#
Date
Title
Source
Description
Tags
W3773
18.05.2011
MEMORY OF AN UTOPIA Graphic Novel of the Popular Government in Chile, 1970-1973 - Luis Guerra
WWW
  • Introduction During 2003 and 2004, I was working at the The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report, the Valech Commission, a Governmental institution created by former President Ricardo Lagos. My work at the Commission consist ...

    Introduction

    During 2003 and 2004, I was working at the The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report, the Valech Commission, a Governmental institution created by former President Ricardo Lagos. My work at the Commission consisted into transcribing personal interviews developed by lawyers, sociologists and psychologists with people who had been tortured and/or imprisoned during Pinochet's Dictatorship, since September 1973 until December 1989. For a period of two years, I was reading and rewriting those stories about political repression, torture, and cruelty. After finishing my work at the Commission, as a visual artist, I never thought in using that experience as a theme for my art practice. More than 5 years later, I had the necessity of working about a period that has been detained in time as an unnamable Utopia, a work about a period that changed the face of my country and the history of South America.

    During the last democratic governments in Chile, two National Commissions have worked on Human Rights issues. The first one was known as the Rettig Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, which worked over the history of the people who were disappeared by the political repression. The second was the Valech Commission, which worked with those who had suffered torture and illegal imprisonment during the Dictatorship. Both Commissions worked confronting the consciousness of the country with its reality happened. Both commissions tried to build a fragile reconciliation in Chile. But, after all, the history is incomplete yet. Maybe always will be incomplete, and that is why was so important to continue researching on it.

    MEMORY OF AN UTOPIA

    "Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain." Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, Theses VII. From Illuminations, edition published in 1969.

    My project consists in the production of a Graphic Novel about the period of governance by President Salvador Allende and his Popular Government, developed between 1970 till 1973.

    Memory of a Utopia is an art project based in historical research over a past that has been shadowed constantly by those deep changes in Chilean society produced by the dictatorship of Pinochet during 17 years. This project looks for recuperating a Visual Memory that was lost by the Coup. The whole project has been sketched in 4 episodes, each of them a portrait of one year of Governance (1970-1973). The only truly document that exists about this period, before the Coup, is Patricio Guzman's documentary film The Battle of Chile. All other information has been slowly recuperated by images that were hidden from the military, and are mainly photographs. In 2009, Former President Michelle Bachelet inaugurated the Museum of Memory with the purpose of keeping the memory about the excesses and crimes against humanity produced during the Dictatorship's years. In that process, and by my personal experiences during my work at the National Commission, I realized in the necessity of continuing a research over the years before the Coup. As internationally is well known, Allende's Popular Government was the first Socialist and Marxist Government democratically elected. Today, thanks the release of hundreds of documents during the Clinton's Administration in US, we know now, without a doubt, about the political and economical support given by the Nixon's administration to the Military Coup. Some of that information was substantial in the prosecution of Pinochet developed by Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain. Having more and more information about these facts that had produced the Coup and the decay of the Popular Government, what has been showed is the lack of visual memory over a period where, without fear of saying it, an Utopia was in process of becoming truth. In a way, we can say, that the ideals of May 68 were achieved by a South American society, and through Latin American Marxist praxis. That element, the evidence of a dream that became real is the key concept behind the present project. How could, or should be portrait a period of time from where we have just pieces of images, fragments and oral memory? How if not through an "archeological journalism" sketched by the memory of others? That is why the project relies over interviews developed with people who were witnesses of that period, as for example Patricio Guzman and Carmen Castillo (both Chilean filmmakers, exiled from Chile and living since then in Paris). The project, as I said before considers 4 episodes, each for a year of Allende's Government. Why a graphic novel? Because is a visual platform that permits its own distribution (by printing it and by internet), but also because is a social tool of communication that can contributes to a social debate on the memory issue and the forms of its presentation in the contemporaneity of every country.

    The entire Graphic Novel project will be form by 4 episodes: 1969-1970 An Utopia in Power 1971 Politics and Culture 3. 1972 Resistance Economy 4. 1973 The Coup Each episode will consist in 50 pages, completing an original entire Graphic Novel of 200 pages.

        Currently, I have been working in the project. During the last year, through the support of different residency programs, I have been collecting images,  films, books, building a general frame for the project. I have published a first graphic essay, as an Introduction for this project, named I AM NOT GOING TO RESIGN (document added to this application), 32 pages, developed in a period of 3 months during my residency program at Darling Foundry, in Montreal, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. It has been during that period when I realize in the necessity of developing a wider project over that period of time.
    Finally, it is necessary to say that I was born in 1974, one year and 11 days after that September 11 of 1973 that changed the history of Chile. All my childhood and adolescence was lived under the Dictatorship. I can remember the sound of bombs in the streets, at night, in the 80's, the sound of guns shouted, and after all silence. I remember the people talking in secret about politics at home and the image of my grandmother burning political books in the backyard, dangerous books for that time. I remember when in a family dinner, someone, some guest, talk openly about the disappeared people, and about torture. 
    

    One night, my family told me about the National Stadium, where a lot of people were tortured and killed by the Chilean army. The family house is, still, near to that Stadium. They never have forgotten the sounds of guns, and the bodies that appeared in the streets.

    Chile has been recognized internationally by its Contemporary History: its deep changes in economic and political issues, and for its process of democratic recuperation. However, this process of “globalization” has impacted the cultural fields, where, as a critic of that development, its cultural identities have been dissolved and some parts of that reconstruction, some social sectors, have been disappeared from the “great narrative of recent history”. The project searches for reconnect that “spirit”, which one has returned democracy to the country, with the contemporary generations, not only in Chile, but also for all Latin America.

