups of neighbors or protestors identified with certain artistic expressions and then made them their own.

And yet it was nothing new. “Los pingüinos” had already danced “Thriller” a million times outside of La Moneda presidential palace, and long before that, some of the family members of political prisoners who had gone missing during the dictatorship started dancing la cueca sola dressed in black and white, with the photos of the disappeared clutched to their chest. In the past year, performances in the midst of protests have become commonplace, and in a way, we have gotten used to finding art in places other than galleries and museums: on walls, in plazas and on the street. Art that has stood apart from the establishment, going viral and becoming mainstream, even drawing the interest of academia and the media.

And then the apocalypse came and sent us all home. It seemed like an act of collusion from the powers that be, for its violent and crushing modus operandi.

Satisfying merely one’s basic necessities became the mark of responsible maturity.

We stopped getting together, not to mention greeting each other with a kiss on the cheek. Casual strolls turned into secret meetings. We stopped living in order to survive. Museums, galleries, cinemas, and theaters turned off their lights and closed their doors. From their homes, those in charge of art mediation tried to convince us that we could do everything through virtual reality. But the truth is that we have grown tired and numb looking at social media. Only live contact without any reviews or pauses, only laughter without the mute button, and art without “likes” will wake us up.

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A LONG AND INTENSE NOW1 | Yana Tamayo

Participating in the ninth edition of SACO in 2020 was a real treat, as it provided me with the opportunity to discover other kinds of independent artistic experiences, as well as a chance to dialog and cooperate with curators and artists from South America and other parts of the world.

Now or never took place in the middle of a pandemic that brought the fragility of human presence on the planet into sharp relief. The curatorial proposal for the latest edition of the festival dealt with these types of emergencies, potentialities, and asymmetrical flows. Imagine if the call were opened today, what would the submissions look like after all we have just been through? In light of the mourning, loss, struggle, and social achievements made during this age of extreme conservatism, how does the production of art conceive of, express and define its territories? In a field as sensitive as is the production of thought, how do we view our relationship with the world that appears before us here and now?

With these and other questions in mind, we can dig into the important role that artistic exchanges play in peripheral spaces2. Currently, in the face of interventions that minimize the occurrence of cultural activities in society, such actions take on greater relevance due to their capacity for strengthening bonds, exchanges of thought, and the policy-making that goes into making such a field of sensible knowledge possible. And so, since we began receiving the first submissions to the open call for SACO9, we had to deal with an increase in the number of proposals submitted as well as unexpected modifications to the route, including a change in the exhibition space, from the Melbourne Clark Historic Pier to Sitio Cero, in the Port of Antofagasta; a place that, in the end, better accommodated not only the winning proposals, but also the need for greater social distancing.

In different ways, the collection of selected works would seem to encompass a variety of perspectives regarding the relationship between the act of building, and impermanence. The modern condition of South America? It reminds me of that Caetano Veloso song that goes, “aqui tudo parece que ainda é construção e já é ruína”3. Consisting of only the barest essentials, a sense of transience inhabits some of the works presented in the exhibition. Three artists utilized intangible materials to construct their works: Remo Schnyder, the wind; Paula Castillo, sunlight; and Ernesto Walker, sounds and radio waves that traversed the space between the lighthouse and the port.

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The title refers to the 2017 João Moreira Salles film, No intenso agora (In the Intense Now).

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We refer here to the idea of the periphery as a place that is removed from large cultural and economic centers, areas with little institutional action and where independent initiatives often take the place of the actions taken by the state, which ought to do more to support the production of and access to culture.

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Verse from the song “Fora da Ordem” by Caetano Veloso (“Everything here seems to be still under construction and already in ruins”).

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Somewhere, Sometime, by Remo Schnyder and Camila Lucero, arranges a meeting between chance, memory and elements from the surrounding area, capturing the currents that blow in from the Pacific, creating unique sounds. Recollections of the sea and wind in Antofagasta run through us. In 45 Degrees, by Paula Castillo, sculptures of color and light allow us to visualize the movement of the planet around the sun. It is as if the transient sketches of colored shadows projected upon the ground brought back some lost sense of the day’s natural cycle. Ernesto Walker uses sounds to manifest an architecture that reveals the density of information in which we daily live. Domes is a work that positions itself between efficiency and loss of privacy, in that cloud of information in which we are able to glimpse the choice between visibility and invisibility in contemporary society.

Daniela Serna, in Concurrences, questions the arbitrary nature of linguistic symbols, while proposing new structures of meaning using words/images positioned in suspended lines above the sea’s horizon. Among cargo ships and sea birds, words or simply loose letters slide through the empty white space.

In Container City, Simon Van Parys appropriates the idea of architectural materiality in a state of constant change, using a conglomeration of handmade wooden containers. Simulating a familiar urban spaciality, the artist assembles his elements in a bricolage cross between futuristic enchantment with the technological world of merchandise and the clear presence of ruin in which the foundations of capital are now drowning.

In contrast, Open Circle, by Marisa Merlin, furthers the discussion over the manner in which we create the basis for emotional ties and how distributions of power are socially constructed. The circle has us sitting side by side, facing each other. Among the stories, the actions and the desire to live in a society with more justice and solidarity, a circle of memories and perseverance also appears to grow stronger there in the interlacing fabric.

This suggestion of coming together is present, as well, in Sand. The work by Japanese artist Kotoaki Asano creates an imaginary place that unites two coasts separated by the Pacific Ocean. Evoking a poetic and sensorial relationship between the sand from Chilean and Japanese beaches, Asano proposes a geopoetic and meditative experience with his disregard for all that water separating the shores of two continents. We are able to rest for a moment in an atlas modified by the desire to find oneself in another, far away world.

Thus, coming at us in every possible moment for the creation of meaning –body, place, history(ies), image, time and the word– art goes to work, causing cracks and fissures to appear in our understanding of lived experience. May the yearnings for transformation turn into actions in our everyday lives, and may gatherings and exchanges continue to open up spaces for the complexity of the world, for different narratives, for timeless poetry, for solidarity, and for embracing dissent.

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TURNING PAGES | Fernando Sicco The curatorial focus of SACO9 Now or Never sought to highlight the idea of present time as an eternal continuum, the only one that exists. Recent events have made it so that this main idea, as well as its philosophical underpinnings, should become stained in politics, and echo with the overriding need of making decisions.

The changes that were brought about on a global level in 2020 are enormous, and, surely, it is a year that will be reconstructed in future presents to make an après coup, a posteriori reading that will help to put the experience and its effects into perspective. Undoubtedly, some of the changes we are presently facing are linked to the need to pay better attention to the day-to-day, to reformulate our routines, becoming more aware of global processes, and above all, guaranteeing everyone the fundamental rights of access to healthcare, education, information and culture.

SACO has been addressing these challenges in the midst of the radical, extreme weather that characterizes the north of Chile, opening up spaces so that art, along with other critical discourses from science to philosophy, might bring us closer to a more equitable society, one that would necessarily be more cultured, in a wider and more diverse sense of the word, not merely marked by the difference between high culture and the prevailing culture of consumerism.

Recently, Chilean people drew the world’s attention due to a nationwide popular uprising, which eventually gave way to a plebiscite and a constitutional assembly.

This was a major achievement in and of itself, though the country still faces the risks inherent in a negotiated political settlement. Now or never: this social achievement is perhaps a collective artwork. Some (or maybe a lot) of that transformative energy, which implies a restitution of truly democratic values, is also characteristic of artistic freedom. It happens when we ask ourselves different questions: Is the pandemic pulling us apart? Is it the policies put in place to deal with the pandemic, or the fear that is separating us? Or on the other hand, is the pandemic bringing us closer together as we reimagine the possibilities for being in touch, in spite of the distance? Maybe it is easier to come together in the face of a “common enemy”, as this poor virus is so often called, a virus that is simply floating around without any intention of becoming our rival at all.

It is time to realize that if there is an enemy, it is nothing more than the social, political and economic order, with its inherent inequalities. There is a risk that now or never could be read in this new reality as “every man for himself, or die trying.”

In some ways, it is just like it has always been in a hyper-competitive capitalist society, only now, one that has been hacked by a natural agent, which would seem to have emerged as an uncontrollable force, connoted by an abounding mood of 20

fatalistic determinism. SACO9 has had to face this pandemic event that appeared to place a limit on its program, forcing a change in date, and at times, placing the viability of the festival in question, just as it has done with so many other cultural activities the length and breadth of the world.

Now or never turned into “if not now, then a little later, but it will happen.” It wasn’t the now that we thought it would be, nor was it never, but rather whenever we can, because we want to. The important thing, it seems, is to leave behind the need to do things at some predetermined time, and instead move towards an approach of looking for the right time, a viable context, almost like a revolutionary strategy for art that can sustain life, manage risks and determine its own rules, all at the same time. Managing the uncertainty, turning pages, rewriting the script.

The artists selected for this year’s festival form a diverse and complementary set, whose works help spectators to connect with all of these issues, which are at once contemporary and timeless. Paula Castillo´s piece completed itself each day in conjunction with the angle of sunlight, building a unique moment, an unrepeatable now. Kotoaki Asano collected sand from Japan, his homeland on the other side of the Pacific, and combined it with sand from Antofagasta, thereby restoring unity amidst diversity. Remo Schnyder and Simon Van Parys were in dialogue with the structures and dynamics of the port, albeit at quite different scales, forcing one to reconsider their experience of physical space; while Ernesto Walker exhibited the signals we cannot see but which traverse the soundscape. Daniela Serna invited the public to collectively deconstruct fragments of SACO9 curatorial text in an open query into new meanings. And finally, Marisa Merlin created a circle of chairs interwoven with scraps of local cloth, whose stability will always be subject to stress, depending on the weave of the social fabric. The interpretation of their projects and the work with the jury have been very productive, and these works will surely stand as a valuable testament to the final edition of SACO before becoming a biennale, in a year that we will most certainly never forget.

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NOBODY KNOWS WHAT ART IS | Enrique Rivera Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), a Lithuanian poet, filmmaker, and defender of experimental audiovisual art claimed: “Nobody knows what art is, where it begins and where it ends, though we are able to talk about the history of film and watch the classics again and again. I can’t talk about art, I don’t know anything about art . . . I have only tried to capture the present moment with my camera, the reality that surrounds me, and that has nothing to do with art, absolutely nothing at all . . .

Beauty is another complicated subject: What is beauty? Being in the company of friends and spending a nice afternoon with them is beautiful”.4 Current circumstances are redefining our ideas about the present, past and future. How are we to understand time when the collectively constructed idea about what constitutes normal life has been irremediably fragmented? Disrupted time transforms our day to day existence. Which leads us to experimental audiovisual languages, overlooked by a film industry that has been subjugated by entertainment, these are narratives that zoom in on the perceptual distortions brought about by the national popular uprising of 2019 and the ongoing pandemic.

It would seem that establishing what reality is has become an impossible task. The informal is becoming conventional and the margins are receding, revealing the troubling flipside of the story, shadowy, full of affliction, and out of place.

Mekas claims that he doesn’t know what art is; these days we could say that it doesn’t really matter, since reality itself is no longer relevant. The overwhelming feeling of exhaustion produced by inequality and injustice has made it so that demands are mixed with rage, exploding like a cluster bomb, wounding the same bodies that had enforced the systematic degradation of the exploited in the first place. Art and on-site experience have become an antidote to the unfocused excesses fostered by oversaturation of information; our nervous systems are being attacked by a relentless and beguiling witchcraft that is hypnotizing us, paralyzing us, and trying to turn us into actual zombies.

Fearlessly facing our bodies’ vulnerability to the elements strengthens one’s position within this context. Our immune systems, weakened by confinement, are reactivated, building resistance, helping to fine-tune our intuition and capacity for discernment in the face of the flood of information affecting our subconscious, conscience and unconscious minds. Does checking social media upon waking affect our dreams? Doesn’t each “Like” turn into a shot of endorphins that replaces a good conversation, a kiss or a heated discussion? And so an event, a fissure in 4

In defense of perversion is a text that remained unpublished until it was included in a selection of texts published by Spector. This version was taken from: Cuaderno de los sesenta. Escritos 1958-2010, Ed. Caja Negra. Buenos Aires, 2017.

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the topography of our social meshwork, becomes a phenomenon impossible to describe by any branch of knowledge that may attempt to encapsulate it. The process of transitioning from one paradigm to the next is part of a deep-rooted, long-term cycle, which confirms that questioning what constitutes art, what its place or possible function is, its usefulness or relevance, is a meaningless endeavor.

Only the voluntary suspension of all logic allows us to orient ourselves within a temporary autonomous zone5, or stated differently, within a social ontology of anarchy, a logic of hospitality fueled by a relaxing afternoon full of friends and good conversation that is able to neutralize distrust.

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Hakim Bey, author of Temporary Autonomous Zone, talks about the possibility of creating areas that exist at the margins of the rules established by the traditional social contract.

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THE EXHORTATION OF IMMINENCE | Lia Colombino The curatorial concept to which we were called to respond ended up as more of an exhortation in that the time was thought to be at hand. In the midst of the popular uprising came the global pandemic. A sense of all times taking place in the times in which we live.

Everything seems to be at a standstill and everything seems to be shaken up, everything is happening in a dizzying confusion, the likes of which we have never seen before, and in overwhelmingly slow motion. It is as if time were broken, and in this cleft all forms of time were concentrated.

The curatorial concept, reconsidered, served as a brief hiatus to reflect upon the present. Maybe so we could get through it. To be pierced by an imminence, some urge that has yet to run up against that which remains unknown.

That continual present, in which the past and future concentrate into the fleeting eternity of this particular time in history, has placed us face to face with a number of things: fears, strengths, monsters, and priorities. An almost ghost-like presence, that continual presence must pierce us so that we don’t escape unharmed, so that we can embrace the necessary dislocation that this temporary pause imposes on us.

This minefield of time, that imminence, is what we must go through, affecting what we are, so that we are able to build another time; in which we can better live, beautifully so, in the Guaranian sense of beauty, where the good and the beautiful have an ethical dimension that brings with it the future.

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DIARY OF AN ARTIST RESIDENCY IN PANDEMIC TIMES (OR HOW TO MAKE EMERGENCY ART) | Camila Lucero Allegri As the open call of SACO9 was drawing to a close, we started to hear about the first cases of COVID-19 in Chile on the news. Our country, which had been undergoing a process of transformation ever since October, 2019, would now be facing a situation of isolation, fear, and uncertainty. For those who submitted their proposals during this period, as well as for those who were involved in curating the festival’s ninth edition, surely Now or Never didn’t have quite the same meaning that it would take on a few months later. This whole idea of Now or Never became quite real from one moment to the next. At first, it seemed there would be very little chance of having an on-site festival. However, after months of delays, it was finally decided that the artists would come to Antofagasta. There wasn’t any time for mulling it over; the invitation made the open call’s theme a reality: it’s now or never Surely those of us who experienced SACO9 firsthand can attest to how it was not only the uncertainty, but also the capacity to react and adapt to the changing circumstances that characterized the tone of the event. In this case it wasn’t just the energy of the selected artists and their enthusiasm to materialize their ideas, but also the work of an incredibly committed team, whose ability to find solutions instead of just throwing in the towel is what turned Never into Now. Between canceled flights, long layovers, negative tests, sanitary passports, medical insurance that covers COVID-19, quarantines and daily check-ins, the selected artists came to Antofagasta from all over: Asia, Europe, North and South America.

In the beginning we felt it, and later it was proven to be true: the ninth edition of the festival was especially complex, sensitive, and challenging. At ISLA everything was intense from Day 1. Between the time for staging the exhibition, which was drastically reduced due to the pandemic, and the schedule of activities, we stayed busy. Thanks to the expertise of Héctor, Víctor, Alejandro, Edwin, Christian and the whole SACO team, it was possible to materialize the submissions in light of the unusual circumstances, and against all odds. Not only were timetables met without fail, but there was never a lack of a pisco sour or conversation at the end of the day. There was also time to share patacones, arepas, pasta, miso soup, rösti, mezcal served in a cup made from green chili, and completos, only to continue the staging the next day with big smiles under the masks, out there beneath the desert sun.

Due to the willingness of the artists, as well as the adaptive nature of their pieces, their works were able to merge with the flow of what was happening: each one was constantly changing in response to the space and the public, finding a perfect temporary emergency shelter in the port. Although the works were originally 34

conceived for installation at the Melbourne Clark Historic Pier, for reasons that were out of the hands of the festival organizers, the exhibition space had to be moved to Sitio Cero, in the port of Antofagasta. The jury was aware of this change when they were choosing submissions, which is why there was such confidence that the artists would be able to perfectly adapt their proposals to the new setting.

In the end, Sitio Cero provided a little more breathing room for the pieces, for the interaction of the public with the works, and of course, for social distancing.

The case of Marisa Merlin’s piece is unique. Her work was built in togetherness, through give and take, and with the idea of community in mind. The new space allowed her to widen the radius of her installation, which meant at the same time working against the clock with the women representing the People’s Movement for Decency in Housing from the Los Arenales shantytown, whom she got to know intimately. It wasn’t easy for Marisa to practice social distancing with them, as they were constantly showing her their gratitude. Her work managed to bring together bodies unified by the act of creation, showing the real possibility of creating community in times of pandemia. The piece offers an invitation; thrilled to do so, we sat down in the installation of thirty-seven chairs that had been woven together with long strands of fabric, looking each other in the eyes and conversing in a mix of Spanish-Italian-English, resting after a day’s work, fully living out the concept of gathering together that the work implies.

Paula Castillo, Simon Van Parys, Remo Schnyder and I worked at Sitio Cero nearly every single day of the residency. There was never enough sun block nor drinking water, which is why we were so happy that day a man came around offering freshsqueezed mango juice and Christian decided to buy some for us all.

