“Chile woke up, tell me something prettier than that”, is the phrase that is found in the structure of the bus stop. From here I see this new city, chaotic, rowdy..., but alive, more alive than ever. Through here the runaway boredom of neoliberal order passed by, when we grew tired of being people of mortgaged life and we got messy, we got overflowed with creative and dismissal rage to be again the throbbing and constituent people. The walls of Chile, like a palimpset, show the pain and hope.

I am still at the bus stop.

How far will the rout go?...

“Until dignity becomes a habit”.

Silvia Aguilera Morales, Editor LOM Ediciones (1963)

The wall like a blank sheet where history is written, the day to day of the citizenship that deploys, brush in hand, leaving the ephemeral record of their hopes and desires so that tomorrow, new protesters cover them with new slogans, dripping paint and sweat and desires, scratching the walls with their fists raised, leaving their mark on the roadside, as they go step by step looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, illuminated by the flash and thunder of the gas bombings and the tears that spring from the stinking gases of repression…

Luis Albornoz Riquelme, Graphic Designer (1948)

Seminario Street up to Moneda Street
Seminario Street seems like a vanishing point
It’s not that, but it anticipates entrances and drifts
If I go forward, the temperature rises and also the slogans
Stopping in the slogans is a memory exercise, they will pass
An indelible trace will stay in this construction, for better and for worse
It hurts to pass by, but it is agency and activation of accumulated wishes in short time
The landscape, definitely changed, and in that gaze exercise, it is expressed by 2.4 kilometers
I wonder if that image will still be the eternal trace of the photograph and visual identity of Chile
				

Pedro Álvarez, Designer / PhD in History (1968)

Fourteen years ago, even though meanings and justifications for the design of these bus stops were sought, for the eyes of the citizens they always looked as an electrocardiogram. Today that interpretation seems prophetic.

The electrocardiogram is the graphic representation of the electric activity of the heart in function of the time. In the current landscape this interpretation takes on a greater meaning. The rage, passion, fury and adrenaline marking the peak of the agitated heart of the people that demands dignity, contrast with the minimal and eventually absent activity that is produced on the other end of this journey where, on the opposite sidewalk, the cold ruler’s stare limits to stubbornly contemplate the place where once was the flame that they thought eternal, but today dying, waits for its end.

Moisés Arancibia, Designer (1977)

It’s New Year’s Eve and we stop by “Plaza de la Dignidad” before going to our party. An eternal sound that remains in my ear and demands dignity. A constant beat that is repeated, amplified by the hands that collide with the metal sheets that shield Telefonica’s tower. It’s a night to celebrate and get lost, but here we are hitting the wall. A nocturne trance between the burning candles honoring those fallen in the fight. A sound, a cry, catharsis and a collective hug; so as not to forget why we wake up every day after 10/18. Now, we loose ourselves to always return.

Alfonso Arenas, Cultural Manager (1985)

The Streets and the Magic Pad

The Uprising is an exercise of writing and drawing. Given the provocation to think about the blocks and blocks full of graffitis, I can’t stop thinking about Sigmund Freud’s magic pad. This children’s toy that allows to write and then erase to rewrite or draw. The blackboard was –for Freud– a representation of our psychic apparatus, the events of our life are inscribed in our psyche, but cannot remain as ‘graphos’ forever. The ‘magic pad’ with a simple movement makes the writing disappear, but actually if we take a closer look, each writing remains influencing the writing to come. The unconscious of the magic board; our unconscious; or the one of our city collects that writing which is gone. Today - like Freud’s magic pad- the streets turn white, but underneath those layers of new paint, the old paint continues to speak to us.

Marcos Chilet, Designer (1982)

With nostalgia I look at those portrayed streets, so colorful and full of content, each brick painted with a message that cries out for a dignified future. They were my daily life until recently, and have become longing in times of quarantine. But they are not the streets that I knew all my life, not at all, those were gray, boring, contained streets. Since October 18, the streets in my city have become a space of freedom and resistance that were built in the heat of the marches, evasions and barricades. They can paint them over and over again, but they will never be able to erase the new world that was drawn on them.