    The Utopia is still alive, not as a ghost, but as Truth.

    Introduction During 2003 and 2004, I was working at the The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report, the Valech Commission, a Governmental institution created by former President Ricardo Lagos. My work at the Commission consist ...

    Introduction

    During 2003 and 2004, I was working at the The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Report, the Valech Commission, a Governmental institution created by former President Ricardo Lagos. My work at the Commission consisted into transcribing personal interviews developed by lawyers, sociologists and psychologists with people who had been tortured and/or imprisoned during Pinochet's Dictatorship, since September 1973 until December 1989. For a period of two years, I was reading and rewriting those stories about political repression, torture, and cruelty. After finishing my work at the Commission, as a visual artist, I never thought in using that experience as a theme for my art practice. More than 5 years later, I had the necessity of working about a period that has been detained in time as an unnamable Utopia, a work about a period that changed the face of my country and the history of South America.

    During the last democratic governments in Chile, two National Commissions have worked on Human Rights issues. The first one was known as the Rettig Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, which worked over the history of the people who were disappeared by the political repression. The second was the Valech Commission, which worked with those who had suffered torture and illegal imprisonment during the Dictatorship. Both Commissions worked confronting the consciousness of the country with its reality happened. Both commissions tried to build a fragile reconciliation in Chile. But, after all, the history is incomplete yet. Maybe always will be incomplete, and that is why was so important to continue researching on it.

    MEMORY OF AN UTOPIA

    "Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain." Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, Theses VII. From Illuminations, edition published in 1969.

    My project consists in the production of a Graphic Novel about the period of governance by President Salvador Allende and his Popular Government, developed between 1970 till 1973.

    Memory of a Utopia is an art project based in historical research over a past that has been shadowed constantly by those deep changes in Chilean society produced by the dictatorship of Pinochet during 17 years. This project looks for recuperating a Visual Memory that was lost by the Coup. The whole project has been sketched in 4 episodes, each of them a portrait of one year of Governance (1970-1973). The only truly document that exists about this period, before the Coup, is Patricio Guzman's documentary film The Battle of Chile. All other information has been slowly recuperated by images that were hidden from the military, and are mainly photographs. In 2009, Former President Michelle Bachelet inaugurated the Museum of Memory with the purpose of keeping the memory about the excesses and crimes against humanity produced during the Dictatorship's years. In that process, and by my personal experiences during my work at the National Commission, I realized in the necessity of continuing a research over the years before the Coup. As internationally is well known, Allende's Popular Government was the first Socialist and Marxist Government democratically elected. Today, thanks the release of hundreds of documents during the Clinton's Administration in US, we know now, without a doubt, about the political and economical support given by the Nixon's administration to the Military Coup. Some of that information was substantial in the prosecution of Pinochet developed by Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain. Having more and more information about these facts that had produced the Coup and the decay of the Popular Government, what has been showed is the lack of visual memory over a period where, without fear of saying it, an Utopia was in process of becoming truth. In a way, we can say, that the ideals of May 68 were achieved by a South American society, and through Latin American Marxist praxis. That element, the evidence of a dream that became real is the key concept behind the present project. How could, or should be portrait a period of time from where we have just pieces of images, fragments and oral memory? How if not through an "archeological journalism" sketched by the memory of others? That is why the project relies over interviews developed with people who were witnesses of that period, as for example Patricio Guzman and Carmen Castillo (both Chilean filmmakers, exiled from Chile and living since then in Paris). The project, as I said before considers 4 episodes, each for a year of Allende's Government. Why a graphic novel? Because is a visual platform that permits its own distribution (by printing it and by internet), but also because is a social tool of communication that can contributes to a social debate on the memory issue and the forms of its presentation in the contemporaneity of every country.

    The entire Graphic Novel project will be form by 4 episodes: 1969-1970 An Utopia in Power 1971 Politics and Culture 3. 1972 Resistance Economy 4. 1973 The Coup Each episode will consist in 50 pages, completing an original entire Graphic Novel of 200 pages.

        Currently, I have been working in the project. During the last year, through the support of different residency programs, I have been collecting images,  films, books, building a general frame for the project. I have published a first graphic essay, as an Introduction for this project, named I AM NOT GOING TO RESIGN (document added to this application), 32 pages, developed in a period of 3 months during my residency program at Darling Foundry, in Montreal, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. It has been during that period when I realize in the necessity of developing a wider project over that period of time.
    Finally, it is necessary to say that I was born in 1974, one year and 11 days after that September 11 of 1973 that changed the history of Chile. All my childhood and adolescence was lived under the Dictatorship. I can remember the sound of bombs in the streets, at night, in the 80's, the sound of guns shouted, and after all silence. I remember the people talking in secret about politics at home and the image of my grandmother burning political books in the backyard, dangerous books for that time. I remember when in a family dinner, someone, some guest, talk openly about the disappeared people, and about torture. 
    

    One night, my family told me about the National Stadium, where a lot of people were tortured and killed by the Chilean army. The family house is, still, near to that Stadium. They never have forgotten the sounds of guns, and the bodies that appeared in the streets.

    Chile has been recognized internationally by its Contemporary History: its deep changes in economic and political issues, and for its process of democratic recuperation. However, this process of “globalization” has impacted the cultural fields, where, as a critic of that development, its cultural identities have been dissolved and some parts of that reconstruction, some social sectors, have been disappeared from the “great narrative of recent history”. The project searches for reconnect that “spirit”, which one has returned democracy to the country, with the contemporary generations, not only in Chile, but also for all Latin America.

    The Utopia is still alive, not as a ghost, but as Truth.