Paula arrived in Antofagasta from the U.S. without eating or drinking a thing, so as to avoid the risk of exposing herself to the virus by taking off her mask. She had proposed several possible placements for her work for the SACO9 exhibition, and in the end it was installed facing the sea. Her pieces required great technical precision, and it was at this point that the carpenters played a key role. They patiently assembled, painted and pieced together the parts so that they would conform to the irregularities of the ground, Paula being present throughout this process. We all quickly learned that we had to protect ourselves from the unrelenting sun of Antofagasta. After a couple of days, it had already left its mark on Paula’s legs. Esteban would call from the car telling us that it was time to go, and Paula would take advantage of every last second in order to weld a corner or place a screw. Like a sundial, the work filters light through blue and yellow panes of glass, inspired by the two most predominant colors in Antofagasta, which later combine into green, a color that is hard to find in that landscape. The piece was constantly reacting to the space, inviting us to inhabit the light, a concept that Paula carried out with perfection. It was a special moment when we first saw the projected light fitting the white background like a glove, a well-earned outcome after so many hours of work.

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The piece that Remo and I built was the result of a tremendous technical effort.

The process began in Basel, where we tried out different materials, angles, tensions, and resonance chambers, only to later mount the 15 meter long strings on-site at Sitio Cero. This was both a simple, and at the same time complex task, requiring the coordination of several people. The strings were attached with a crane to the upper part of a light pole, then later tightened and temporarily affixed to the ground. Once they were affixed, Remo had to climb up the crane once more, while Victor and I loosened and tightened the strings from below to untangle them one by one. The four days of airports and airplanes en route to Chile were worth it in the end: listening to the music of Antofagasta’s wind was a delightful surprise for all. We were able to control the technology by which the work functions, but not its interaction with the space, in particular with the wind; each and every second was unique and unrepeatable. Due to a change in our return flight, we missed the group trip to Quillaga and had to say goodbye to everyone earlier than expected, but that has just become an excuse to go back to the region for another visit.

As for Simon, he was the final artist to arrive in Antofagasta. There was a traditional Chilean barbeque planned for that same day at Casa Azul, and so that is how we welcomed him. He was also the last one to leave. His work, of mercurial nature, began as an individual process (with headphones, work gloves, electric tools and sunblock), which later gave way to exchange and transformation through a community workshop whose purpose was the joint creation of a container depot.

Simon’s work adapted particularly well to the change of space; its materiality was reflected in the landscape of Sitio Cero, where the artist’s work was in constant dialog with the movement of containers in the port, which could be viewed as a sort of backdrop. The containers were scaled down in his piece in such a way that people could change and rearrange them. The only thing Simon missed was the pisco sour; he was the only artist at the residency who didn’t drink alcohol.

Daniela Serna´s creative process is related to her academic background (she studied Comparative Literature), and the idea for her submission came to her immediately after reading the curatorial proposal for SACO9. It’s interesting how she gave the public the opportunity to interact with and recast the piece in a number of different combinations of letters, points, commas and spaces. Her work has a lot to do with organization and coordination, which I believe is why it was possible to stage it in under 24 hours.

Those of us who were in residency at ISLA during SACO9 were given the opportunity to help Daniela in the preparation of her installation. The final pieces of the work arrived in the afternoon of December 9, and with this, ISLA turned into a factory where a number of coordinated hands sorted, organized and tagged the 720 small placards on a large table, allowing for the work to be staged the following day in record time.

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The story of how Japanese artist Kotoaki Asano was able to get into Chile with sand from Japan is a noteworthy one. A trained architect, Asano’s piece creates a livable and poetic space, where one can sit down and contemplate the sea, knowing that right on the other side of the Pacific Ocean lies the coast of Japan. Having Japanese sand was crucial to the work’s execution, and the artist provided the solution by bringing it with him in a suitcase. He was stopped by customs upon his arrival in Chile. Luckily for Kotoaki (and the festival), a Japanese resident of Chile happened to pass by and realized what was going on; acting as an interpreter, she explained to the authorities that what he was carrying in the suitcase was training weight.

Surprisingly, he was permitted entry into the country. So that’s how Kotoaki was able to stage his work with Japanese (and Chilean) sand, communicating with the production team and staff through sketches and blueprints. In spite of the language barrier, he seemed happy to share the experience with everyone and was always willing to lend a hand when needed.

Ernesto Walker set up a device of his own design that identifies and records voices in a never ending sequence that was later played back and transmitted via a radio signal. Although no one was sure where the work was going to be installed for the first few days, in the end the Navy authorized the installation of the work at the lighthouse directly facing Sitio Cero. The apparatus would capture the sounds of the ocean, the birds and the sea lions, allowing us to hear what it identified as voices. Ernesto’s piece could very well be a spy gadget used to infiltrate the area in the form of a signal able to be picked up by any standard radio, which gave rise to a variety of creative conspiracy theories at ISLA, but this cannot be discussed any further for security reasons. It is strange that the Navy allowed for the installation of Ernesto’s piece, and that they themselves facilitated access to the lighthouse, all of which was the result, of course, of the expertise of the production team.

Ernesto’s return proved to be a bit more complicated. Did it have something to do with the conspiracy we were plotting? His flight from Antofagasta to Santiago was arbitrarily moved up and he didn’t have time to reach the plane, which meant that another ticket had to be hastily purchased. Having already checked in to this, his second attempt, and waiting for the boarding to begin, the passengers were informed that the flight had been canceled. The third airline that operates between Antofagasta and Santiago had already closed, and so it was that Ernesto had no way of leaving the city that day. In the meantime, he put his social skills to use, making friends with the women who run the airport’s public health checkpoint, who offered him a wifi hotspot so he could get online and communicate with the SACO production staff. Ernesto returned to ISLA that day, and his entire flight was changed. The next morning, after already boarding the plane, the passengers were ordered to disembark, informed that there would be an indefinite delay in their departure; the same old story. Fortunately, there was a greater window this time between the various flights and everything else went according to plan. The best part of the story is that Ernesto received food vouchers as compensation that he 37

was able to exchange for beer, which he shared with Daniela and the Canary Island artist Acaymo S. Cuesta back at ISLA, and then later on with another new friend that he made on the airplane.

What Role Does Art Play in the Midst of a Worldwide State of Emergency?

The experience at SACO9, which took place in the middle of a public health crisis, is clear evidence of the real and essential need for art as a place of encounter, exchange, and reflection, one for which there is no replacement. We don’t know how much longer the pandemic will last. For many of us, this was the first gathering after several months of isolation and telecommuting. Sharing stories about what each person had gone through in their respective geographical context, mutually supporting one another in our creative processes and finding some form of meaning at this very strange point in time; as well as opening a dialog with other artists such as Jaewook Lee and Acaymo, or with those who make up the SACO team: Dagmara, Christian, Esteban, Carlos, Iván, Roxana, Carmen, Héctor and the carpenters, Gabriel and the mediators, and also –through exchanges facilitated by them– with the public. All of this underlined the need for creating community through the practice of art, and it will forever remain etched in our memories as a festival that, against the wind, tide, virus, with masks on, in lockdown and under curfew, was able to mount an exhibition at Antofagasta’s Sitio Cero, Now or Never.

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THE YEAR OF CHANGE | Escondida BHP Through SACO, contemporary art has installed itself in the region, and with it has come the opportunity to better appreciate, reflect on and understand our reality.

This is an example of how with dedication and perseverance it is possible to achieve grand artistic experiences in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. As cultural centers, public events and museums were shut down –some of them forever–, SACO, from Antofagasta, was able to put on a festival, promoting artists’ works while opening spaces so that members of the community could enjoy the exhibitions either in person, or by exploring them online through virtual guided tours.

At Escondida | BHP we hope that Antofagasta continues to be a center for the arts, not only for the country, but also for the world, through collaborative alliances that promote culture in the territory we are a part of. Experiences such as these stimulate a spirit of reflection in the community, something that is particularly relevant during the times of profound change that we are living in.

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MUSEUM WITHOUT MUSEUM

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RESISTANCE WITHOUT A SHELL | Dagmara Wyskiel SACO9’s curatorial text, written in June of 2019, completed the triad of the festival’s most recent editions, dedicated to the phenomenon of time: Origin and Myth (2018), Destiny (2019), and Now or Never (2020). October would bring the popular uprising, and with it, a different meaning for the last of those themes; in March, the pandemic’s arrival to Latin America provided it with yet another spin.

Then the lockdown began. All of us, just like snails, withdrew into our shells. After a few weeks of shock, the transition towards virtual life began. In social media, slogans featuring concepts like “reinventing oneself” or “democratization of access” had a deep effect on the imagination and motivation of those of us within the field of culture. “Stay at home” became a tribal mantra that, posted on your wall, gave proof of your responsibility and commitment to the health of others.

Naively, I wondered why we never saw something like that posted above the entrance of a supermarket, in a car commercial, or in an advertisement for airlines or beer. Why should people from the world of culture, so sensitive and welleducated, be the exemplar of obedience, voluntarily locking themselves inside their homes, accepting without complaints the closure of theaters, museums and libraries, while commerce and big industry never once ceased to function.

We insist (from our screens) that the right to culture must be fundamental, inalienable and egalitarian. But let’s not kid ourselves, we are able to see what is truly fundamental by who has still got their doors open. The message is clear: whatever hasn’t shut down due to the crisis, it is because the world would end if it did. Commerce and industry, aggressively baring their teeth at any sign of imposed limitation, reacted in a coordinated fashion to the crisis with the collective power of trade associations, using any and all tools at their disposal, some of them questionable, in order to defend their interests, which in the end they were able to do. The field of culture complied with the government’s instructions, and waited at home, hoping to receive some sort of protection. I know there are some exceptions. I am trying to shed light on a complex process, a test of endurance that most of the class failed, for fear of possible reprisals.

Culture can only be strong enough to exert pressure on society when it has the support of ordinary citizens, when it is present in the streets and the people feel it belongs to them, and they belong to it. Maybe the shuttering of nineteenth century mansions, impregnated with patriarchal and hierarchical thinking, could prove favorable to the establishment of spaces that are more horizontally aligned and more open to inclusive, flexible, and dynamic dialog. Even so, how can we expect people to come to our defense if the majority of us have shut our doors, telling everyone that we did it for their own good? In the bleakest moments of history, in the most terrible, dangerous and painful times, in every corner of the 51

world, artistic expression, shared with one’s fellow humans, was able to lift the spirit, helping people to continue on. These types of expressions were always present, physically present. Where are they now?

In the face of all this, SACO9 Now or Never was an act of strength, a political expression, as well as an ethical one, a show of commitment to the local public, whose thousands of on-site visits in prior editions showed us their growing interest in art. It is a demonstration of the wherewithal to deliver something extra, something different, through works of art, to members of the community in the copper mining capital of the world. We must not kid ourselves: the digital lockdown on culture increases the divide in terms of access, making the world of art even more sealed off by elitism than it was before.

In spite of the borders being closed, we were able to bring twelve foreign artists to Antofagasta, from places like the U.S., Japan, Switzerland, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Brazil, as well as Chilean curators and artists from across the country. Now or Never was the largest international exhibition open to the public in Chile at that time. And this has nothing to do with the competition to increase the viewing public that exists between the many sub-industries within the world of culture, but rather to testify to the fact that it is possible to maintain a safe, direct, in-person link with the public without jeopardizing anyone’s health.

The seven site-specific works selected from the international open call were put on exhibition at Sitio Cero in the port of Antofagasta, installed upon an esplanade measuring 4500 square meters, allowing for a maximum of 15 visitors at a time.

Right across the street from the exhibition, the concentration of people both inside and outside the mall in the days leading up to Christmas went against all sanitary regulations, not to mention common sense.

The festival adapted to the new conditions, offering 360º guided tours with voiceovers by the artist or curator of each exhibit, while always prioritizing inperson visitation. Seven workshops were put on from San Pedro de Atacama, to Antofagasta, and Quillagua. Half of the eight exhibitions from this edition had a public presence: Now or Never at Sitio Cero in the port of Antofagasta; Windows, curated by Sebastián Rojas at Casa Azul; The Last Island of Heaven by André Salva at ISLA; and Silence is Stronger Than Noise, by Pablo Saavedra in the Art Gallery of the Minera Escondida Foundation in San Pedro de Atacama.

There is an epidemic today that isn’t spoken of very often: infant and juvenile depression. Let’s not send them presentations about how to do exercises for relaxation, or videos on self-care. If we aren’t able to open up the cultural infrastructure, then let’s take art into the streets and plazas, to the beaches and parking lots. It is our duty to society. It is the nourishment we provide on a daily basis.

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REACHING PORT | Elisa Montesinos The most anticipated exhibition of the SACO festival, which every year brings seven international artists to Antofagasta to show pieces specifically designed for a public space, was mounted in spite of the constraints of the pandemic. Excited by the possibility of assembling and staging projects that had been submitted nearly eight months prior, the chosen artists each boarded a plane that carried them to the north of Chile. And so the installations began to appear, some monumental, others in a more scaled down format, audible, tactile, optical, textual, and as mutable as the times in which we live. Nor could changes to the date or location hinder their arrival to the port, both literally and figuratively, for their rendezvous with an admiring public for whom the works had been conceived.

In times when ‘Ground zeroes’ have become part of our everyday language – whether it was to describe places hit by a natural disasters, violent conflicts, accidents, industrial activity, or any other event that might leave a plot of land vacant– the exhibition was moved to a 4500 square meter lot adjacent to the port of Antofagasta casually referred to as Sitio Cero. It was necessary to clean up that empty space, so that the bare ground could become an adequate setting to host the exhibition Now or Never. The exhibition design called for moving shipping containers to certain defined points that would provide spatial context for the installations and in some cases would serve as support structures for the pieces.

And so, this particular ‘ground zero’ was turned into an urban arts district.

Dialog With the Landscape Built in 1934, the Molo de Abrigo lighthouse bears witness to the ceaseless activity of the towering cranes, in a bay where sea lions swim, and seabirds go plunging into the sea. It was also a suitable location to install Domes, by the Mexican artist Ernesto Walker.

From the old lighthouse, this sonic sculpture captured the sounds of nature along with the feverish movement of the port, transmitting radio waves that could be heard on radio from anywhere within a one kilometer radius of the lighthouse.

The sounds were simultaneously transmitted to speakers set up “on solid ground” in the exhibition area, where the works were arranged along a route in which one or another sense predominated. Walker’s idea had been to listen in on and then reconfigure this mix of urban and natural sounds in an endless loop.

Japanese artist Kotoaki Asano came with a heavy suitcase. It was not easy to explain its contents, which is why a little linguistic trick was required in order to get through customs. It held an unusual cargo of dark, dense earth, brought to Chile from his country in a poetic and performative act. From the suitcase, the sand was deposited onto a black table and glued to the tops of benches of the same color 56

facing out towards the artist’s homeland. At foot level, he scattered local white sand. All of this was situated inside a kind of box, where a small beach was made out of particles of Chilean and Japanese sand that one could touch, step upon, and feel in its varying textures. Over the course of the exhibition, the sand would mix together, in an effort to bring the two distant worlds closer together.

Struck by the Wind Somewhere, Sometime, by the Swiss-Chilean duo of visual artist Camila Lucero and the musician Remo Schnyder, proposed listening to the wind of Antofagasta. Gusts striking the 36 nylon strings of varying thickness caused them to resonate from within a wooden base, which amplified the voice of the breeze in a 15 meter tall musical sculpture whose form mimicked the twisted mast of a tall ship. The very same cranes that daily move about the area surrounding Sitio Cero were used for its installation, a procedure that turned artists into workers, who were kept busy by the tireless rhythm of the art festival in that peculiar space adjacent to the port.

Remo ascended the crane in order to give shape to the giant, 36 string Chilean harp, which would keep on resonating long after the exhibition had come to an end.

“As your gaze slides along black, abstract shapes”. Black letters hung upon a white background forming a phrase that could be read in three horizontal lines. This was one of the six possible combinations of phrases copied out of the SACO9 curatorial text that were present in Concurrences, by the Colombian artist Daniela Serna.

The work was framed between two containers that were used as walls to form a secret alley that looked out towards the lighthouse (which was transmitting equally secretive messages), the work challenged ideas such as authorship and readership. The phrases varied with human action in a sort of interactive text in a state of constant commotion, connecting the act of reading words with a reading of the surroundings, as well as the overall context; a game that (in between the lines) included the ships and the sea.

Geometry of the Sun 45 Degrees by Paula Castillo, a Chilean resident of the United States, was a three dimensional work that changed along with the sunlight. Colored shadows were projected by acrylic triangles throughout the day, filling in painted figures on the ground that formed a sort of extension of the surrounding landscape. Desert hills in yellow, ocean waves in blue; as they criss-crossed they sketched an unattainable utopia of green in the desert. Depending on the time and the weather, the shadows burst forth in different ways, giving shape to a sculpture in a state of constant movement and transformation that brought to mind op art.

A bit further on, it looked like the stevedores had suddenly stopped working before taking their lunch break. Container City, a piece by the Belgian artist Simon Van Parys, was erected from a collection of scaled down containers and 57

pallets made out of wood. Its location within sight of a large amount of actual cargo provided a visually stunning contrast to the work. The idea was to create a sculptural compilation of industrial offal that would continue to change and grow over the course of the exhibition. In a makeshift carpentry workshop attached to the installation, Simon continued to produce crates for the piece even after the exhibition’s opening. In the end he would conduct a workshop where a definitive shape was given to the work, along with the participation of the public. While Antofagasta continued on its own course of unstoppable growth, this miniature urban space made out of common materials also grew and changed, raising questions about the boundaries between art and objects from our daily life, and what exactly it is that differentiates the two.

Sisterhood at the Center Open Circle, by the Italian artist Marisa Merlin was collaboratively made out of old chairs that were woven together with strips of colored fabric, forging a union as strong as that which exists between the women who helped with the work’s installation; women that gave not only their time, labor, care and vision, but also scraps of their own clothing.

Marisa often materializes her projects with individuals who contribute their own feelings to the work, but this time it was women from different countries living together in conditions of extreme poverty who bestowed their emotions upon the chairs, thus bringing new meaning to the work, sisterhood emerging from within the center of this circle where everyone fit in. Upon sitting, visitors could take a break from their walk in order to better appreciate the exhibition, the lighthouse, the movement of the sea, and think about when it was that the port became a place next to the mall.