Camila Cifuentes, Biologist (1988)

If architecture were a book, the façades would be the cover.
It announces what is inside, waiting to be opened.
Fear is what drives many to shut the doors from the inside.
Because anything from outside is always intimidating.
Book covers with small padlocks, like on children’s diaries.
If the city were a book, each façade would be a page of that intimacy.
Pages that in their contiguity need the chance to sit next to each other.
The outside is the orderly intimacy in sight of others.
Like in the open shelves of a public library.
Everything else is just embellishment and cleanliness.

José de Nordenflycht, Art Historian (1970)

If the press is a villain,
We will paint the walls to speak,
The walls are the people`s blackboards,
Our voice will never be silenced,
That is where we tie up our ideas.
				

Claudia Echenique, Theatre Director / Phd in Arts (1962)

• * Excerpt from the play “Brigadas”, Colectivo Obras Públicas, COPS.

ON ANY GIVEN DAY

On any given day –that exact day is eternal– muralists come and go filling the walls with slogans that we believe in and demands that we want. On any other given day –that exact day is eternal– the citizens march with banners and flags intoning the slogans and demands of the walls. On any other given day –that exact day is eternal– we all retreat facing repression. On any other given day –that exact day is eternal– few people walk on the sidewalk, giving way to the pandemic, while on this side at least one person walks, the author, making those days an exact and eternal day.

Mario Fonseca, Visual Artist / Art Critic (1948)

Required visual noise.
Overlap of historical events.
Trace of what was built or what should
be built?
How do I record it?
				

Felipe Fontecilla, Photographer / Architect (1981)

And while the revolt happened,

some,

those of us who were still here,

we were alive and we didn’t know why.

María Paz González Durney, Actress (1985)

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”, Mandela said.

Did you know that we have not even recognized them as citizens in the Constitution?

Because they have been the ones who have carried the greatest burden of violence and those who have known how to set limits and put the body, that the rest of society has not. No + Sename transcends the institution, it is about more respect, visibility, consideration, appreciation. More play, wonder, curiosity, plasticity, empathy. More spaces, participation and opinion. For the children of today, for those who were and for those who will come.

Claudia Hernández del Solar, Psycologist specialist in childhood and research (1981)

Look: There are clandestine fractal connections around every street. Have you noticed that you can draw a perfect line between a subway entrance turnstile and a barricade? Although ideologically they are in opposite poles, I see them very close. Two constructions designed to control the flow that passes from one side to the other. The frantic loop of a diseased circuit has broken: the city leaks through every pore. Putting a finger over the crack it will only stop the chaos for a few seconds. You have to let the beat drop hit.

Valeria Hofmann, Audiovisual Director (1988)

The gutter was always my refuge, my place of reflection. Twenty five years ago I thought about becoming an artist, while my mind wandered through different ways of managing that, amid threats, loves, real and imaginary bullets. I still think about them, but from my MAcBook Air. OUR INNER FIGHTS are there, are here, and we fear them more than the bullets (imaginary ones). Without fear. The inner fights exploded. LET’S DO LIKE THEM, We should do that!

Sebastián Jaña, Artist (1981)

They sound in the city    concave                       convex metal
                         ,tak                tak                   tak       tak     tak
                         ,tak                tak                   tak       tak     tak
one after another
                          The skin stands on            ;
Our eyes are                                                       together
resonating                in the matter                            ,
they will never leave     the beats                     stay there
faintly                   faint                                    on the walls
as a whole                                                a great noise
background                raises a line
                          which                                    always remain
traktraktraktrak          taktaktaktak
                          interference                             sharp metal
that breaks                                                        the noise/silence
it is alone            ,                         it is not ours
                                                          it does not remain
                                                          it does not resonate
it hurts
                          , tak              tak                   tak       tak     tak
				

Mathias Klenner, Sound Artist / Architect (1986)

The Cave.

The street, like Altamira, offers us the walls as a canvas in a cave. From anonymity, spontaneous drawings emerge, which express in the most primary and visceral way, the message. This, filled with political burden, makes the city scream at us. It face us to the general malaise of a society subjugated for years, which demands changes and a decent way of living. This tour invites us to look, dialogue and above all to reflect on these texts, to recognize ourselves in the messages featured on this imaginary, made in communion and by a new collectivity of people that has awakened.

