Another Sky in the North | Melanie Garland

Lichens | Elodie Antoine

Melanie Garland

I

Sea below, desert above. Hot at day, freeze at night. Salted water below, drought above. Possible tsunamis to the coast, possible flood to the hill.

South zone heading to Santiago, North zone heading to Iquique. Mansions to the south, shantytowns to the north. Mining work inland, street work downtown.

Change of government nationwide COVID-19 pandemic worldwide Contradictions, similarities.

That was how my stay in Antofagasta started and moved on. Experiencing aesthetic and material contradictions while walking through the city. I came searching for the migration path in Chile and found many contradictions and complexities. Immigrants from yesterday, immigrants from today, immigrants in transit, and transients.

I watched, described, and considered. I came bringing an ethnographic and artistic method. I gathered local stories within the city, I gathered life stories from brave women. I walked, heard, and looked.

II

Global migrations, local migrations. Rethinking and rewriting our Chilean history.

Post-social uprising times Migration and post-migration times New coexistences, new reflections on the others. Rethinking our Chilean identity, rethinking our future. New learnings.

Watching, describing, and respecting mobility. Sliding our gaze, looking to one side, looking up. Meeting our new neighbor. Crossing the border.

Since my first residency at ISLA in 2016, I got to know deeper the Northern camps’ complexities, especially those of immigrants in the north of the city. Since then until now, I have witnessed the urban, social and economic development of Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian communities´ mobility in Chilean territory, and in recent years of Venezuelan people. That pushed me to start a path of anthropological, ethnographic and artistic observation and reflection around the current dynamics of immigrant societies in the context of post-Chilean social uprising. Antofagasta is a place of new residencies, transit and a strategic location in the Latin American migration route; that’s why my interest in its dynamics of territorial coexistence.

My residency in January 2022 at ISLA took place at a critical time when an active civil society fighting for the future was capable of rethinking and rewriting this history. The immigrant camps mirrored the political atmosphere. The active fight for a dignified living and a new constitution has extended an atmosphere of hope that also reaches the more vulnerable people of the north. That pushes us to visit and discover other visions, stories and dreams over a shared territory. I reflect on these other gazes over the same territorial sky from an ethnographic method and artistic practices like sound, poetic writing, and cartography.