The Installations According to Their Creators Domes It’s materiality is ephemeral, a radio signal that can be heard on the FM channel, which was previously presented in other contexts. The object is a computerized device built with a system programmed for voice recognition. The piece is always alert, listening. When it realizes that someone is speaking, it begins to record and later plays it back, like in some kind of dystopian conversation. In this case, being installed at the lighthouse, it hears the sounds of nature rather than human voices.

There are speakers set up at the exhibition broadcasting all these sounds, but the piece also inserts itself into the radio dial. Time is suspended somewhat because all of the sounds are being constantly reproduced.

Ernesto Walker, multidisciplinary artist

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Container City My proposal was meant for the Melbourne Clark pier, but the change worked out even better for me. It is a modular system. The big containers are not part of my piece, but the curator suggested that I ought to try and integrate them, which I thought was a great idea. The use of pallets was a convenient way to make the piece more sculptural. At first I only had 50 pieces to scale, but the work needed more force. The idea was for it to look like a city, and so I continued to improve on it little by little, increasing the number of wooden boxes that simulate the containers, but at a smaller scale. Part of the game is to take them out of context and give them a new destiny.

Simon Van Parys, visual artist Sand The coasts of Japan and Antofagasta look onto one another from across the Pacific Ocean. There is a 12 hour time difference between the two countries. Both are situated at the edge of an ocean, far away. I overcame this distance by taking Japanese sand and bringing it to Chile. Changing the location of the exhibition posed no problem, given that one can feel the presence of the sea at Sitio Cero. Some people have mentioned that my work with the sand communicates something very Japanese. I discovered how this method relates to the minimalist tradition of my country, such as with gardens and tea houses.

Kotoaki Asano, architect and poet Concurrences I have always utilized text in my work; for me it all starts with reading: how we read, how we relate to one another through the word. Also questioning who constructs a text: whether it is the author or the reader, what is that relationship of co-creation like? What I did was create six complete images with six phrases that I took from the SACO9 curatorial text, raising questions about the relationship between reading, images, and the present moment. The idea was that the words would be able to rotate, with different letters and different phrases appearing.

I really liked the idea of the horizon and scenery as lines to be read. When I saw the site in which the work was to be situated I realized it would connect with the landscape in a really special way.

Daniela Serna, artist and Master in Comparative Literature 45 Degrees The work is an arrangement of eight sculptures that were designed to dialog with the position of the sun. I studied a lot about how the sun interacts with the region, what the angles and elevations are. I chose the 45 degree angle because there is a lovely symmetry that I learned about in lighting: that the shadow is the same 59

size as the object. The light of the sun projects a shape that completes the threedimensionality of each sculpture. Some of them were positioned for the morning sun, and others for the late day sun. I was working a lot with optical illusions, drawing lines around a volume that isn’t there; light filling that space. I have no control over the piece at any moment; it is different depending on if there are clouds or if there is sun. This speaks to the ephemeral nature of life and of how we try to grab hold of things, since in reality, everything is constantly moving.

Paula Castillo, scenic designer Somewhere, Sometime The idea was for an installation that would combine sculpture and music. We wanted to allude to space and sound. We experimented with a lot of different materials, first with piano and guitar strings, until finally we found that these nylon strings of varying thickness were best suited to the work. They are used on ships, and so they are materials commonly found in these kinds of places. The installation of the work was a bit complicated, and required a lot of coordination. First, we put everything on the ground, and then we took hold of the upper part, while someone else stayed below. The strings had to remain tight, like with a musical instrument, but one that is 15 meters long. The source of inspiration was the context, the ships.

That’s why we like this place, it is very inspiring. We wanted the piece to appear asymmetrical upon entering the exhibition area. It is slightly twisted, because we were looking for a dynamic aesthetic, which is also true for the sounds.

Remo Schnyder, musician, and Camila Lucero, visual artist Open Circle The piece is a large circular seat made of chairs bound together by a weave of colored strips of cloth and recycled fabric brought by those who collaborated in the process, rendering an account of their emotional states. The circle represents eternity, figuring in many ancient alphabets. It is also one of the first shapes drawn by children. Every transformation happens in a circular form. An open circle evokes the feeling of human protection and security, like a hug. On this grand stage full of movement, which is Sitio Cero, the installation can evoke even greater meaning, becoming more welcoming and inclusive.

Marisa Merlin, landscape artist

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INTERVIEWING A BIRD-HEADED MAN | Iván Ávila Jaewook Lee puts on a latex mask in the shape of a blue jay’s head. In no time at all he is in the new role and to our surprise, responds to the first question with a perfect imitation of birdsong. In the background plays a documentary: Treaty of Rhythm, Color and Birdsong, which shows him and his wife, who plays the flute, in the Arizona desert, along with different interviews with experts who talk about synesthesia, music, color theory and neuroscience from a variety of viewpoints.

The exhibition by this Korean artist is a balanced blend of these different topics, which would be hard to bring together in a different context. The trigger for this exploration are the compositions of French musician Oliver Messianen, created in the early 1970’s in the Utah desert of the United States.

Jaewook is also an erudite speaker, who overflows with enthusiasm when talking about his work and that of the French composer: “He is known for his music and his travels around the world capturing different types of birdsong. He collected them as part of an effort to combine classical music and the sounds of nature.

Messianen had a special ability called synesthesia, which meant that when he heard something, he saw bits of color; he mixed two different senses in his mind. I find it an interesting phenomenon and in this video I try to show his experience of color through the sounds of the desert.”

His original plan in Antofagasta was to connect the sensors of an electroencephalogram to the public, in order to analyze how the brain responded to musical stimulus and the chirps of birds. But the sanitary conditions wouldn’t let him, and he was left wondering about what it would have been like to gather and analyze the reactions from the residents of a place with much less aviary diversity than where he had initially developed his research. “I live and work in Arizona. In Antofagasta there are pigeons and seagulls, but you don’t hear many song birds in the morning, and so although they are both deserts that may look somewhat alike, they are different with regards to the presence or absence of birds.”

The video projection is spread across the entire wall inside of Sala 13, on the second floor of the museum, walls that were repainted according to the precise specifications of the artist, giving the room an uncommon warmth and direct relationship with the shades that predominate in the video, creating an immersive visual experience. The editing produces ruptures in our perception in which a new relation between color and music insinuates itself, an experience that has to do more with feeling than reason.

“There is an attempt to combine various disciplines, and this is not only happening in the field of art, but also in science and other areas, because through the 84

collaboration between different fields of knowledge, we can bring about new ideas that help make for a better world. The sense of separation between painting, sculpture and music took place in the modern era, the European model that tried to separate these disciplines and abilities. Maybe it is time to rethink these distinctions and try to merge them together to see how that blend can lead us to a new vision,” Jaewook ends without taking off the mask that has turned him into a hybrid. His shape perfectly matches the images and sounds of the documentary, which fades to black displaying the credits upon a simple starry background, amid the vibrato of bird calls that fill the room with peace.

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CASA AZUL: THE LIVING ROOM, THE BACKYARD, THE STAIRS, THE BEDROOM | Dagmara Wyskiel Casa Azul is a DIY cultural project in Antofagasta under the direction of the photographer Sebastián Rojas and the actor Claudio Alarcón. In operation since April of 2019, it was founded along with the street artist Mauricio Contreras, in response to the overall lack of spaces in Antofagasta dedicated to the study, contemplation and exhibition of visual arts.

In order to fund this collective domestic art space, the team employed a strategy that combined gastronomy, exhibition of works, concerts, audiovisual screenings, and “cultural hot dog fundraisers” among other events, aiming towards a style of work that is collaborative, horizontal, free from competition or any form of dependence, be it private or institutional. The popular uprising was a major influence, Casa Azul opening its doors in response to the crisis. A series of dialogs, assemblies and roundtables were held, as well as workshops with themes ranging from psychology to first aid. In the months of lockdown that followed, barter and the emergence of micro-economies proved to be fundamental.

Today, Casa Azul is more active than ever, having become one of the four exhibition spaces open to the public during the festival, offering theatrical mediation, created

by Natalia Leal and Claudio Alarcón. Windows is the first curatorship of Sebastián Rojas, who uses photography to reflect upon the inner and the outer, exhibiting in the living room, patio, stairway and bedroom the works of five Latin American artists: Graciela González from Bolivia, Fernando Montiel Kint from México, Gastón Bailo from Argentina, and Cristina Dorador and Sebastián Rojas from Chile.

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WINDOWS | Sebastián Rojas Windows look towards the outside, windows light up the inside.

A ray of light comes through the window while the world outside is falling to pieces; we watch live on Facebook as each piece breaks off and I like it. Reality is always mediated by something else: a gadget, a camera, a screen, probably powered by a lithium battery, a mineral mined from the bowels of the Atacama Desert. A desert being bled to death for the sake of science and technology, being bled to death in order to finance the political establishment, being bled to death in order to maintain power, being bled to death for the benefit of just the very few, a desert agonizing there before our captive gaze. A mountain disappears and nobody says a word.

Windows illuminate our private space, but also open onto the outside, revealing the nooks and crannies of our home, the stains, the debris, the dust under the rugs, the family space. Community mindedness turns into something else, almost to the point of becoming a sort of cushy prison. When out of nowhere time was put on hold we realized the importance of thinking about being, about reconnecting with our insides, because everything on the outside –a faithful reproduction of cancel culture– is cancelled, toppled, torn apart, postponed, eliminated.

After being in this cushy prison we will not be the same. We will go back to reorganizing the boundaries, the new confines mediated by algorithms that turn us into half human, half machine. Reality viewed from a screen, that at some point during quarantine seemed to me like the face of a friend.

The crisis has put us face to face with the transformation of our society, the insanity of a system where speed and efficiency are everything and health is cast aside, while bodies keep piling up in plastic bags.

Gastón speaks of agony, Sebastián doesn’t say anything, Graciela reflects upon private space, Cristina raises questions about the landscape and Fernando thinks about the future. Each one from their own sidewalk, from their own border, from their own window.

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THE FRAILTIES OF THE BODY | Dagmara Wyskiel The research project Fissures, by Uruguayan artist Ana Agorio, emerged slowly during her stay as an artist in residence in Antofagasta at the beginning of 2019; the following year she received an invitation to show her work. This production might just relate to fissures in all of their possible layers of meaning.

A few months after Ana returned to Montevideo, Chile had an awakening and the fissures were filled with blood. International news channels showed images of Dignity Plaza on a daily basis. That summer, Santiago radiated a burning breath of hope to the world. Later came the autumn, and with it the plague. We quickly fell into the depths of the pandemic; both the festival and Ana’s exhibition were rescheduled.

Landscape as Insight is and is not a project based on current tensions. The work would not have existed without the pandemic; it is fed by the graphic visualization of statistical information from the northernmost regions of Chile during the peak of the public health crisis. At the same time, it gives an account of the artist’s findings during her trips exploring the desert and nitrate fields. In both pieces that comprise this work –video and graphic– we find ruptures of overlapping artificial layers contrasting with the sky.

Elements gathered during her residency fuse with audiovisual takes and images from the work of software engineer Juan Olivares. From Seattle, along with the help of researcher Jorge Pérez from the University of Chile, Olivares produced graphics about the correlation between quarantine measures taken by the authorities in different towns and the numbers of new cases of COVID-19 during those same periods. The results were published on Twitter, generating a great deal of interest among Chilean media outlets.

Aliro Bolados is a retired gynecologist from the public health service and an academic from the University of Antofagasta with more than five decades working as a professional, and is also the former director of the Regional Hospital and expresident of the Antofagasta School of Medicine. His wife, the artist Flor Venegas, has hosted the only commercial art gallery in the entire north of Chile for more than 30 years. The space, which smells of old oil paints, is covered by the image of a surgeon´s apron.

Flor and Aliro´s Image Gallery became part of the exhibition circuit museum without museum in 2019 with the show Personal (Nothing Lives Forever) by Francis Naranjo and Carmen Caballero, an exhibition based on medical themes.

It is strange that in 2020 this space should yet again house a project that focuses on human health from an existential perspective. The body’s vulnerability on an 98

individual scale in the work of Naranjo and Caballero, and on a massive scale in that of Ana Agorio, reveals our fragility in a way that is both beautiful and brutal.

Beautiful, because it is brightly poetic; and at the same time brutal, because we find it hard to accept that without a body, we don’t exist.

RETHINKING IN ORDER TO REBUILD | Ana Agorio Within this context of global confusion, with a pandemic that is shaking up the political, economic and healthcare systems; full of conflict and uncertainties, where, in humanistic terms, the basic principles of coexistence are called into question now that the settings have been transformed, in order to rebuild, some rethinking is in order.

A sensible construction of the landscape and territory that characterizes the northern part of Chile, the work uses a graphic representation of data to propose a reflection: does information construct the landscape? Or is the landscape where the answers are found?

Could this territory, so different, so magical, and with such unique beauty, but also with extractive practices, sacrifice and blood, perhaps also contain some of the answers that Chile needs in order to rewrite its history in the light of day?

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UPROOTED | Francisca Caporali Jahir Jorquera was born in María Elena, a city that proudly defines itself as the last nitrate town on earth, while Simone Cortezão is a mineira artist, just like me. Our identities bear the marks of the economic activity that has shaped the history of the state where we are from, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The context of extractivist activities, as well as the contradictions that they create in the lives of those who inhabit regions economically dependent on said activities, is so strong that it blends into the cultural identity.

This exhibition is the result of the displacement of these two artists. Simone traveled from Brazil to Chile in January of 2020 and Jahir took the opposite route, in March of the same year. Their respective trips were the result of cooperation between JA.CA - Art and Technology Center and the SACO Corporation, the purpose of which was to produce reflections on the territories of Jardim Canadá and Antofagasta. The exchange was an attempt to reflect on the failures of a context characterized by the breakdown of an economic model based on exploitation and the resultant impact on communities living in a constant state of alert.

In their travels, the artists sought more than to simply raise questions about mining, but rather understand how their life experiences related to a landscape that was so different, and at the same time recognizable.

The twin landscapes of those two different parts of the global south were rebuilt from Simone’s photographs, windows that bring together Minas and Antofagasta, and where one can hardly be distinguished from the other. Those diptychs show the impacts that centuries of despoliation have had on the land, offering us a rough outline of how, in both cases, the establishment of extractivist industries, and thus everyday life, turn into ephemeral ruins devoid of history. Simone searched for traces of the past in order to understand what some of those lived moments were like, creating a small photographic register where a series of pictures fill in some of the spaces that were reclaimed by the desert dust.

During his stay in Jardim Canadá, Jahir set out to unearth family memories and references to his own life within the culture of Brazil. Named after one of the most famous football players from the 1980’s, Jairzinho, the artist arrived in Brazil at a time in which his name had taken on a different meaning for the population. “É melhor JAIR se acostumando!” (“It would be better if you get used to JAIR!”) was one of the phrases that marked the convulsive electoral process in which Jair Messias Bolsonaro ended up being elected the president of Brazil. With the choice of that name, the father hoped to reflect the athletic dexterity and manliness of 104

the football player in his son, aspects of a patriarchal culture that shapes both national identities.

Jahir’s journey was abruptly interrupted by the spread of the virus, while Simone and I were unable to return to Chile to participate in the staging of this exhibition.

Due to the pandemic, we have come to see the urgent need to rethink the way in which we relate to the earth, with its territories, and with the impact of everything that, in modern times, moves rapidly throughout the world: capital, material, people and the virus.

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ISLA+: QUESTIONING THE (UN)REALITY OF THE PANDEMIC | Dagmara Wyskiel and Iván Ávila 2020 will be remembered as the date on the tombstone for a number of cultural spaces in the world, especially in Latin America, where neither the industry of culture, nor what it is able to provide to the community, were priorities for ruling governments. In Chile, the mandatory and indefinite closure of schools, universities, museums, galleries, cultural centers, theaters, cinemas and other places, in contrast with the uninterrupted operation of supermarkets, and other large scale industries of production and exportation, sketched out a map of predominance that went basically unaltered. We wanted to face this environment of mourning with a utopian gesture, since there is nothing more real than the persistent utopian ideal. When everyone else closes down, we open up. We sawed our way through the fence in order to step outside and to take it to the streets.

ISLA+ seeks to be a stimulus for experimentation with video, using a window that opens out onto the street, a public space where, now more than ever, art is needed.

The curatorial proposal for this new exhibition space, ISLA+, located in the headquarters of the ISLA Latin American Superior Art Institute in the Playa Blanca neighborhood, focuses on video art productions, experimental films, recordings of performance art, animation, visual and graphic creations, pursuing new forms and interpretations of moving images. The approach is intended for the people passing by, or the person next door, keeping in mind that one of the principle missions of art is to question everything.

That’s why there could have been no better choice than to inaugurate this new space with the short film, The Last Island of Heaven, by André Salva, a resident of Antofagasta.

Within a span of two minutes, we are immersed in a fantasy world of drawings that at first glance seem juvenile, but behind their innocence hides the heartrending gait of a giant whose steps cause the beauty of the last island in the sky to come crashing down.

His voracious appetite destroys every sign of life. With no show of remorse, his thirst consumes the water of the small territory that could be any city on Earth, or perhaps it is the whole Earth that is sketched out in forms and colors that are obliterated by this insatiable behemoth.

Is it but a dream, or perhaps a metaphor for a future lacking in life, nuance, or joy?

Through lucid sketches, Salva invites us to question the (un)reality of the current moment, suggesting the need to reflect upon how we relate with the environment, how (in)humane we have become at this point on the line of time in which we are forced to reconsider and reformulate, perhaps like never before, our systematic relation to the environment, managing to touch us at the deepest level with an urgent message that, rather abruptly, takes us on a rapid journey backwards towards the starting point of this dream, of this “now” to which we must react immediately, before it becomes a hopeless “never”.

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LISTENING IN LICKANANTAY | Dagmara Wyskiel The desert’s silence would have been infinite if not for the wind. Silence is stillness, and the wind, movement. Complementing each other like being and not being. Its gusts are repetitive. Its violence is transformative.

Skeletons of mattresses from some illicit garbage dump are the first images that strike the eyes upon adjusting to the dim interior light. Spirals of rusty wire hide scraps of fabric, tiny remnants of intimacy caught up in the metal. A structure originally created to support the human body, it has become a three dimensional sketch imposingly raised in this small and subtle space, that would appear to be scared by this guest. It seems like the desert wind, with its powerful force, lifted it up only to later get entangled like this. It has become a speaker transmitting sounds of objects activated by the mantra of the air, in its natural and eternal movement. According to the artist, this part of the piece is anecdotal, and yet it introduces us to the rest of the route.