Andrés Larraín, Photographer (1985)

Each era is reflected in its diversity and quality of expression. // Each time records its mark in the Collective Memory. // Each group repeats its language, purposes and appearances. // Each one marks his body, soul and territory. // Neither for replicating repeated applause,

Nor for abiding by visceral rejection. // Yes for graphing beautiful and positive messages that can educate, persuade and convince many and diverse people, so that together we build a more conscious, human and harmonious Chile. // Adding honest wills, capacities and rigor…………… We Can!!!

Vicente Larrea, Graphic Artist (1942)

The so-called social uprising is for me, a truly popular insurrection. History teaches us that, in those cases, the city walls are the blackboard of frustrated aspirations, hatreds and loves of the common citizen. This was the case during the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Mexican agrarian revolution of 1910 or the uprising of Paris in 1968, when the city walls received slogans such as “Forbidden to Forbid” or “Let’s be realistic: ask for the impossible.”

It was evident that, now, the walls of our Alameda de la Delicias would be depositories for the waterfall of retained longings, after dozens of years governed by an exclusionist economic-social model.

Miguel Lawner Steiman, Architect / National Architecture Award in 2019 (1928)

Décimas to the messages written on the walls during the social awakening of October 18th, 2019

Out they came, the invisibles,
–those that go by unseen–
the time had come to intervene
and denounce the inadmissible.
In the streets, they were visible
silently taking the city;
their plain demands for dignity
sprayed on buildings, the message read
in bleeding letters overhead:
“Bread, justice and liberty!”

The authority was resting
untroubled in their office chairs.
While experts joined and put on airs,
nearby streets began protesting.
Out they came to paint, requesting
for basic rights to be restored,
neglected, outcasts, those ignored,
they found their voice and filled the sky
and with that voice they would summon
the government they so abhorred.

No authority could stop them
people came to paint, a stream
denouncing this severe regime,
“resign now Mr. Piñera!”
From Arica to Punta Arenas,
the painted words, as clear as day,
ubiquitous and on display,
beaming out like a watchful light,
guiding us in the dead of night,
the face of Catrillanca.

Certain work begets restrictions:
It shows the southside of the street,
The Alameda now complete
with everyone’s shared convictions.
This unequivocal diction,
it travels fast, with no delay,
word-of-mouth, in constant relay
one by one, ideas are seeded
clear demands of all that’s needed
to rebuild a vibrant Chile.

Farewell

With this farewell, the people proclaim their conviction:
“With a new Constitution,
a new way of life”.
Meanwhile, in the avenue,
in any place imaginable,
the visible letter will be visible
–for express delivery–
to the indifferent authority
who does not listen to the invisibles.
				

Jorge Lillo, Illustrator / Graphic Designer (1946)

Living the social outbreak abroad, it helped us to find ourselves in a foreign city. It brought us together to act from afar, showing even stronger that we had ALL awakened. That there was no turning back. During those days my foreign friends understood to what extent we are a seismic country. Of extreme changes and violent movements, but also necessary after years gathering so much pressure. I experienced the demonstration with the aerial vision of my cell phone. I was so excited that my throat tightened, it hurt to be away and at the same time I felt, more than ever, united to my country.

Constanza López Polanco, Art Director / Designer (1988)

In the museum-street blinking is breathing.

I step forward. I breathe in by opening my eyelids. The air is the light. My pupils take in the oxygen of shapes and colours that fill my retinas and thoughts. I breathe out by closing my eyelids. In the darkroom comes the alchemy of the image, it burns.

I take another step. I breathe in, I open. Once again a gust of light.

In the museum-street, eyes are lungs. Maybe that’s why they shoot straight at the eyes.

Julián Marras, Actor / Documentalist (1983)

Crown Plaza, crown and square. Its portico resembles a parentheses that opens downwards. A tunnel for passersby. Everything is passing by: The oasis, the crowd, the chanting, the crying, the posters. The crown of tourists that photograph themselves with demonstrators before heading back to the safety of those parentheses that only the crown virus can close. A parenthesis between the state of emergency and the state of catastrophe. Everything is removed but nothing is forgotten. The walls are not the canvas of the rabble: They beat among the crown of power and the pandemic, “Dignity square and the blindness”.