A number of still photographs playing on a loop show the song and dance of objects captured unexpectedly, documenting the solitude of life outdoors. A red metallic bird anchored to a post beats its wing against a microphone, with the sound of a tin drum serving as a warning to others in the surrounding area. A number of fences, remains of a grand human effort to divide and own the space, have become percussion instruments, trembling with the rhythm of the wind.

A toddler’s tricycle with one wheel lifted, pointing towards the mountains –the tricycle appears to have been destroyed in some accident– adds more drama to the scene.

A small zine with words from local folk completes the triptych of the exhibition.

Stories from those who know about silence and the wind. It could be considered a random plus that the room only permits entry for up to two people at a time.

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I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION! | Rodolfo Andaur Antofagasta is the epitome of neoliberalism. This city located in the Atacama Desert crudely exposes –in each and every part of its urbanity– the calamities of an economic system walking on a tightrope.

In light of this precipitous prelude, the effects of the psychopolitical crisis and the syndemic have spurred on a social movement that has produced a number of signs and slogans that reflect a time of discord, not only within Chile but from around the world.

Emerging from a general feeling of dissatisfaction within a majority of the population, we are able to see the slogans of a cultural revolution that has constructed a graphic image stemming from both the insipidness of capitalism, as well as from the civic, collective and collaborative hopes that have sprung up in many of the neighborhoods and informal camps around the city.

Within this convulsive landscape, the creative drive of the Canarian artist Acaymo S. Cuesta appears. Revisiting these street symbols in a solo show, he installed a series of images dealing with the rift that exists between the ideal of a market economy and its actual performance in the midst of an unprecedented health crisis.

I demand an explanation! The well-known phrase of the comic book character Condorito became the title of the exhibition, as well as the starting point for a reading of the epistemological processes of transformation that the world is undergoing. Acaymo Cuesta used the words and symbols of demands made in the streets throughout Latin America –tangible and incomparable mantras– to give an account of the fraud of economic power, and of its main promoters and detractors, who emerge in the stories at every second, their struggles, songs and poetics made visual.

The overall context of I Demand an Explanation! is characterized by the environmental footprint of extractivist practices, which was also one of the triggers of the recent protests. From this situation, the symbols and slogans that the artist collected are amalgamated with the (d)effects of the 1980 Constitution enacted

by Pinochet. That charter has been the main political resource used to justify the indiscriminate expansion of neoliberalism into the ecosystem of one of the driest deserts in the world.

Recently though, a fired up community has, through an historic plebiscite, initiated a democratic process to replace the destructive Constitution that was installed by the Pinochet dictatorship some four decades ago. As such, this historic moment 118

continues to compile chronicles and characters from among the same social outcry that has become such a hot topic throughout the country.

In the end, the current circumstances in Chile are the frame for an exhibition where the artists’ modesty conspires to speculate upon ontological uncertainties in a way that brings into being the ever important space for critical reflection for the visual arts in Antofagasta.

Acaymo S. Cuesta’s appearance in Antofagasta was made possible by the support of the PICE fund for Spanish artists sponsored by Acción Cultural Española, Canarias CREA and the Francis Naranjo Foundation.

In addition to the residency for producing and installing his solo show, the artist’s participation included an immersion trip to Quillagua in the Atacama Desert as well as his participation in the SACO9 festival program.

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SCHOOL WITHOUT SCHOOL

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Touch | Carlos Rendón The program school without school was developed in a context where there are literally no schools. This doesn’t just mean no schools of art, but rather no schools at all. In light of the pandemic of 2020, educational establishments were all closed.

This forced us to look for new participants and ways to approach them. During the year in question, we did what seemed right: we used technological means to connect with others through talks and roundtable discussions. But we knew it wasn’t enough.

We turned this inability into an opportunity to try out new formats and offerings, starting with multigenerational workshops. Routine had kept us restricted to working in schools and universities. The changing times, however, brought us back to the original objective of school without school: to deliver knowledge through non-traditional methods in a variety of settings, away from the cages and rigid ways of thinking, getting closer once again to the people, with no regard to titles, degrees, age or any other barrier in between.

We worked in open spaces offering workshops that previously would have been held inside of classrooms –but which were now conducted on beach boardwalks or football fields– going for a more participative, interactive approach, in which there would be no problem for a grandfather to attend with his granddaughter.

Ignoring preconceptions about what an art workshop is supposed to be, or the number of attendees, or how many community interventions there were, allows for a purer way of relating with others.

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CONCEPTUAL EXAMPLES FOR FINDING ART IN WASTE AND CONTRACTS | Carlos Rendón Nobody imagined, on that late March afternoon, that we were attending what would turn out to be the last ISLA community activity before going into a sevenmonth long period of silence due to the pandemic. Maybe it was the most appropriate way to say goodbye: with an activity that dealt with the ambiguity of ideas, the uncertainty about what we observe and, above all, the question, “where is the art in a work of art?” That was the title of the talk given by French artist Fabrice Michel at the end of an eleven day residency, paid for by the French Institute of Chile. He had been brought to the mining capital to look through the city’s waste in search of an artistic proposal, which due to the pandemic, was not able to be exhibited at the festival.

Waste products figure into Fabrice’s entire journey throughout the north of Chile.

The waste products of Neoliberalism in the street protests in which he took part; industrial waste products in the garbage and junk sullying the vast desert landscape; waste products produced by western culture in the most recent symbols of resistance from the indigenous communities of the Atacama Desert, trapped in territories that were both blessed and cursed by the riches of the day.

Guano, saltpeter, copper, lithium.

The talk sought to expound upon these issues, but also to present a general overview of conceptual art; probably the most baffling style of art for a region generally lacking in arts education, and where contemporary art is still considered a sort of eccentric cousin.

Perhaps due to that very same strangeness, the talk drew a large number of attendees. Teachers, actors, visual artists, cultural managers, academics, scientists, all gathered to listen to the French artist, who subjected his own work to the question “where is the art?” The main example he used was his piece Ratio Essendi, in which he signs a legal contract, along with another person acting as patron, stating that “the signatories agree to create a work of art for Fabrice Michel.” And so he asks: Is the work of art in the paper? Is it in the letters that state it as a work of art? Is it in the signatures of both artists? Is it in the ethereal idea that this contract is art?

As the artist reflected on the dialog produced between art and aesthetics (subject matters that he splits into two separate categories), and until what point a work is still considered art when its format or meaning is taken away, the twenty five heads in the room nodded in recognition, and offered their perspectives; first in silence, then out loud, in a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. Later, he talked more about his trip through the Atacama Desert, mentioning among others, the small town of Peine and the chat that he had about 132

violence with Zoilo Gerónimo Escalada, grandfather and “living human treasure” of Colla ancestry.

What began as a literal search for garbage ended up being a process of discovering the wounds of a country that had been going through nearly five months of nonstop protests, something that had an effect on his trip through Chile, which was clearly evident in his presentation. He ended by paraphrasing the words of Paul Klee: “Art nowadays is missing the common touch, because art is associated with the dregs and the margins . . . Here in Chile, all artists should be in favour of a constitution that legitimizes its people.” A general applause followed.

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MASTERFUL MICRO-REFLECTIONS Extracts from the first day of talks from Micro-Curating

| Carlos Rendón

Enrique Rivera: Curator as Spy Director of the Santiago Biennial of Media Arts (Chile). Researcher, audiovisual artists and curator.

“The curator is a kind of spy that needs certain strategies and tactics in order to gain an artist’s trust. Often the curator must remain invisible, disappear. Therefore, getting to that place of familiarity, in a broad sense of the word, is a complicated matter. It’s as if you were going to a psychoanalyst, telling him everything, then the psychoanalyst somehow reveals your inner world.”

“Talking about marginal curatorship in a museum institution smacks of structural paternalism. Generally speaking, I wouldn’t work with an artist just because they are someone who is socioeconomically disadvantaged. It’s like choosing a woman to take part in an exhibition just because she’s a woman, just ‘to keep it balanced.’

If the exhibition were to call this into question it would be interesting, but it opens up the debate over whether including those who are historically underrepresented in an institutional setting in an almost paternalistic way can in fact be as harmful as their exclusion.”

“We try to think of the humans who walk through museums as animals. Primates, intuitive mammals, and their relation to the works, which is often rational, or intellectual in nature. We were interested in encouraging that intuition, but without being naive. We were dealing with complex issues like immigration and inequality, but without trying to over-intellectualize. Integrating the logic of intuition in curatorship.”

Javier de la Fuente: A Curator Isn’t a God Co-director of the Expanded Aesthetics Festival (Colombia). Sound artist, researcher and academic.

“A curator is not a god, nor someone that knows everything about everything. A curator is liable to make a few mistakes from time to time, and the mistakes too, are part of the journey. Errors are a way of reaching places that we have never been before. In no uncertain terms, what we are dealing with is not something measurable, but debatable.”

“The box, be it black or white, is now obsolete. Work is starting to appear away from museums or other preordained spaces, away from those buildings whose architecture requires you to go up some set of stairs in order to look at a sculpture.

This means that people can now appreciate and be part of a work of art, even if it would never occur to them to go to a museum.”

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“Dialog is the mechanism a curator has to generate critical discourse. I don’t think that the curator is called upon to educate, but rather should create symbolic discourse that generates questions.”

Lia Colombino: The Parasite’s Strategy Director of the Museum of Indigenous Art /Museo del Barro (Paraguay). Academic, Masters in Museology and PhD in Art. “It’s like a fly laying larvae, working with that kind of parasitism in mind. I think that it’s the same strategy found in marginalized or peripheral spaces: attack the open wound of the system with art, try to inoculate it here and there with little ideas or images, and see what happens. It is the survival strategy of a parasite.”

“I don’t think of an exhibition as a display of objects, but rather a place where someone shows him or herself. My job is to champion for a multiplicity of voices within a single work and I don’t care whether or not someone walks away from the work with something that wasn’t anticipated; on the contrary, it should open up possibilities.”

“We were intrigued by the possibility of contraband as a curatorial strategy.

Something that has always been done, but not with this in mind, especially not in contemporary art. The work travels in a suitcase, crosses borders and is brought as a gift, like fabric, like embroidery, like a toy.”

Yana Tamayo: Art as a Generator of Possibilities Visual artist, educator and independent curator. Coordinator and producer of a variety of artistic projects in Brazil.

“We still haven’t gotten to the place where art and the production of culture are seen as fields of experiential knowledge that are essential to society, something to which you should have a right to, the same as healthcare, housing, or water.”

“Thinking about the center or about the margins is a site-specific concept. There is the established concept of a geopolitical center; we have to look at that and consider whether or not we want to be at the center and take centralized actions, through which the margins are maintained.”

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MICRO-CURATING | Dagmara Wyskiel Self Proclamation From the geodemographic periphery we can see how over the past few decades curators, visual artists, and other agents have struggled to overcome the vast expanses that separate the larger cities of Latin America where artistic circles are concentrated and the territories agonizing and being reborn in a lack of opportunities. The entire offering of university level art programs are clustered together in an area less than one-fifth the length of Chile, as well as archives and other spaces specializing in the research and dissemination of art. There is unequal access to art institutes and universities and as a result, a professional void going back three generations that widens the knowledge gap, excluding the majority in terms of fostering creative potential, due to both lack of resources and distance (The only university art program in the north was shuttered at the start of the dictatorship). In this panorama marked by absence, where neighboring countries are in the same situation, whoever assumes the role of curator must proclaim him or herself so, becoming a one-man band (managing spaces and funds, curating, museology, staging, publicity, recording, graphic design, social media, among other roles). And if no such person is involved, the project ends in frustration for failing to be materialized, shared and seen by the local community.

According to research conducted by the production team, a project like this one had never been seen before, a strange fact when one stops to consider how, in keeping with dynamic and sometimes even oral traditions, informal cultural arts education is often horizontally spread throughout many fields of knowledge and occupations. Which begs the question: why aren’t there any workshops about curatorship in cultural venues, why aren’t there any seminars offered through the university extensions in any of the regional capitals? Why is it that city governments and regional cultural councils so rarely provide this kind of offering to the people of their communities?

It’s safe to say there is a consensus that without a curator a microscene ends up hobbled, and that the work of a curator is indispensable for the establishment of a diverse and multidirectional map of art; and so we are faced with a paradox. On one hand we know we need them, but on the other hand, we don’t do anything to help them appear and make themselves known to us. What is it about the job of curator that would appear to be incompatible with the non-center. There is, doubtlessly, an aura of sophistication, which is evidenced by the way they speak, their extensive travels through the world of art, and their networks and connections to important exhibition spaces that turns their world into a sublime and intellectual bubble, one that is increasingly less permeable to the realities that might wish to approach the curator while exercising their profession. In Latin America there are worlds that don’t intersect, whose existences go unknown even 138

though they are in your own city, let alone your own country. Today more than ever, the curator needs to have a knowledge of and connection to the street. Those old hermetic worlds are not only incompatible with a conscious and awakened society, but they are an impediment, like any other force of conservatism, to the fundamental changes that will occur irregardless.

From within this context emerged Micro-Curating, a series of practical exercises and spaces for dialog designed to kickstart a symbiotic process of transferring knowledge and abilities related to the curatorial field. The program seeks to impart creative and critical thinking to leaders in territories traditionally lacking in opportunities for formal education.

The aforementioned absence of academia could eventually seem to be an advantage in the search for a shift in paradigm. It has already been stated that the transcendental, that which will forge the future of art, will most likely begin to emerge from within the social and territorial eruptions, from the margins, the periphery, both geopolitically and structurally speaking.

Projection Micro-Curating was conceived of as an experiment, a process that will hopefully continue in 2022 with the possibility of developing a certification program that safeguards methodological and pedagogical standards, with contextualized content designed to be applicable to the unique conditions particular to field research, in response to the demand coming from at least four countries located in the macro-zone of the Southern Andes.

One of the ongoing challenges that programs outside of the academy face is the diverse nature of program participants, as much in terms of praxis as in the conceptual exercises, a situation that has already been evidenced in prior programs, such as Desert Interventions (2016 and 2018) or Between the Form and the Mold (2015). This diagnosis probably indicates a future need for the establishment of minimum requirements for admission, and the development of a methodology with a strong component of individual work. Likewise, the cultural diversity and age range of participants allows for the formation of symbiotic relationships, where the participants with the most experience share their knowledge with everyone else, as was the case of Sandra Ruiz Díaz, curator and producer from Ushuaia, who has been a student and facilitator at the same time. These instances of multidirectional, reflexive variations today form a new (or rediscovered) system of teaching-learning where the very process of designing and implementing the methodology is a path of learning for everyone involved.

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IT’S NOT REALLY NECESSARY FOR MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES TO CONTINUE WITH THEIR RESPECTABLE LABORS | Elisa Montesinos The artist, curator and cultural manager Jorge “Coco” González offered the workshop Domestic Curating for non-traditional spaces. Critical and reflective, he expounded on some of his more controversial ideas surrounding the concepts that were developed in the program, Micro-Curating.

Margins Personally, I have been increasingly distancing myself from concepts that cause us to view ourselves as somehow unworthy or unimportant. I don’t entirely agree with the whole idea of curating from the margins, since the term itself is so loaded with preconceptions about the center and the periphery, a concept that was widely adopted throughout the world of art during the 1980’s.

I feel the same way when I look at, think about, or travel through Latin America.

In the end, our continent does not need to seek validation from some other supposedly superior world. Obviously, we have another universe that we can share and communicate about, but not under some watchful, paternalistic eye looking into our affairs. Writers like Enrique Dussel, Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui, Ticio Escobar, Gabriel Salazar, Ronald Kay and many others have been talking about these things and beings from a Latin American perspective for some time.

Latin America has a knowledge and power that many foreigners are again viewing through the eyes of a conquistador and fortunately for us, the visual awakening is a real, powerful phenomenon right now, not only among creative people but people in general.

All that energy gives me a real sense of security in terms of what we have to contribute to the coming visuality, no longer crying about what we don’t have, but rather, sharing our own strength and cosmogony.

Art and Crisis It seems to me that one of the foremost values of art (if it has any at all), is that it is in a perpetual and profound state of crisis. It doesn’t provide any truths, it isn’t trying to guarantee anything; and as such, it will always be a critical entity.

Art is a living organism. For a long time, it perfectly represented the courtly system of patronage, which was finally overcome by a visuality of common life. As such, it has had to evolve new systems for questioning reality, no small task in Latin America. The racially mixed nature of our continent can be a big help at a time in which we are experiencing a new relationship between the virtual world and the supposed reality that we think we are living in. In times like these, the only 140

thing left for a curator or artist to do is to go even deeper into their methods for perceiving the world. For them it is not entirely necessary that museums and galleries continue with their respectable labors, as the spirit of investigation and creation increasingly outpaces the manhandled world of art.

The North I have had the good fortune of traveling to Antofagasta on and off for the past 30 years and I have always been left with different impressions. On this last trip I returned to Santiago with the belief that the North has been recovering a cultural vitality that was destroyed in the Military Dictatorship. The mixing with fellow Latin Americans has also brought a new energy, new flavors, and new visualities, and at the same time a lot of young people have begun to find out the truth about their history, their territory, and their knowledge. This has opened the way for its artists to take other risks, other paths. It reminds me a lot of the feeling I got when I went to Concepción, which has a scene that seems to me like a good example to follow. I don’t think it is necessary to have Santiago’s seal of approval in order for the North of Chile to continue to develop artistically. Especially in Iquique and Antofagasta, where there is the potential for different branches of knowledge to come together in a special kind of convergence that will further drive the creation of art in our territories.

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creative and critical thinking

thinking about the center or about the margins

the curator is a kind of spy

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a curator is not a god

field curatorship

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MICRO-CURATING MODULE 1: CURATING FROM THE MARGINS | Carlos Rendón On Monday, December 14, the world stopped for 45 minutes. All of Google’s servers went down as Chile was beginning its work day. A few hours later, an earthquake 6.0 strong on the Richter scale struck the Region of Antofagasta, while a total solar eclipse was happening at the other end of the country. On that same day began: Micro-Curating: Curating From the Margins.

The program was fully developed on the campus of the AIEP Professional Institute in Antofagasta, created in response to the lack of opportunities for informal training in curatorship. The program sought to bring what had previously been restricted knowledge, overly-complex and elitist as the curatorial field is, to parts of the country where it isn’t even possible to study art in an academic and professional manner. After years analyzing the territory, the SACO Corporation confirmed that the North of Chile was more like Bolivia, Peru, or northwest Argentina that it was to Santiago in this regard. They are marginal areas, far removed from large cultural centers. For that very reason, they are rich with unlimited potential.

Day 1: Where Is the Periphery?

The first day was dedicated to master talks developed by different Latin American professional artists. Led by Enrique Rivera and Javier de la Fuente, an analysis was made of large-scale cyclical events and the curator’s role in dealing with them; while Lia Colombino and Yana Tamayo shared their impressions and observations about the act of curating in marginalized urban centers. The day ended with a panel with all four guests participating –Yana there in person, while the other three appeared virtually– moderated by SACO director and curator Dagmara Wyskiel.

One of the central topics was the need to get out of the habit of using a white box for displaying works of art. Enrique spoke about his experience literally working on the top of a hill in order to produce artistic experiences, while Javier talked about the potential for site-specific works and the obsolescence of traditional galleries.

They both concluded by remarking on the need to challenge the viewing public.

Another theme was the concept of the periphery, and to what extent this might be a negative idea to work with. This was exemplified by Lia, who spoke about her experience moving an exhibition from Asunción to Salta, instead of Buenos Aires.

It turned out that the show garnered some attention after being presented in Salta, and she was able to take it on the road to other places in Argentina (Corrientes, Rosario, Resistencia); something that would not have happened had the show taken place in the capital, where there is an overabundance of work on exhibition, each work fighting for just a little bit of attention.

In closing, a final series of questions were posed to those in attendance: Where exactly is the periphery? Is Antofagasta the periphery of Chile? And what about 144

Chile, being at the periphery of the world, on a continent that is perhaps in the periphery relative to all the other large land masses on the face of the Earth. Isn’t Antofagasta yet another large cultural center from the point of view of nearby towns like Tocopilla, María Elena or Quillagua? In the end, the periphery –and marginality– appear as discursive subjectivities, an overly simplified and submissive way to speak of resistance.

Day 2: Find Your Ideal Place The second day of Micro-Curating began without any system outages or earthquakes. At this point the program took on a more specialized format, allowing the participants to learn a lot from the vast experience of visual artist, curator, and educator Yana Tamayo, who gave a talk and conducted a workshop that day.

Afterwards, Ximena Zomosa led a practical activity in which participants presented their projects.

Outside of its borders, when someone is asked the question, “What is the capital of Brazil?”, the usual response is either Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo; or at the very least, there is a slight pause before replying with the correct answer, Brasilia. This phenomenon, specific to Latin America, has spawned a unique way of doing art.

In her talk, Yana spoke about this limited artistic circuit, and how Brasilia has had to reformulate its strategy with actions like the project BSB Plano das Artes, a map that seeks to connect cultural spaces within the capital. In the practical part of that day’s program, these same themes were dealt with, generating a discussion over questions like: what are the poetic, political and ethical issues that relate to the territory in which each participant is doing their curatorial work. Terms like democracy, memory, food, symbols, and roadside shrines, among others, came up during the discussion, revealing a diversity of opinions and specializations among the participants.

Ximena Zomosa invited them to present their artistic or curatorial work to the rest of the class. It was an intense program, in which the only opportunity for direct dialog between the students was during breaks, but the activity allowed them to get to know each other’s work. As such it was possible to see projects from Chile and Peru ranging from land art, to street interventions, to desert installations, including prints and projects that were developed during other formal and informal learning processes.

Afterwards, the participants were told to get up and move around the classroom, to understand their environment, even getting to know those spaces that curators avoid, like an imperfect wall, or the floor near the electrical outlets, or the corners of the room. Individually, they began to move about the area, paying special attention to hidden spaces, looking for their own ideal place. For the final part of the workshop, they did the same exercise out on the building’s rooftop terrace, which allowed them to get close to the city itself, and brought them face to face 145

with the idea of intervening in different kinds of spaces, a skill that they would later apply in the final presentation of the program.

Day 3: The Karma of Living in the South (or the North) “I am not going to give up even though they say that there is nothing left to do.”

Just like the song by Argentinean rockstar Charly Garcia, such was the feeling on the final day of Micro-Curating, especially in the first part of the day. The fact is there is no guaranteed success nor any easy path to take when curating at the extreme edges of society. María Luisa Murillo, from Tierra del Fuego, began the day with a talk about mediation strategies used in the Alberto Baeriswyl MuseumHouse (CAB), the difficulties and doubts she has had there, and how it is that they are able to maintain a cultural space at the end of the Earth, one that enables a dialog between art, science, and local history. María Luisa valued the isolation as a means of protecting and refortesting an area that had once been severely damaged by resource extraction.

From one extreme to another, the talk was followed by a panel discussion entitled: Contextualizing Curatorships in the North of Chile from 2009-2019, with Chris Malebrán (Arica), Rodolfo Andaur (Iquique) and Dagmara Wyskiel (Antofagasta).

Unlike the rest of the talks from the first day, this conversation, which lasted a little over two hours, focused on the unpleasant moments that the panelists have had, revealing another side of the work of a curator, one that often goes unseen. They spoke of ideas that didn’t end up working out, and how they were still struggling, each from within their own stronghold, to bring projects to fruition in their respective regions. There was general agreement that considering the capital as the cultural zenith of Chile was a retrograde concept, and that working in the provinces, even though it can be extremely difficult, allows for greater selfdetermination, a chance to reimagine the territory, and an opportunity to actively create projects that may challenge the status quo.

When it came to failures, each panelist had plenty to say. Chris talked about his negative experiences doing projects in Arica, a region that the authorities consider to be “down in the trenches.” Dagmara used the Micro-Curating project itself as an example, continually denied state funding due to the small number of participants that would benefit from its offerings. Rudolfo said that he felt “like a failure regarding the Cerrillos project”, referring to Cerrillos National Center for Contemporary Art, given the fact that he had tried to point out mistakes that were being made at the center, but was unable to get anyone to listen.

With all of this in mind, the program continued with the workshop, Image Trafficking, led by Paula Campos, in which she sought to transmit concepts about design and how to disseminate one’s own creations. The workshop, largely practical in nature, connected with the previous day’s proceedings, as the images being elaborated were made using photographs that were taken on the building’s rooftop terrace.

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In groups, the participants came up with different outlines for potential works of art in a particular space, and how the work should be presented in a given format, from social media to an artist’s portfolio. Though some used images from the rooftop, others chose to work with images of less attractive spaces, like a pile of dirt and debris out on the street as seen from the roof, perhaps representing the filth and garbage upon which large urban areas are often built.

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THE LIGHTS OF ART TURNED ON | Elisa Montesinos María Esperanza Rock, an art historian with a PhD in Ethnohistory, has worked to contribute to the territory with creative, contemplative and critical thought.

Her workshop, Visual Field Ethnographies, generated great enthusiasm among the attendees, with whom she reviewed various ethnographic methods that can be used in art mediation. These are her reflections about how to train cultural managers for change.

Banners Every territory has its own codes and its own rhythms, which form unique ways of experiencing life, or even just surviving, such as in colonized lands like Latin America.

Within this context, art is and will continue to be a human right, a way in which to transmit feelings, and by sharing them, opening up rich veins of language, while also shedding light on certain problem areas in society that tend to be hidden or simply overlooked. For that very reason it becomes essential to have creative, local, and territorial systems for the development of art. Regardless of the trends, movements, or styles these may deal in, they will nevertheless become testimonies, records, and oftentimes banners in the fight for social justice.

Micro-Curatoring, Curating From the Margins is one such contribution. We need to educate –or “uneducate” in every sense of the word– change agents, people who would help make up a critical mass defined by what they could offer in creative, affective, and effective terms. We are facing a short, medium and long term challenge.

What Doesn’t Fit On the Screen Crises are large forces that open the way for the destruction of a failing system.

That is when we must fall, colliding with ourselves so that we can reconsider who we are, and reimagine the systems in which we live from a different perspective.

One can view a crisis as a profound problem/opportunity if one approaches these breaking points as thresholds of change.

Keeping this in mind, there has been an almost spontaneous reaction to recent events, and it has been to transfer the artistic experience in general to digital platforms of visual media. Though the crisis has pushed us into using these new channels of communication, I am still not sure what I think about the phenomenon.

Even now, after another professional and academic year has passed, I am just starting to feel the sting of failed attempts to “humanize” virtual relationships, incorporating more and more technology, that, in the end, is just technology, a computer, a cell phone. Surely, there are some forms of artistic intervention that 148

could make use of all this to greatly extend their reach. Nevertheless, there are many others that definitely don’t fit on the screen, or at least not in that way.

There are aspects of the human experience that are so complex that sometimes the present moment (this gift) can only be truly experienced or explored in person.

Perhaps the contributions that such technologies can make in cases like these are simply for broadcasting and reaching larger groups of people. Nevertheless, there are transcendental moments that require a live audience, and only with others present is the work complete, message delivered.

There is no doubt that this crisis has caused us to look at other paths, other ways, and other reflections that we are still processing. I just pray that we don’t succumb to the constant manipulation, a senseless melody composed of complicated banalities, difficult to detect for those who are part of this society of spectacle, as it was called by Guy Debord in the last century.

Agents of Change It was very motivational seeing young artists wrestle with their own creative processes in a context of extreme neglect. This, aware of the fact that Antofagasta, as a major hub of the mining industry, generates a large part of the country’s monetary wealth, which could be reflected in education, science, and culture. At the same time, the Chilean education system continues to produce people who maintain the same model of development and progress. A model that requires hard work and large sums of money to end up exporting raw materials for an international market in which one later buys some expensive, sophisticated product. It is a cycle completely lacking in circular, sustainable energy. All this turns “consumption” into a thing of scarcity, as everyone is busy consuming products from the Asian and Anglo markets, while little is consumed from the domestic market, not to mention the lack of consumption of art and culture.

It is gratifying to witness the self-discipline, self-motivation, talent and drive emerging from a context full of great hostility towards artistic practice, especially considering the fact that it is geographically located in a territory that is extremely active, in economic terms. This educational initiative is sustained and supported by diverse groups of young people and artists, in conjunction with the managers, mediators and producers of SACO, who have systematically searched for a way to keep the lights of art turned on.

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MICRO-CURATING PART 2: INVALUABLE PRESENCE | Carlos Rendón In order to carry out the second part of Micro-Curating, some changes had to be made. With the borders closed and the cities returning to quarantine due to the beginning of the second wave of COVID, the program had to focus on those who were able to be present in Antofagasta in January, 2021, considerably reducing the number of participants, but at the same time, strengthening the bonds of togetherness and the force of the pedagogical experiences that the workshops generated.

Day 1: Domestic Curating Coco González, who taught Part 2, doesn’t define himself as a curator, but rather self-identifying as more of a painter. For that very reason, his vision of curating comes from practice, rather than theory or academic texts. “I don’t have a way with words, and so I decided to paint,” he said during one of his first interventions.

The main contribution Coco made in his workshop Domestic Curating was to help its ten participants put their feet on the ground. “There is no reason that my experience in Santiago has to be any better than yours,” he said, as explaining to them how he executed several of his projects, focusing especially on those he staged in Concepción. The second part of his presentation was dedicated to how to apply for state funding. While talking about his experience, he tossed out one of the day’s most memorable phrases: “With Fondart, it’s more important to be creative filling out the application form than with the project itself,” which drew a laugh from those present. He also pointed out the many new possibilities that exist in today’s digitalized society, DIY strategies that rely on patronage from friends or crowdfunding.

The only transmission of knowledge from Part 2 that was not face to face happened that afternoon: a mini-round of talks given by Guillermo Anselmo Vezzosi and Sandra Ruiz Díaz, two personalities linked to the Argentinean art scene.

Guillermo talked about his understanding of materiality and staging, as well as the use of common objects in the exhibition of a work. He talked about his experience going from an artist whose work was shown in museums and galleries to one who was more comfortable working in public space or doing urban art interventions.

His current philosophy, particularly relevant to the central concept in MicroCurating, is “to make high definition art with low cost materials.”

Sandra had been just another participant in the first part of the program. Speaking very informally to those with whom she had been classmates only a few weeks prior, in her talk she elaborated on her experience curating from the margins in biennials throughout the Americas: Biennial of the South, the Havana Biennial, the 152

Biennial at the End of the World, among others. At the end of her presentation she included a small debate about the importance of and justification for government support of DIY projects: is it a good thing or just a bandage that prevents us from really getting to the heart of things?

Day 2: Enjoying the Strange María Esperanza Rock came to revolutionize the classroom there at the AIEP main campus. Making use of interactive strategies and techniques, she was able to quickly win over those who were in attendance. Through dramatic language and performance she illuminated complicated concepts such as the decolonization of the image, in a workshop entitled Art and Social Research.

One of the activities consisted of having pairs present an artistic object they themselves had created (necklaces, hair bands, airplanes, drawings, masks, etc), providing a challenge in terms of curating and mediation that had to be resolved right then and there.

Afterwards, planning began for the projects that each participant would be presenting to the class the following day. Sandra told the participants to wander the space for three hours, looking for the best place and manner in which to present their ideas: do I show my own work or that of someone else? Do I show objects or ideas? What is the best part of the room in which to present?

18 hours later the workshop Art Mediation at the Margins began, led by Jorge Wittwer. The purpose was to deliver important tips about how to connect art with the public, not only through analysis and dialog about the work, but also by creating methodologies that attract the viewing public and re-enchant them in contexts that may be less than ideal.

Day 3: Curators at the Margins The final day of Micro-Curating was a trial by fire for the eight cultural workers who had made it to the end of the program, an ending that promised to be an intense creative process.

In the second part of María Esperanza’s workshop, one of her most interesting ideas was a reinterpretation of the game “Spot the Difference” in which each person used their body in a way that was suggestive of a work. The exercise was meant as a vehicle for analyzing each participant´s capacity for observation and exhibition.

In the afternoon, Jorge Wittwer conducted another workshop which ended up with individualized accompaniment for each of the eight curators in the making, 153

who had expressed their ideas in extremely variable ways, using the given space practically from end to end, which allowed for the creation of a natural flow to the route linking each of their presentations.

Focus On the Territory Two of the projects were in dialog with each other, using disruptive elements in order to pose questions about what kind of visual art it is that we appreciate: Sebastián Rojas made a multimedia presentation revealing both the absurd level of non-communication and the power of social media; while Ángelo Álvarez created a mobile work out of images of some of Antofagasta’s more colorful street personalities, painted upon cardboard and a Coca-Cola bottle that held a few stems of plastic flowers.

Some of the participants focused their sights on territory. Claudia León, from Colombia, made an international call, aimed at artists from “translocated” countries, whose raw materials had been extracted by transnational companies.

Meanwhile, Veronica Figueroa waxed poetically in a travel diary that noted the contrasts between the desert and the forests of southern Chile, challenging commonly held notions about the absence or overabundance of life in those landscapes.

Memory was yet another of the presentations’ significant themes. Fernando Huayquiñir offered a minimalist work contraposing touristic images of the desert with its tragic and hidden history. At the other end of the spectrum, María Gallardo’s project consisted of placards imprinted with ideas about collective memory interwoven with a path of rose petals several meters long, an installation that called on the public to contribute their own ideas to the work.

On two of the room’s opposing side walls, women appeared as a central theme in two of the interventions. Rocío Zuleta presented a local graffiti artist’s works, whose central figure was a woman, now deceased, who had since become his muse, revealing a tragic backstory that was made visible by the curator’s decision to include an actual photograph of her. Celeste Núñez juxtaposed two actions: on one hand, she projected explicit drawings of surgery and diseases of the uterus; on the other, was the Atacama Desert seen through the eyes of a feminist, illustrating the contrast between fertility and infertility from up close and personal, to global in perspective.

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THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS | Carlos Rendón Synesthesia has been documented since the 19th century as a phenomenon that allows some people to perceive more than one sensation from a given sensory stimulus. It is possible for these people to hear colors, see sounds or taste touch. It is not something that can be taught or learned, though there are techniques that can help one to experience it.

The perception one gets reading a text or looking at a painting can be altered by its form, outline or color. The same thing happens with sound and its rhythm, tone, harmony or dissonance, especially when guided listening is involved. Such was the case with Visualizing Birdsong, a workshop led by South Korean artist Jaewook Lee at the AIEP Professional Institute.

Divided in two parts, the first was a presentation on synesthesia and the workings of the human brain. Using a portable electroencephalogram (EEG) machine connected to a computer, Lee was able to show his neuronal activity and how it was altered by different external stimuli. When he closed his eyes and focused, the brainwaves subsided. When he spoke or listened to music at high volume, they would increase. The same experiment was repeated with one of the workshop’s participants, and we were able to see that person’s brain activity converted into blotches of color.

In the second part, Lee invited everyone to participate in a hands-on activity. Each person, with pen and paper, listened attentively to the songs of different birds, interpreting their trills, endowing each with specific color, shape and intensity. This was done with a Steller Jay, a robin, a red-winged thrush and finally the northern cardinal. All foreign birds, which made the process of turning their songs into abstract images that much more complicated. The most interesting part was that none of the images looked alike, even considering that they had been inspired by the same birdsong.

Jaewook had begun the workshop talking about Olivier Messiaen, the composer famous for having translated birdsong into pieces of classical music. Regardless of the differences, within the hour workshop participants were experiencing that same mental process, which in some ways was even therapeutic.

In the end, it was impossible to know who had been closest to experiencing true synesthesia, as it was about subjective, personal experience, in which birdsong served to connect an individual with his or her own brain. It’s almost as if it were easier to reveal the secrets of the mind through the chirping of birds rather than human language.