Jorge Montealegre Iturra, Writer / Journalist / PhD in American Studies, mention Thought and Culture (1954)

I

We are invited for a particularly special tour. Two thousand four hundred meters along just one sidewalk. How curious it turns out. It’s like having two eyes, we were allowed to peek into life only with one, as if there was also a north should we imagine it, but from its opposite side. But, everything has its explanation; the one in the north is the sidewalk of the Civic Quarter, the forbidden, the institutional, the protected. The one in the south, on the other hand, is the one trod by the soles of the stubborn, of those who aspire one march after another to bring together more hopes. Over here, observant and observed, go the insurgents, the dissatisfied, those who do not forgive the unforgivable impunity.

II

Time after time they have come down from Plaza Italia or Baquedano, or what remains of that plaza. On the left they move on, their dignity held high above. They also march with the left, which refuses to bury the dream, to collaborate with the programming of amnesia, the one that does not count the poor, but counts on them to deny rest to their oppressors.

III

“Todavía cantamos”*(“We still sing”) yes, and we still march. despite the ahistorical modernity imposed those who deny the motherland and then co-administered by its “democratic” replacements, technocrats pasteurized of every alternative program to the programming of the despoilers. We march, of course we do, those who cannot be bribed, those of us who don’t listen to siren' songs of those who wish to pull us off the path, of those who ask us to turn the page in the face of the uncomfortable past, the one which accuses them and shames some; the same past which for us, instead, enlightens and fills the soul with courage.

José Miguel Neira Cisternas, Professor in History and Geography / Collaborator in the electronic magazine “Polítika” (1954)

New Popular Hagiography

The street becomes the space for a popular identity with its own forms of memory and aesthetic expression. One of the most striking manifestations is the resignification of national cultural and political icons in terms of popular religiosity. More than a religious metaphysics, the force of the religious symbol is instrumentalized to elevate the carriers of the popular struggle. The bleeding eye displaces the sacred heart as a symbol of sacrifice (to make sacred), for the sake of an egalitarian society. The visages of Camilo Catrillanca, Alex Lemún, Gustavo Gatica, Fabiola Campillai, High School students, Gabriela Mistral, Violeta Parra, Mon Laferte, Negro Matapacos, Pedro Lemebel, Víctor Jara, Gladys Marín, Clotario Blest, Jorge González and even Felipe Camiroaga superimposed on religious images exemplify this act. This new popular hagiography is the testimony of the popular rebellion against the Chilean oligarchical and hierocratic opression.

Simón Palominos Mandiola, Sociologist (1984)

Memory and the Enemy

The Enemy knows that the memory consciously weakens in these lands: We prefer to forget the terror and death rather than honor them.

That is why, one day The Walls got reunited in a secret meeting and decided to lecture us: Immortalize “The Battle of Chile”. That way, they told us we would stop having an “Obstinate Memory”.

The agreement got started and the Enemy heard of it, he did everything he could to avoid it, but The Walls knew how to defend themselves and today we all remember the gestation of it, and in front of them we cry and dance celebrating those of us who are here and those who are gone.

Rafael Pérez Maldonado, Lawyer (1986)

(Only in this way can I think far from rage, pain. Every story is a love story. For you, for me, for those who were and those that will come).

My nails,
Your hair,
My eye,
Your smell,
My steps,
Your footprint,
The street,
Our
Street
The Alamedas make their way and do not stop coming.

Nicolás Pino, Hidden Arts (1981)

Checking, it seemed
As if someone was watching it
As if the answer was based on facts

Renewed, it fought
As if it had a cause to live

Denied, it learned
As if it had been destroyed before

Reviewing, it fought
As if someone was watching it
To what it had previously refused

Renewed, it seemed
As if it had a cause to live
Destroyed, then it based on facts

Providing,
Deciding,
As if the answer was based on facts

Patricio Pozo, Designer (1971)

(San Francisco Church. Built between the years 1562 - 1618)

Here they rape.

The detection of places where violation of fundamental rights of women and girls occur. Corners, buildings, streets, churches, is one of the exercises we do when we link the city with our daily life and the male chauvinist violence that hits our bodies and the bodies of others. Understanding the city form that point allows us to open our senses and pay attention to what is invisible; a dark memory of our life or a piece of paper without sender in the courts of law.