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THE IMAGES WE CONSUME AND PROJECT | Natalia Leal, Claudio Alarcón y Sebastián Rojas Images as the trigger for action, truth, and the construction of our own reality; how they show some truth about the being that created them: these were some of the concepts confronted in the exhibition Windows. Starting with these concepts in mind, we began to weigh the challenge of creating a theatrical activity that would help the viewing public consider questions raised by visual arts, a staged experiment that began with “dramatized mediation.” The project opened a dialog between visuality and theater, without either of them predominating the interaction. We decided not to talk about technique or context, but rather about the depths art can uncover in our regular, day to day lives after a long period of confinement.

With the aim of promoting an intimate atmosphere, throughout the course of the theatrical performance, only three people were permitted at a time. A fundamental aspect of the project was to foster different feelings and emotional states in the viewing public.

What Do Visual and Performing Arts Have in Common?

The construction of an imaginary order is the foundation of performing arts. The actors try to get inside the head of each artist in order to translate their work into an emotional state, generating a dramatic dialog between these two characters (Valentina and Klaudio), who live in the same house (theatrical space). The work is set in the year 2070, after a series of pandemics, starting with the public health crisis provoked by COVID-19. Klaudio apparently suffers from a psychological disorder stemming from a total fixation with the images associated with 2020, while she tries to help him recover. A constant struggle in which memories from the state of disaster unfold.

Upon entering the house, visitors are accompanied by a guide, while they constantly listen to the sound of the clock. In another room, the actors commence their performance looking at each other, with full face shields, hazmat suits and rubber gloves. They move through the house as the public follows. Poetic texts, mantras and music intermix, while Klaudio or Valentina look at the photographs that inhabit the stairway space, or they tap on the keyboard of a typewriter in the blue room.

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SHADOWS IN QUILLAGUA | Carlos Rendón When the winning artists from the open call for Now or Never proposed to lead a workshop during their immersion trip to Quillagua, it was something completely new for the festival. Three of them teamed up to offer to bring the children of the town into the depths of the Atacama Desert for a unique experience that would not only take advantage of each of the artist’s individual expertise, but also an inexhaustible source of fuel in the North of Chile: the sun.

The idea for the workshop was to use photographic paper that reacted to sunlight, in order to print the forms of meaningful objects from Quillagua. A small print shop was set up on the main field of the school, along with tables, chairs, and trays filled with lemon water. A short time later, it resembled a photo lab .

The initial instructions had been for the students to gather objects that represent their hometown, inviting them to view it as a sort of treasure hunt. All kinds of things started to appear: from bones, toys and seeds, to a doll’s arm, bottle caps and other odds and ends. The compilation offered the schoolchildren an opportunity to find different meanings in their everyday environment. After overcoming some initial hesitation, their imagination was given free rein, and from hidden corners, or perched up in the trees, they began to see things differently, that patio, that dirt, that landscape.

With the objects on the tables, each student began to design their print, placing the odds and ends on the photographic paper; some at random, others making sketches, trying to reproduce images characteristic of the place, such as trees or animals that are seen in the town on a daily basis.

It took the sun ten minutes to imprint pictures on the paper. After wetting the paper with lemon water, the object’s shadows became impregnated, acquiring a whitish tone against the paper’s blue background. The shadow became the brush upon that small but surprising canvass.

The students’ teacher kept the remaining photographic paper so that they could do the activity again at school, and the students were left with instructions on how to produce more of the paper at home. And so, in the classroom that is the driest desert on the planet, the students will be able to use all of that sunshine in a creative, new way.

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REVEALING SILENCE AND SOUND | Iván Ávila Sunset in San Pedro de Atacama. The fifteen attendees of sound artist Pablo Saavedra Arévalo’s workshop are present there on the open grounds of La Tintorera guest house. Pablo spent three weeks living at the oasis preparing for the workshop.

Pablo tried to avoid having preconceptions about the territory he had come to explore. This allowed him to more freely approach the people of the place (both natives and newcomers alike) who contributed to his field research, availing themselves to the informal interviews he conducted. A number of the people he met during his time in San Pedro are at La Tintorera, ready to participate in this experience whose first stop is an open dome, built out of earth and wood.

Pablo explains to those in attendance, whose ages range from eight to seventy years old, that the purpose of the exercise is to discover the sounds of the environment, both natural and artificial, even the ones that we ourselves are making. This is why the participants are remaining quiet for a few minutes, sitting in a circle inside the dome, finding out that the apparent stillness of the place isn’t really so: it is full of the sound of movement: of the plants, trees, insects, animals and vehicles driving by outside.

Soon thereafter, Pablo “crowns” each person with a device made from cardboard and plastic tape shaped like antennas. Everyone fans out in different directions through that rural space, using those extensions to touch walls, logs, the ground and furniture. Through vibrations they discover the sound each element makes upon contact. The conclusion reached is that nearly everything that surrounds us is capable of generating sonic responses that we are able to then hear as sound.

The next exercise consists of the use of contact microphones in order to listen to sounds that are normally imperceptible. These are amplified with a speaker that the artist found in an illegal garbage dump, giving it new life in this workshop.

So the participants are able to sense how the various materials react –bottles, pots, funnels, pieces of wood– each emitting totally different sounds depending on what they are struck with.

Pablo has worked these past few weeks with what he calls “future remains,” commonly used items thrown out by the residents of San Pedro, that at some point will become part of the desert’s geological layers, and perhaps even be analyzed by archaeologists hundreds or thousands of years into the future. Out of corrugated iron, kettles, a stove and some plates, he built an installation three meters in length, and a meter and a half tall. The final part of the workshop 166

consisted of getting this structure to produce sounds by pelting it with the fruit of chañar trees, which grow on the grounds of La Tintorera. In an action that could almost be considered cathartic, the participants “attack” with the fruit of the chañar, whose form and texture is similar to the dates of the palm trees that grow near the coast, the exercise slowly becoming an atonal symphony of percussion.

“What he did fits perfectly with this intercultural meeting place,” says Verónica Moreno, hostess of La Tintorera and workshop participant. “Here we try to understand others, their way of seeing life, of feeling, of perceiving nature and the place where they live.”

“They always say that the desert’s silence forces you to listen to yourself. When there is no noise, essentially you can hear yourself, physically: you become aware of your breath, you are able to hear your heartbeat. And so, what they said is true, not only from a mystical point of view, in terms of healing your spirit, but also in physical terms, the way your body produces sound. That feeling of emptiness helps you to hear yourself, and to hear those little things, like grains of sand hitting wood. The thing is that there is no silence in the city, there is always some other far away sound that covers the silence that the desert emits,” Pablo concludes.

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MEDIATING ABSENCE | Gabriel Navia y Carlos Rendón Guiding visitors in Sitio Cero was a tremendous challenge. We knew the situation in the country was not the best, from the social uprising to the pandemic; that selective and classist event, so convenient for the economic elite. A pandemic that keeps all of the icons of consumerism increasing its earnings while everything that might save us from mental breakdown is turned off.

It’s a situation that hit the cultural sector hard (and still is), leaving artists impoverished and cultural centers with no public, while the minister in charge, totally disconnected, uses degrading language to talk about people who work in culture. In the middle of all this, the main exhibition of SACO9 took place, which was also affected by a change of location.

The new space was not seen by visitors as a place for appreciating art. Knowing that in advance, we faced the challenge of looking for new strategies, beyond the classic invitation through social media and guided visits. The number of visitors ceased to be a decisive factor in order to establish if an exhibition had been successful or not. Sometimes we even had the sensation that “less was more.”

The exhibition was huge, diverse, thoughtful and very interactive. Everything was set up in a way that invited the public to take a pause –that “now or never” that the festival was pursuing– in that lapse of time that the end of the year and holiday season allows for. The route was designed to begin with the transpacific dialog of Sand, moving on to the linguistic games of Concurrences, then on to the song of Antofagasta´s win d, with the piece: Somewhere, Sometime. The next stop allowed for an observation of the sun’s reflection through 45 Degrees, and after sitting in the Open Circle, visitors passed the modular piece, Container City, before finally experiencing Domes, the most challenging piece to mediate, due to its invisibility.

There was the case of a couple, in which the woman only wanted to go out to lunch and was practically forced to attend the exhibit by her partner. During their visit, talking and learning about each project, they admitted that it had been a life-changing experience. That is the mediator´s greatest satisfaction. There were also people who already knew about the festival or who had participated in prior activities, and it was nice to listen to them talking about what they had learned about contemporary art thanks to some of the activities we had earlier led in the city.

Perhaps the most interesting situation during this festival was the visit of a homeless man to the exhibition. Respectfully, he came in and asked if admission was free. He refused the mediation very kindly and went to see the artworks by himself. Probably, among all the visitors, he was the one who spent the most time 170

looking at the works, analyzing them one by one, enjoying the solitude of the space. Looking at this person appreciating art with such attention was a rewarding experience. Never before during all the years exhibiting at the historic pier, had a homeless person come by to contemplate the site-specific pieces.

And so, who is the challenge meant for? We often hear complaints about a lack of culture in the city. The challenge is ours: to create new strategies and ways to attract the public. And also for the public to get excited and take time for the moment of reflection that we present. A symbiosis between both is needed for facing the hard moments we have been through and continue going through.

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ANCHORING EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS: SCHOOL WITHOUT SCHOOL AT THE PORT | Carlos Rendón A concrete esplanade that spread out over more than 4,000 square meters, remaining empty for most of the year, was the space that SACO, in its ninth edition, arranged to use for a collective exhibition of international artists.

The space was also used for various educational offerings that introduced the public to different themes like the construction of musical instruments, the reinterpretation of works of art, or how to play architect with big blocks of wood.

Learning to Be a Luthier Remo Schnyder and Camila Lucero Allegri Until a few weeks ago, making a stringed musical instrument in under an hour seemed like an impossible task. Remo Schnyder, Swiss artist and exhibitor in Now or Never, along with the Chilean artist, Camila Lucero Allegri, showed that it was indeed possible, in an activity that was both dynamic and fun.

As they introduced themselves, each of the ten participants talked about what had got them into the world of music. From DJs to members of a local school orchestra, they had all been drawn to the event by the novelty of making sounds with a stick, a guitar string, cans, screws and plastic ties.

There were those who improvised, and used more ties; or who used larger cans or even two, connected to two different strings, whose sound changed depending on where they were struck, the can playing the part of resonance chamber. An excited music teacher that participated in the workshop said that she hoped to repeat the activity in her classroom.

At the end of the workshop the group went over to some shipping containers that they turned into huge resonance chambers. The music, at first a cacophony, acquired structure and rhythm, becoming a small improvised orchestra of percussion and strings.

Not Very Refined Now or Never exhibiting artists with Dagmara Wyskiel, Director of SACO Where does a work of art begin and where does it end? What is it that turns a few pallets used in the shipping and warehousing industry into a work of art?

Or a few chairs covered in cloth? Or sand? These are some of the questions in contemporary art that have gone unresolved since they were first raised.

Ordinary, inexpensive and “not very refined.” The materials that went into the creation of the works exhibited at Sitio Cero in Now or Never, could just 174

as easily have been found in the storage room of a mall or in a hardware store.

SACO’s director, Dagmara Wyskiel, museographer of the exhibition, walked from one work to the next, followed by twenty people. At each stop, the artists were waiting to talk to the group about their process for conceiving and staging the work. They shared their concepts, inspirations and thoughts about each piece, paying special attention to 45 degrees, which stretched out on the ground beneath the desert sun, extending beyond the space allotted for the staging of the work; and Sometime, somewhere, which was heard by the public for the first time, thanks to the steady coastal breeze moving through the strings that stretched up into the sky. More than one attendee remained afterwards to talk to the artists, asking questions or with the hopes of remaining in further contact.

Occurring a day before the festival’s inauguration, the activity served as a sort of dress rehearsal, so that SACO’s mediators could test the strategies they would be using to generate meaningful interaction with the works there at Sitio Cero in the weeks following the exhibition’s opening to the public.

Nobody Was an Architect Simon Van Parys, exhibiting artist in Now or Never The workshop, A Modular Container Terminal was conducted on a hot Saturday afternoon, but nobody seemed to care. The space was begging for intervention. At least that was the feeling one got from Simon Van Parys’ work Container City, the most modular piece of all, and the only one whose main feature was the time it took to complete.

During the opening of the exhibition Now or Never, we could only see the foundations of a city formed out of pallets and wooden boxes. The purpose of the workshop was to give it a “final form” in a collective, collaborative and civic manner. As such, the first step would be to completely eliminate the shapes and structures that had been previously constructed. Except for a few pallets, the space designated for the piece was vacant.

The Belgian artist then invited the participants to partake in an experience that was a lot like playing with legos. Each person started placing the minicontainers about the space, without any direction or rules imposed, going on “gut instinct”. The result was unique: while some people constructed big, tall structures that defied gravity, others preferred to build forms at ground level, or put together letters and bridges.

“When you build a work of art in a public space, it is important to keep safety in mind,” Simon remarked after this first engagement, adding that no matter 175

how cool the piece looked, the most important thing was to look after the well-being of the public. Therefore, the mission was to rebuild the piece, while keeping that in mind.

Considering that none of the participants had any expertise, the end result was a large and varied sculpture. The artist concluded the workshop by telling everyone that the staging of the piece was finally finished, and that we had become co-creators of a work that would remain the same until the end of the exhibition.

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THE NEW ROLE OF ART IN TODAY’S MASS INFORMATION LABYRINTH | Elisa Montesinos Among the many activities included in the festival’s most recent edition, featuring both virtual and live exhibitions, workshops and panel discussions, was the colloquium What Do We Do in the Face of a Crisis? Examples From Latin America 1 and 2, in which curators and academics working in Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia were able to share their thoughts about the role of the state regarding the current crisis in the field of culture, as well as topics such as the advantage and disadvantages of online offerings. More than seventy people connected from different places throughout South America and Europe in order to follow the debate between the six panelists, as well as to participate by asking questions at the end of each of the sessions, one in May and the other, in October.

With regard to the kinds of experiences that are impossible to transmit through existing channels of communication, one of the questions had to do with what is gained and what is lost with the large number of current technological platforms.

The responses varied from the inability to truly express the artistic experience through online formats, to the exact opposite: that new aesthetics and experiences can emanate from virtual technology.

The Uruguayan artist and curator Fernando Sicco put it bluntly: “I strongly believe that the experience of art cannot be completely transferred to the virtual world. I am a staunch defender of the idea that art must alway fight against being moved from a place of physical encounter to some virtual space; regardless of whether or not we have certain tools at our disposal, we are not trained to use them. In my opinion, artists, museums, and galleries need to rally beneath the banner that live, in person experience is essential to art. Nothing can replace being immersed in an installation, looking at a painting, or looking at a sculpture with other people beside you with whom you can discuss the work in situ. That will always be something that is irreplaceable.

Dagmara Wyskiel put her seal of guarantee on a sort of declaration of principles, stating that the festival would not be offering virtual workshops. She went on to talk about all the efforts that were made in order to ensure the arrival in Antofagasta of the twelve international artists participating in the ninth edition of the festival before the borders were closed. “We did everything we could to get them work visas and travel permits. A surprising source of help came from the Antofagasta Regional Health Department, saying that direct contact with artistic expressions is vital to the maintenance of mental health in the community. It became our slogan in our fight against the bureaucracy.”

Artistic, Social, and Political Imagination All things considered, technology allows for different kinds of audiences, ways to dialog, and creative solutions. That was the point raised by the Brazilian visual 180

artist, educator, and independent curator Yana Tamayo. “We cannot stop thinking, because art is also a production of thought, a way of bringing to light the things that we haven’t yet been able to manage well on a social or political level. Digital platforms are not able to achieve the same things as a live event, and yet they have allowed us to find a way to have live dialog with people and places far beyond our local networks, which is what we are doing right now.” Founder of the autonomous art space NAVE, in Brasilia, she spoke of her experience seeing “editors organizing debates between writers about the pandemic, the crisis, and their thoughts about the future. There has been a powerful summoning of artistic, social, and political imagination of late. We need to take part in this public dialog in order to know what is happening, what works, in terms of experience, in terms of building.”

The Argentinean architect, sound artist, and cultural manager Javier de la Fuente had a different point of view. “New media art is part of an ongoing development that doesn’t contradict traditional art forms just because it is taking advantage of the latest technology. The new media have been for art, let’s say, a fabric, a tapestry that has been elaborated and continues to be elaborated and wonderful things come from it. In some way, it’s also turning us into cyborgs, beings in which the biological is merged with the cybernetic. It’s a challenge, but every challenge is also an opportunity, in fact the aesthetics produced today are totally influenced by technology.”

Museums and Galleries as Sacrificial Sites The debate was a joint attempt to understand the changes that come along with the crisis. The answers were arrived at in a collective manner, with some issues going unresolved, some questions unanswered, as well as some areas of disagreement.

Lia Colombino, director of the Museo del Barro in Asunción, contributed to the debate her ideas about the democratization of art, which implies a departure from its traditional spaces and formats. “Maybe people unfamiliar with the art world will get interested in it through the use of new technologies, whether they are part of the public, or even artists themselves. The distinction between what is and what is not art has always interested me.

No language can accurately express the exact nature of experience, which is why we had to invent metaphors, we had to invent a lot of things to be able to communicate that which it is actually impossible to express. On the one hand something is lost, but on the other hand something is gained.”

Enrique Rivera, director of the Santiago Biennial of Media Arts, elaborated further on the need to leave behind traditional art venues. “It is precisely this idea of receiving an artistic work at your own place, without any intermediary, like a gallery or museum; that´s what is happening online right now. Museums, cultural 181

centers and the like, have become a sort of danger zone, a sacrificial site, where, in order to see a work, you put your life at risk, in terms of the current pandemic.

The dissolution of the author is part of the production when it comes to digital media, and it is worth considering how intellectual property starts to lose meaning in the context of the internet, and how the elimination of intermediaries, such as museums and galleries, might be a response to all the art developed through these kinds of technological means.”

Some of the other issues dealt with were nostalgia and the need for live events.

“Call me sentimental, but I miss those openings with three hundred people, but not just to make some business happy. I miss them because they were an excuse to get together with people to talk about the work, and have a nice time together,” Fernando Sicco confessed. “I really miss openings with sixty, or a hundred people.

We had an exhibition in January that was also like a manifesto, with no money, but with a lot of collaboration between the twenty-nine artists,” added Yana Tamayo. “It was an important venue in Brazil that was being threatened with closure, and we were able to stage an opening with more than six hundred people in attendance, which was almost a record. As soon as the exhibition ended, the quarantine began.”

Dagmara Wyskiel took up the banner that Sicco had raised about the importance of not giving up. “I believe that we have a duty to the community that cannot be neglected. At least that is how I feel in Antofagasta and I never thought for even a second to wait until all the lights turned green, because we in the field of culture will obviously be the last ones to open up. There are malls and supermarkets open, not to mention big business, which never stopped functioning, while we in culture were forced into confinement. If we just accept it, we signal to the community that in fact the neoliberal government was right in considering us the least important sector.”

In the face of this, one of biggest concerns put forth by Paraguayan artist Lía Colombino had to do with eventism, an eagerness to do event after event and Zoom after Zoom on the one hand, and on the other, thinking about “everything associated with the shadow, with darkness, a sort of emptiness that is preserved through art. Because the ‘total transparency’ that new technology brings, a ‘total shareability’ is in reality, for me, a total fallacy. We have to try to communicate in new ways that might not be totally transparent, but that actually create an experience where some art’s inherent mystery can remain. ” These reflections reveal how art, just like other languages, is evolving and is affected by the current crises in such a way that it will never again be the same.

In the information labyrinth, art becomes a labyrinth in and of oneself. Marshall MacLuhan declared it more than a half century ago: the medium is the message.

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RESIDENCIES / TERRITORY

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A NOTE FROM ANTOFAGASTA, CHILE | Jaewook Lee The endless horizon of the blue Atlantic Ocean, the rhythmic sound of waves, the steep ridges of rocky Atacama Desert mountains, open sky, and bright sunlight welcome me with a breath of warmth. Street dogs, big and small, roam freely.

Families of sea lions grin near the fish market. Seagulls are flying, high above the ocean. In the Southern Hemisphere, it is summer. I am in Antofagasta, Chile.

Antofagasta is a port city known for mining production, exporting copper to the other side of the Earth. The port owner is providing a large outdoor area for international artists to install their artwork for SACO 9 Festival of Contemporary Art. He seems like a successful businessman, but maybe he is bored with the trucks, containers, mining production, and ships he sees every day. Now he smiles, excited to see this extraordinary and intellectual event taking place on his property. The outdoor exhibition of art offers time to think, sense, feel and imagine. We pause and contemplate. It is an escape. Workers at the port are still hard at work.

Some people asked me how I felt about seeing art in a marginalized region such as Antofagasta. The question was somewhat unexpected. While Antofagasta might not be a big city like New York, I don’t think of it as a marginalized place for contemporary art, thanks to SACO. Major contemporary art exhibitions can take place anywhere in the world, and people will pay attention as long as they provide interesting content and raise important issues. The internet has contributed a lot to this phenomenon, but the effort made by the SACO team is the primary reason, and creates a strong gravitational energy.

SACO 9 presented my video at the Museum of the Region of Antofagasta. This is very meaningful for me. The museum is one of the oldest buildings in the region and exhibits the region’s history. My video was installed in the last room of the museum. That means that the latest contemporary art is in the city. As a South Korean, I wonder whether I am eligible to show my art there. At the same time, it shows how open-minded the city is and how they welcome people from other parts of the world. I am honored and humbled.

I am staying with other artists from different parts of the world, such as Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland and Spain. We share time and space. We eat together. We learn from each other. While political news pains us, we heal ourselves by being together, understanding our differences. I feel that visiting Antofagasta has been worthwhile, even though the pandemic made it difficult for us to travel.

Jaewook Lee´s participation in the festival was possible thanks to the Korea Foundation Arts and Cultural Exchange Program 2020. Along with his exhibition Treaty of Rhythm, Color and Birdsongs, the artist offered the multigenerational workshop on sinestesia Visualizing Birdsongs at AIEP Professional Institute of Antofagasta.

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THE DEATH OF MEMORY | SACO Team In 2011, Quillagua lost the only teacher it had. In a show of trust, the teacher gave the keys to the Museum of Anthropology to one of its oldest residents, doña Felisa Albornoz.

She was one of the hundred people that, surprisingly, decided to remain in one of the oldest villages of the Atacama Desert, after the Loa River was contaminated by a toxic spill and the few available water rights passed into private hands.

Doña Felisa and the rest of the neighbors living in that oasis became figureheads in the resistance against the depredation of industry, environmental devastation and the neglect and indifference of the state.

Doña Felisa took care of the museum for nine years, until she finally passed away in the middle of 2020. From that point on, the museum remained closed.

She looked after and spoke to the mummies, and became a link behind the present and the region’s precolumbian past. For SACO, she was a colleague and hostess.

She was there with her stories for each of the immersion trips we took to Quillagua since 2012.

She was a symbol of that which is meaningful, beautiful, moving and potent in the driest place on earth, but also of the delicate and vulnerable situation in which many of its communities find themselves. Moribund Quillagua must not die, because it would mean a loss of culture and memory.

The death of doña Felisa invites us to reflect on those stories, experiences, anecdotes and feelings, so personal and at the same time so common, before they disappear, and with them, the people that have forged the past, present and future there.

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WHAT THE TOURISTS DON’T SEE | Elisa Montesinos Fabrice Michel´s residency in Antofagasta, in March 2020, coincided with the social uprising and the beginning of the pandemic. Through the course of his research, he at times felt like a journalist, as he talked with the people and the activists of the city, visiting possible locations for an exhibition. He toured through the city and the desert looking for clues about the impact the lithium industry has had on the region. But something distracted him. The clanging of pots struck by wooden spoons compelled him to go out into the streets. For twelve days he kept a journal, noting down his impressions, filled with questions, observing how the issues in Chile resembled those of the social movements in France and the rest of Europe: the need for greater equality and feminism. He became interested in the people’s struggle in the face of the social issues and the mining industry’s pollution, which caused him to go searching through a waste dump. With all these things in mind, he sequestered himself in the Atacama Desert. To see what the tourists don’t see.

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LITHIUM FOR BIPOLAR DISORDER | Fabrice Michel / murmurs / day one… the window / the room / the Pacific… lying in bed (night falls)

[...] shrill sounds on top of other sounds of different tones [...] I go out into the streets of Antofagasta… to the sound of the country’s cooking pots [...] / awake / after the ravages of the dictatorship [...] the military-law enforcement complex [...] neoliberalism [...] is no longer tolerated / 14 October 2019/ metro fares go up / the people / break / a long silence / what had been buried (abruptly surfaces) / marches / steel shutters > < glass windows / the graffiti all over the city / massive protests / «Killer cops just like Pinochet» / bitter chants / «No More Sename» (places of confinement) / early childhood abandoned / «No More AFP» . . . about money manipulated by high finance / familiarity: violence against women / dignity / fiscal / social equality / revaluing those who are invisible [...] statues of generals and decorated soldiers torn down / covered in paint / a uniform / coersion / is banned / front line / as soon as night falls / no more mr nice guy (families with children return home) [...] front line><armored vehicles / wearing improvised masks + knee pads + heavy boots + molotov cocktails / there are women and family men / the smell of tear gas [...] the city / the poverty of political systems / the failure of social dialog / the violent repression of the protests [...] are an indication of the inevitability and legitimacy of a certain kind of violence [...] economically speaking: those with whom they are clashing are from the same level / working class / is leading the revolution>< a working class that defends the regime / / archives / chance meeting with don Pepe in a bookstore [...] I start a conversation / they tell me he doesn’t miss a single cultural event / he has a ton of newspapers at home / a variety of publications / he makes copies and writes it all down [...] I ask if I can see his archives / he agrees / there is no roof on his house / almost no walls / he takes out his notebooks / a mountain of paper: pages and pages (where everything is hand-written) / reviews of exhibitions / articles about theater / medical theses / don Pepe is a conceptual artist (art brut) / he doesn’t know / living on nothing> he remains standing > dignified > underneath the sky / without any protection> thanks to his notes that keep him busy until nightfall (as he has no electricity) / he endures / scar / museum of Antofagasta / models / photographs of early mining operations / nitrates / later it would give way to copper and then lithium / a functioning railroad still running through the city / scar / on one side the most wealthy; on the other side slums / the train still transporting materials / in dust > therefore legible: «this building and its inhabitants are contaminated / garbage / I wanted to see 194

/ Antofagasta’s landfill / to see the garbage and forget about it / I was dissuaded / too dangerous [...] they take me somewhere else / one of the larger dumping grounds / without a single living soul / we find hundreds of truck tires / thousands of machines picked to the bone / rusty vehicles / fragments / plastic / gutted out jugs [...] a place / off stage / the entry hall to the exhibition / [...] what is submerged and what has come to the surface / what is buried and what is taken out / desert / How do you penetrate a desert? / on the map: its flat immensity captures the imagination / our eyes follow the fine blue lines / we want to run away / losing ourselves in the heart of the pastel parts / the precise nomenclature / but / in that region one tries to follow the roads / the uncomfortable body / the rucksack weighs heavily on the back / the sun burns the skin covered in a fine dust / persistent [...] in the Valley of Death / and / in the white salt flats / choosing some ground / taking the spheres that I carry / throwing them: cause of displacement (physical and mental) / the desert’s desire > the desire for the game to end / left there on the ground / they take their places / in the dimensions of the landscape / they seem to be looking at (themselves) / military buildings strange + utopian / emitting signals towards the astrological observatory / high up on the volcano / as Deleuze (and Spinoza) said / with full knowledge of the facts / «I love the sun?» / and Nietzsche: I am not one of those who searches / I want to create my own sun / extraction / on the salt flats / south of San Pedro / at the foot of the volcano that watches over the Lickanantay people / upon this thick crust of salt a vast lake is hidden [...] in the middle of the desert / pink flamingos / in the pools of water that blossom / where they usually proliferate: live the microorganisms that feed them / from these salt flats a large quantity of the world’s lithium is extracted / that alkaline metal / for making electric car batteries / for one ton, more than two million liters of water / are evaporated / the levels of the pools diminish / the sun’s rays become aggressive / the microorganisms end up disappearing / the flamingos desert / die / in the end I don’t see them [...] Peine / small Lickanantay village / a majority of its inhabitants work at the lithium plant / there is no other choice / for them it’s a steady source of income > not of enrichment / the equity goes away [...] a madness whose cynicism drives the production of our “clean cars’’ / lithium is still the standard treatment for bipolar disorder.

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THAT WHICH GIVES LIFE, KILLS | Elisa Montesinos What do the landscapes of the Region of Antofagasta have in common with those of Minas Gerais? The inhabitants of both mining regions (one of copper, the other iron) live daily with the pollution and other environmental impacts, as the regions turn into zones of sacrifice.

Francisca Caporali, director of the Jardim Canadá Art and Technology Center, in Belo Horizonte, visited SACO in 2019 and the idea came about to start a residency exchange program between the two areas. Artists Simone Cortezão (Brazil) and Jahir Jorquera (Chile) had both explored the theme of mining in their respective works. Jorquera, originating from Maria Elena, and whose father works in mining, traveled to Minas Gerais at the start of 2020. The pandemic forced him to return earlier than had been planned. In spite of this, he was able to connect his earlier project Lunar de pampa, in which he establishes a link between extractivism and patriarchy, with his residency, merged together with elements from his own biography.

Simone Cortezão came to Antofagasta a short time earlier. Travelling through the desert, she was able to make connections between the environmental tragedies that had occurred in the region with those she had witnessed in her own country, linking them to the breakdown of the exploitative method of mining in Chile, which, in addition to being the region’s main source of jobs and wealth, is slowly killing its inhabitants.

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MAGUA | Simone Cortezão The landing in Antofagasta came at the end of a morning whose sun I did not recognize.

I’d never seen the desert before. That day I saw a yellowish light, a city trapped by dry hills. The architecture looked like the favelas in Brazil, what we call do-it-yourself construction.

I arrived at ISLA carrying my own impressions and queries into the world of mining.

After almost eleven years working in brazilian territory, I was able to recognize the deterioration of the land and the resulting disaster.

I came to Chile with the shock of having witnessed the bursting of two dams, a lot of mud, the regurgitation of melted earth and loads of dirt sweeping through the entire region.

My energy became focused on the mountains from years of research done in a landscape full of them, and which are disappearing due to extractivism and theft day by day. Whereas in the desert, the violence was clearly displayed in the open, arid landscape.

I went looking for the depths of the earth and its connection to the sky. Knowing the geographic situation of the Atacama Desert, I thought it would be possible to find some clues there, some cosmologies of that meeting. And it’s not that I didn’t find them, but I keep searching. Anyway, it was in the unforgiving surfaces of the desert where I found the necessary sideroad.

I was attracted to María Elena, a place with a woman’s name in the middle of the desert. For some days, I prepared for the trip while in Antofagasta. I spent a whole day walking, feeling the heat, perceiving the sounds and the light of the desert.

When I was about to leave, seated at the bus stop, an old lady with the skin aged by the sun arrived and joyfully said: “beautiful girl!, where do you come from?” The driver, who witnessed the conversation, murmured to me with a tone of prejudice: she is the oldest prostitute of María Elena, her name is Magua.

In Portuguese Mágoa is a meaningful word. It’s sadness and spite, the heaviness of sorrow, a pain that remains even after a long time has passed: a deep feeling. I found María to be like that, Magua. A couple of days later I returned to that mining city in the middle of the desert, whose principal and oldest living memory was called Magua. María, Magua, didn’t want me to, and so I was unable to find her again.

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Now, I will dwell on what I have seen. I will take time with every sound and image, allowing each one to find its place. At that intersection between fiction and reality, where it is possible to put together the puzzle, examining the spectres, the ghost towns, the sulphuric acid, the dusty signatures of the old inhabitants of those old abandoned cities, and the mining which appears as a mirage between the dust and the acid mist, in a high intensity and low frequency reality, I will find myself in the desert again.

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Poem O Maior Trem do Mundo / The World’s Longest Train (1984) Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Itabira – Mina Gerais (BR)

Jahir Jorquera´s residency in Minas Gerais

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A FLOWER IN THE CRATER | Dagmara Wyskiel Each year when we make our group pilgrimage to the desert, what we are hoping to find in the faces of the visitors we bring with us is that look of astonishment that you don’t usually see in adults anymore. And it always happens, in between the endless empty stretches, the overwhelming barrenness of the landscape, and that tangible existentialism embodied in stone. The desert is eternal, the people there only lapses.

It wasn’t the same, arriving in town with no doña Felisa there to greet us. Neither did the town’s mascot, Madonna the donkey, appear. This time, the desert fauna that drew near came in the form of scorpions, apparently residents of the new hostal Sol de Quillagua, fruit of the expansion made by the owner of the unforgettable Quillagua Space. A folkloric group from the neighboring region of Tarapacá danced for the artists, changing their wardrobe three times, according to the schematics of the cultural division of Chile –north, central, and south– on the thick pillared stage of the adjacent building, probably one of the most cosmic places in the desert, the covered pool.

On top of the fixed stops made on this yearly trip (Chacabuco, Chug Chug geoglyphs, Sloman dam, and the Valley of Meteorites) we added an opportunity for stargazing beneath the clearest skies on the planet, this time without the presence of any specialist. What at first seemed like a collective attempt at deciphering a Chinese poem, making associations based on the form of its script, ended in silence, with an acceptance of the beauty without any need to understand it.

The large crater again received a group of humans into its warm and safe interior.

Insignificant in the face of its volume, some remained contemplating and capturing the sunset above, while others raised dust that slid down towards the bottom.

Kotoaki Asano, the same artist that brought a bit of Japanese sand to the Atacama desert, was now preparing his second minimalist offering. An organic form made of stones and Japanese paper, whose shape suggested a nest, emerged for an instant in the driest place on the planet. It was a gesture that resembled the one made by Rafael Silva in SACO4, who five years prior, had crafted a poetic dance space in the Valley of Meteorites. In both cases the contrast between that which symbolizes life –though represented in an artificial manner– and the surrounding area choking in its absence, opened the door to imagine other natures, perhaps existing in some other place or some other dimension.

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DESERT READINGS | Michael Hirschbichler y Guillaume Othenin-Girard In the pre-columbian cosmologies, the surface of the Earth –the habitat of people, plants and animals– was located in between the upper world of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the lower world of the dead. From our current perspective we could say that the panorama ranges between the fields of geology (below) and astronomy (above), both of which are still pervaded by myths, beliefs, and speculations. Almost nowhere else on earth is this more obvious than in the Atacama Desert.

Just like in the myths of old, the region’s landscape forms a middle point between the earth and the sky, in which some people dig (raw materials sought by mining companies), while others observe the immensity of the universe (at ALMA and other observatories). The landscape itself is covered in structures and tracks that go up and down, and as such, can be understood as a “recording” or a projection screen of events and ideas. In the topography one can also find different temporal horizons: geologic stratifications of time, leading from recent human history all the way back to the distant past; and in the unfathomable space-time of astronomy, which traces back to the origins of the universe.

In our project we want to delve into these traces, at the intersection of cosmological and scientific ideas and more-than-human histories. By reading about and materialising some of these things, we plan on paying special attention to the desert as a recording plateau, while adding a temporary imprint to its surface and contributing to the process of stratification of its immense existence.

Michael and Guillaume were selected during the open call for Resonances, organized by the Goethe Institute and the French Institute of Chile. During the second half of 2020 the two artists remotely lived the first part of the residency art&rocks, approaching Antofagasta’s territory through archive materials and conversations with the winner of the National Science Award, Dr. Guillermo Chong, a professor at the Catholic University of the North, who collaborates with SACO in geological matters. The on-site part of the residency is supposed to take place in 2021.

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THE RESURRECTION OF MATTER | Iván Ávila Quebrada Carrizo is an accident of geography located to the south of Antofagasta.

Route 28, which leads from the city to the Pan-American Highway, passes through the area, and also a railroad whose trains carry copper and other minerals––the fruit of the ceaseless exploitation of the desert.