The eradication of sexist violence happens since the feminists question, intervene and are part of the decisions that are taken in the cities, only that way we will be able to build a feminist city.

Patricia Retamal, Master in Gender and Culture / Territory, Space and Society Phd Student (1985)

Emblazoned in white above a door is the letter “A” within a circle. A call to mythical heroes who stand between the powerless and those who wish to cause indiscriminate harm. A cursory glance reveals the face of the enemy, “ACAB” was painted hurriedly, deliberately and energetically around the “A”. Through the skeleton of a bus stop - its plastic panels and steel benches converted into makeshift shields against the rain of tear gas, water cannons, and truncheons - I see written in the same white paint, a hint of the identity of those who fought on the front line, “SENAME”.

Jude Richardson, Artist / Educator (1969)

Sometimes we must read in depth what is written on the walls of our cities. Just as Bob Dylan sang, 50 years ago, Something is happening, Mr. Jones, there is something we didn’t want, or could not see, until it exploded in our faces. This is what happened to us, in Chile, in October 2019.

What is going on? What is happening to us? The discomfort surrounds everything. It is in the air, it is in our interaction with others, and it is in us.

There is so much we need to understand, there is so much we want to say, but we don’t have the language to do it, we don’t have the words, we don’t have a way. What we say and write in social media fades fast... but we still have the walls, maybe the truth is written on them.

Gonzalo Rojas-May, Psychologist / Consultant / Linguist / Visual Artist (1964)

On the pavement I read “Nothing Has Changed Yet”. I think about everything that’s changed, at least over the last six months. I also remember Longueira claiming that nothing ever happens in Chile. I think of my mum saying “this country has changed a lot, it was so different when I was young”, and five minutes later complaining “this shitty country never changes, it’s always the same”. I think about myself, about my desire for change, and my belief that nothing ever changes. And then, I think of everything that has changed, everything that will change, and the ways in which I have changed.

It’s a great mental exercise to imagine ourselves as static, still, as if to say that nothing changes: To imagine a motionless detail, a single element that never changes, that hides under a veil everything that, in fact, is always changing. And how awful it would be to never change, to be so consistent with myself-yesterday-today-and-always that I have no room to be anyone else.

Leonardo Salinas, Political Scientist (1981)

“The walls are the people’s printshop”

(Alameda-Santa Rosa crossing)

An outburst of common senses on the concrete
Petrified noise
Scabs to remember the wounds
Tattoos on the city
Settled emotions
An overflow of the individual being
Shared muted memory
The end of the dictatorial fears, the emergence of new fears
A blendins of utopias, intimate, private and public
Exquisite corpse
Identified enemies
Caring as a shield
Transgenerational resistance
Newen and the profound homeland.
“Chile has woken up. Tell me something more beautiful than that”

(Alameda-Presidente Juan Antonio Ríos crossing)

María Paulina Soto Labbé, PhD specialized in Ibero-American Cultural Policies (1964)

There are two dimensions that I want to highlight from “The city as text”. The first is the multiplicity of elements that come together in the landscape that make up this photomontage. The city, far from being a singular and unitary entity, emerges here as a space arranged by a heterogeneity of practices and bodies, writings and walls, infrastructures and wiring, flows and atmospheres. Second, the landscape strongly represents the idea of dissent as the quintessential political moment. The work shows a city in crisis, but at the same time a city that transforms disagreements and differences into a possibility of re-imagining the type of society we want.

Martín Tironi, Sociologist / Researcher in Anthropology in Design (1979)

“Let them all go”, is read in the front wall of the Church of San Francisco.

In High School, a history teacher showed us a picture of some farmers (zapatistas, I think), holding a sign that said, “Let them all go”. The teacher asked us, “who will come next if everybody leaves?” And then he said something about the respect towards the authority. I felt fear of the chaos.

Today I do not fear. Our politics is the art to imagine worlds that don’t even exist. And in that future, the death of the king, is not a synonymous of chaos. Because the embraced bodies are the ones that will resist.