In between houses and other buildings, the site is host to some abandoned recreation centers, devastated by the sun and wind. It is a wild, rugged place that, until recently, had wetlands and a tiny stream running through it. The different plants and animals that it once sheltered were driven away by an illegal dumping ground that took over the land. Old tires, debris, and domestic trash came to replace nature.

At the beginning of 2017, environmentalist Ramón Zavala decided that he couldn’t wait for the authorities or private businesses to take any action in response to the situation. Without many resources, but full of desire and conviction, he started the Hidden Forest project, reusing the discarded materials to build vegetable boxes, paths, benches, tables, domes and sculptures. Along with his family, friends, and volunteers, he managed to clean up all the trash and debris, and, month by month, grow the size of the area, which now includes libraries, open air meeting rooms and rest places. This process of transformation also succeeded in bringing animals back to the area, especially birds.

Over time, the Hidden Forest has become the standard for rehabilitating natural areas in Antofagasta. For years, SACO has been donating some of the works from its exhibitions to different groups and institutions that reuse the materials, modifying the works before reinstalling them to fit their new venues. That was what happened here.

“The works we received will be turned into something else, they won’t be installed in the way the artist had originally imagined,” says Ramón, as the sun in all its splendor draws close to the horizon rimmed by the Pacific Ocean, bathing the domes and young trees in orange light. He is talking about three pieces from exhibitions in SACO’s ninth edition: Open Circle, by Italian artist Marisa Merlin, Container City, by Belgian artist Simon Van Parys (both part of the collective show Now or Never), and a piece composed of a series of books for the solo show I Demand an Explanation! by Canary Island artist Acaymo S Cuesta.

“The wooden containers that Simon made, for example, are going to be turned into an arbor where we will plant vines that will give shade for someone to sit and read a book, immersed in a work of living art. With Acaymo’s piece, people have a chance to see and feel the folds of the pages of the encyclopedia in order to 210

understand the shape of the letters in three dimensions. That way we can start a new conversation with the visitors,” says Ramón, with a smile that confirms for us that there are dozens of ideas running through his mind connected to art.

The simple format of these works allowed him to adapt them to the place in a kind of intuitive curatorship that relates the landscape to the forms, with certain useful characteristics of each subjected to a reinterpretation of meaning. The transplanted works not only acquire value in aesthetic terms, but, within their constant transformation in search of new uses and interpretations, could at some point also become places for gathering together or rest, where the “resurrection” of the materials is the focal point guiding the fluidity. More than just recycling, this is a way of reusing materials that suggests ways for a piece to adapt and survive, in a process of transformation that not only reformulates a work, but that also remodels the landscape.

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RESIDENCE AT THE RESIDENCE | Elisa Montesinos The second version of ISLA-ISLA residency, which was supposed to take place at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) Chiloé, was not able to occur in an on-site format.

Felipe Múñoz and Jordán Plaza, the two artists selected to participate, worked from their own homes in the north of the country to later show their pieces online.

The ocean, waves, cracked earth, family photographs, the facade of a house, an open window, an unmade bed. As a photographer interested in documentary work, Felipe faced the impossibility of traveling by rethinking the piece he had envisioned for Chiloé. Confined to his house in Coquimbo, he gathered together family pictures along with another that was taken at the beach, which would be the basis of his project on the island, and picking up his analog camera, began capturing new images from his daily life, creating a kind of visual journal of the quarantine.

Leaving behind the idea of traveling, Jordán went back to work on the photographs of an action he had performed in the desert a few years back, close to Taltal. Near there was an iron deposit that had been mined by the Huentalauquen culture. This was his inspiration for painting his body like the ancient inhabitants of the region and digging deeply and intensely into the earth. Later on, he edited the material during the residency. In the video, he digs into the desert painted with red clay; the editing gives the idea of going back and forth, like a mirror between the past and the present, or a reflection on the illusory passage of time.

In different ways, both artists give an account of introspection during periods of confinement, examining themselves and the environment at the same time.

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DIARY OF AN OBLIVION | Felipe Muñoz Tirado Given the situation we are living in today, relationships, mediated by our surroundings, are restricted and defined by technology, meaning that the difference between presence and absence is defined merely by aesthetics. Those who are able to persevere are able to be present, but not in bodily form, turning those open and personal spaces into one that is lonely and quiet, embracing oblivion.

Diary aims to depict that thin line between the public and private space where we used to live, always accompanied by the deafening sound of nature. My story, yours, ours, of how we have faced living without physical warmth or interaction with others, always resisting.

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DELUSION | Jordán Plaza “Time provides distance for the splintered being excavating through multiple realities, while the individual is lost in the redness of yesterday.”

I had previously made an in situ intervention in a place near Taltal, where the San Ramón mine is located, a place that is approximately twelve thousand years old. That’s where the inhabitants of the Huentelauquén cultural complex extracted iron oxide for daily and ritual use. The idea was to “resurrect” a past that we have been connected to for a long time, creating a dialog between those ancient times and our own. And so I resort to painting myself, just like the old coastal huntergatherers that used the iron oxide to cover their bodies.

With this intervention I reopen the debate over the links that have always bound us to the earth and the problems that arise when we forget about them.

Recently, the work’s narrative has begun to take on a more introspective tone, becoming a regression in search of truths about oneself in a particularly strange context, one of imposed confinement. In a certain sense, it has also become a self-excavation, motivated by the search for raw materials that might serve as sustenance in order to give shape to new realities, facing a world and a system in crisis.

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A TRAP FOR TIME | Elia Gasparolo and Santiago Rey We traveled to the Atacama Desert to install our work, a work that speaks of the past and our relationship with time.

There is a complex plot of causation, which doesn’t limit itself to uni-directional development. It is not just that facts that happen in one moment modify or condition those that come later. The perspective on the present, on what we have in between hands and below our feet, changes our perception of the past, and with it, the perception of the future. The image that we are able to construct of the future works to give shape to our actions. There is also a future of the future, and a past of the past.

The desert welcomes us with its open horizon and burning breath, its mineral rhythm. As we delve into its reality –rough, tangible, brutal and yet subtle– we start to perceive something unexpected, which resonates in a forceful and dramatic way in our work.

When someone like us, who is ignorant of the logic of these kinds of places, imagines the desert, one imagines an environment where physical realities don’t stay the same. Where the world consumes and erases every trace. We have the idea that dunes move, like the waves in the sea. Constant movement.

But it’s just the opposite. We find ourselves in a place where everything lingers and the marks left by human action overlap. The two thousand years old geoglyphs have the same depth, the same presence as the tracks of the red pickups. Many signs and roads lead to places that we cannot even imagine. A labyrinth of mirrors where time gets trapped, reflecting itself and traveling once and again. A trap for time. A house for time.

Now our work is also there. We are a part of it.

We travelled many kilometers in hopes of assimilating ourselves to this place while looking for locations. The different scenes will remain there, separated by a hundred kilometers, exposed to that time that we are discovering. We also learned what an oasis is. It’s arriving in Chiu Chiu, Romina and Jaime waiting for us in their house smelling of perfume and spice. It is also Quillagua, the driest place on Earth, where Manuel welcomes us and the fruit is sweeter than anywhere else.

In Antofagasta, ISLA is an oasis of generosity and joy.

Now we are part of this texture, all these overlapping transparencies in silent dialog.

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Because we also walk and ask ourselves what’s there further on, backwards and forwards. We also need to hear other people’s voices, and add our own.

In any case, we will come back in a year to see how the desert is taking to our work. To see what has happened with each piece. To see how, during this time, the images interact with the course of reality. Finally, and above all, to see who we are in that now.

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AT NIGHT, IT´S BIRD, MOTH, WIND OR SILENCE | Elisa Montesinos Arriving without any preconceived notions for the residency in San Pedro de Atacama. Going out daily, into the desert. Paying attention to the tremendous silence of a tourist area without any tourists, to the effects of the wind over future archaeological remains, in a town in which the topics of conversations are current and ancestral at the same time. People to whom the tongue was cut, but who didn´t remain dumb. Collecting the words of the community and placing contact microphones to forgotten or functional objects, part of the landscape. Listening to them; activated by the sun they become subtle sonic textures.

Pablo Saavedra was in residence at San Pedro de Atacama in November 2020. He stayed at La Tintorera Center for Art and Therapy, where he offered a workshop on sound experiences. The program of residencies and research art&archaeology takes place every year from 2018, thanks to the alliance between SACO and the Catholic University of the North, providing artists with scientific support and mentorship from the Institute for Archaeological Research and R.P. Gustavo Le Paige Museum.

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PANDEMIC RESIDENCY | Simon Van Parys My project was selected by SACO after an international open call in which I was competing with almost 200 other artists. The good news should have been exciting, but this time, things were different. I was happy but couldn’t enjoy the moment.

It was what I would describe as an “out-of-body” experience. This description actually fits my entire project in SACO 9 : from winning the open call to the on-site development of the piece.

The entire journey was a blend of challenges and I consider the pandemic as another catalyst. I have a lot of experience working under short deadlines in big cities. Places like Hong Kong, Tehran, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, and London. A characteristic of those cities is that they thrive on material abundance, and you can get whatever you want, whenever you want. As long as you pay.

But Antofagasta is different: It’s an island in the middle of the desert. It’s heavily import-dependent and doesn’t enjoy a “network effect” of surrounding cities.

Limitations on material are the general rule. If you add to this the pandemic, you can imagine that my participation in SACO 9 was a big learning experience.

Lucky me, as I love to learn :) The entire project was a master-class in “rethinking”. As a result of the pandemic, every variable kept changing. From the project date, to the site, to the production timeline, to the resources available. It also meant that while still in Belgium, I had to plan the final production.

Due to the closed borders, I had to reach out to the Chilean embassy in Belgium for a work permit. They were not helpful. We planned the trip in a “quarantined environment”. But on the brink of my departure the rules of the government changed. I wasn’t allowed to travel to Chile. The constant unexpected changes forced us to modify the process. In my initial proposal I planned on using cheap wood and doing the entire production myself. Time constraints wouldn’t allow for this. A few days before my scheduled departure, everything changed again. As an improvisational artist, I was forced to (partially) outsource my work and became the architect of the whole process. Being a more conceptual thinker is a new skill that I acquired during this time.

The idea was for a modular system. I came up with production plans in Belgium and a video for the technicians to help them be as efficient as possible with the production, in a limited amount of time. So I was able to work on-site two days before the grand opening with what they had created for me. I just had to stage the exhibition.

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It didn’t end there. The pandemic caused a shortage of construction materials and changed the entire scope of the project. So we went through four phases of production. Phase 1: Outsourcing production + making a set-up for the public opening. Phase 2: Building unique sculptural pieces made from discarded pallets from the port. Phase 3: An exhibition-building workshop with all the pieces. Phase 4: Rebuilding a new set-up for the public including the new sculptures.

I’m actually a very ‘European’ artist. I like structure and systems. The pandemic made this a very unpredictable project up until the delivery of the final stage.

Everything kept changing. Sometimes I had to make an instant decision. Through the family-orientated framework of the SACO organisation, I learned a lot about crisis-management and discovered new approaches for my visual work.

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SACO CORPORATION

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FROM CONTEMPORARY ART WEEK TO BIENNIAL Ever since its first interventions in 2004, SE VENDE Collective has aimed to promote artistic dialog between artists, curators, contributors and the public at large. In the second half of the 2000’s, the interventions For Sale 1, 2 and 3 occupied old houses, public space and emblematic sites of the city, such as the Municipal Beach, the Regional Museum of Antofagasta, the Stevedores’ Union Hall, and Colon Square.

In 2005 and 2007 the exhibitions Other Country I and II brought works by local artists to the Catholic University Extension Center in Santiago and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Valdivia, and in 2009, SE VENDE was part of the Triennial of Chile, an event that marked the beginning of the Chilean bicentenary commemoration. Since then, its founders have been building networks, participating in similar projects in Europe and South America through conferences, talks and exhibitions.

With the passing of time and the growth of its activities, the legal personality changed to SACO Cultural Corporation in order to give organic continuity to the mission started 17 years ago.

SACO After five years, Contemporary Art Week, which SACO started presenting in 2012, became an international festival that invites artists to propose site-specific works for exhibition on the Melbourne Clark Historic Pier, interventions that had to be moved last year to Sitio Cero in the port of Antofagasta. The exhibitions each year revolve around a main subject, connecting the jury, participants and guests with different audiences.

The last three editions were focused on the topic of time and the different ways in which it is perceived: Origin and Myth (2018), Destiny (2019) and Now or Never (2020). With this trilogy, SACO leaves behind the festival format to undertake new challenges.

In four years, artists from five continents have participated in the open calls.

Twenty eight of them had the opportunity to come to Antofagasta to show their on-site works, as well as participate in immersion trips throughout the desert, becoming ambassadors for subsequent editions of the festival.

The field trips to the depths of the Atacama Desert are an opportunity to get to know communities located far from the city. For example, in the Aymara village of Quillagua, SACO has created the program The Driest Place on Earth, a lab of ideas that aims to reveal the resistance of a small community against the depredation, corruption and sale of the water, as well as immigration, and the state’s abandonment of the town and its people.

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One of the main concepts developed by SACO is museum without museum, a circuit of exhibitions in public and private spaces in Antofagasta and San Pedro de Atacama. Beyond merely showing their work, the artists offer workshops and discussions with the idea of creating a local audience. Among the guest artists who have left their traces in the North of Chile are the Uruguayan artists, Luis Camnitzer and Fernando Foglino; Teresa Solar from Spain; Elliot Tupac, Adriana Ciudad, Gustavo Buntinx and Roberto Huarcaya from Peru; Johannes Pfeiffer from Germany; Brazilian Heráclito Ayrson; Lucía Warck-Meister and Marisa Caichiolo from Argentina; Yuga Hatta from Japan; Arcángel Constantini from Mexico; Lucía Querejazu and Juan Fabbri from Bolivia; the Chilean artists Rodolfo Andaur, Paz Errázuriz and León & Cociña; and Miguel Braceli and Oscar Pabón from Venezuela.

Another of its pillars is school without school, a series of informal art education programs focused on training teachers and students that have been carried out in more than ten educational centers in different communities throughout the region.

This led to the development of the art camp Between the Form and the Mold during SACO4, in which more than eighty students participated from all over the country, working under the guidance of different Latin American artists. In the following edition, in 2016, a five month long series of workshops took place focusing on current best practices for art teachers, with the idea of bringing fresh strategies to the classroom. Three years later, the project Burying Flags in the Sea by Venezuelan artist Miguel Braceli, included the participation of high school students from the Complejo Educativo Juan José Latorre Benavente in Mejillones, making them co-authors of an international artwork.

Desert Interventions is another series of intensive workshops in the vast and geographically diverse region of Antofagasta, divided into three parts: coastal, plains and foothills, covering places like Paposo, Quillagua, Ayquina, Taltal, Ollagüe and Pedro de Valdivia. From 2016 to 2018 a total of six workshops were developed, focusing on learning and sharing experiences between leaders and participants. Each of the workshops generated dozens of ephemeral interventions with some particularly noteworthy examples including performative actions done at the border between Chile and Bolivia, led by Claudia León (Colombia-Chile) and Lizzania Sánchez (Venezuela-Chile); the knitting of a puddle of water Melanie Garland (Chile-Alemania) in Ayquina; the mirages of volcanoes by Natalia PiloPais (Perú); and the performative refuge of the body by David Corvalán (Chile) in Ollagüe. All of these examples are part of an annual program that includes workshops, talks, artist visits to schools, roundtables, and meetings with the local community.

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tools. In its five years in existence, artists from Chile and throughout the world have come to stay and work, including teachers, curators and emerging artists. ISLA’s longest running initiative is an exchange program of low cost residencies, involving artists representing countries from around the world, including Bolivia, Colombia, Spain, Brazil, Switzerland and the Tierra del Fuego in Chile. It is a program based on guest-host reciprocity, which allows for a real, first-hand understanding of another artist’s context and work method.

The third area that the Corporation is involved in is research of the territory, whose characteristics influence our ideas and activities. This has inspired us to break free from the traditional tendency to isolate different fields of knowledge, so that, in line with the contemporary world, we can blend creativity with astronomy, the depth of images with archaeology, and existential reflections with mining.

In this way it has been possible to solidify and project a complementary understanding of a subject through residencies that combine art and science, understood as focus of research, production, multidirectional reflection, accompanied by academics from fields such as geology, astronomy, archaeology, anthropology, and environmental studies.

The Biennial After presenting nine editions from the driest corner of the world, despite the pandemic, or perhaps even because of it, the Festival of Contemporary Art is turning into the Biennial of Contemporary Art, and will continue to push the limits of both material and of art, with activities throughout the desert, seeking to contribute to the ability of individuals to feel, think, and act independently from learned structures and inherited disparities.

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The curatorial text of SACO9, written in June of 2019, closes the triad of the festival’s most recent editions, dedicated to the phenomenon of time: Origin and Myth (2018), Destiny (2019) and Now or Never (2020). October would bring the national uprising and with it, a different meaning for the last of those themes; in March, the pandemic’s arrival to Latin America provided it with yet another spin.

In the face of all this, SACO9 Now or Never was an act of strength, a political expression, as well as an ethical one, a show of commitment to the local public, whose thousands of on-site visits in prior editions showed us their growing interest in art. It is a demonstration of the wherewithal to deliver something extra, something different, through works of art, to members of the community in the copper mining capital of the world. We must not kid ourselves: the digital lockdown on culture increases the divide in terms of access, making the world of art even more sealed off by elitism than it was before.

In spite of the borders being closed, we were able to bring twelve foreign artists to Antofagasta. Now or Never was the largest international exhibition open to the public in Chile at that time. And this has nothing to do with the competition to increase the viewing public that exists between the many sub-industries within the world of culture, but rather to testify to the fact that it is possible to maintain a safe, direct, in-person link with the public without jeopardizing anyone’s health. The seven site-specific works selected from the international open call were exhibited at Lot Zero in the port of Antofagasta, on an esplanade measuring 4500 square meters. Right across the street from the exhibition, the concentration of people both inside and outside the mall in the days leading up to Christmas went against all sanitary regulations, not to mention common sense.