Juan Pablo Troncoso, Actor / Playwright (1988)

In Spring of 2004 I understood what capitalism was. I was fifteen years old. Massive protests throughout Chile against G.W. Bush’s murderous and imperialist policies, taught me that class struggle had a global dimension and that people’s lives in Iraq mattered. Fifteen years later, the popular uprising in October 2019 succeeded in expelling the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit from Santiago de Chile. An adolescent dream.The new program of patriarchal extractionist depredation would not be agreed on our land.

Geanina Zagal Ehrenfeld, PhD Researcher in Geography / Master in Gender Studies / Co-founder of the Feminist City platform (1988)

EPíLOGO

Memory is redundant¹

The tidy golden numbers of a building at the beginning of the route are painted over with black paint. It said 199, now it says, 1973. A few meters ahead, among photos printed on letter-sized sheets, Camilo Catrillanca. On a diagonal, in neon pink, "More awake than ever". "This is not war" a few steps further and then, "Let's not be afraid of uncertainty". Catrillanca again and "New Constitution". Bright red posters of Blackie the Cop-Killer. Víctor Jara, Mon Laferte and “Blackie” again. Catrillanca, an eye that bleeds and Camiroaga.

Another bleeding eye is pasted on the side of a kiosk, a little further "We wasted a lot of time fighting each other" and "Until life is worth living".

Parque Bustamante, “No more femicide”, Universidad de Chile’s theater, what remains of Vicuña Mackenna pavement. "We will win", "Resist".

"Resign Piñera!”, "1312", "ACAB" and all the possible variations.

"Let's make our internal struggles a collective struggle", reads the story scrawled on what was a bus stop.

"Dignity" around that corner and what was left of the pavement on the street separates the next block.

"Without Justice, there will be no peace", Víctor Jara, "Nothing has changed yet" on the curb and "More rage than fear" on the roof of a bus stop.

Harry Potter, a deserted and boarded up hotel. "Newen" and more bars. "No more SENAME", "Take care" and "Resist" almost face to face.

"<3 of soil" on another kiosk.

"The right to live in peace", "TV lies", "Pedophile Church", "Free Wallmapu", more bleeding eyes.

“No + CAE”, “No + AFP”, “No TPP11”, “No way”.

A Mapuche woman with the caption "The sun is not dead", "We have nothing to lose", Lemebel, "Fight like Gladys".

"Resist Chile" on the southern sidewalk, while on the north sidewalk at the foot of Cerro Huelén (Santa Lucía), the engraving of a Mapuche woman hung by a hand that comes out of the Chilean flag resists under a starry sky that is clouded with chimneys of industries and hills invaded by high voltage towers.

Street with more pavement, "The walls are the printing press of people", "Chile woke up, tell me something more beautiful than that", a church and the anger of many contained for so many years. "Free water", "Legal abortion", "No book tax " on a bookstore metal curtain. Fewer broken windows.

“Resist”, “No +”, “…And we shout revolution”.

Grids, green fields, flags ...

“Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read”².

Daniela Schütte G., Bachelor of Linguistics and Hispanic Literature / Master in Edition (1977)

1. "Memory is redundant: it repeats the signs so that the city begins to exist", Italo Calvino, “Invisible Cities”
2. Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust, a History of walking”

PREFACE 2

Scratch it all!
City Archive of an Ecology of Resistances

The city as an archive is an inappropriate and inalienable testimony, which transits in a parallel dimension to official history, news, opinion columns, museums and academic articles. The city as an archive is polyphonic, situated and overflowing in its own materiality and immateriality. It is an ecology of resistances difficult to balance and contain outside its own ecosystem. A story of resistance in a first person.

The City as Text captures the urban nucleus photographically as an archive, registering it situated in a perpetual moment. It registers the 36th day of the “Social Uprising” at that precise moment and enables it as an open digital file. With that it may be observed and activated, freely. Even in its overflow, this record allows me to approach from a physical and temporal distance to that specific morning light, the traces of the protest in the streets and the slogans, among notaries, stops and pharmacies that seized walls and all materiality available in deep mutualism. They call to "scratch it all!", how do the walls of San Borja cry on this 36th day, between bleeding eyes and black flags. This project registers and immortalizes that ecology, even in the difficulty of its containment, helping to archive the memory of the resistances.

It also integrates a new layer that, as an attached dimension it contrasts with the street one, contained in the photographs. As a two-dimensional story, The City as Text runs through anonymity and authorship. The first, collective, street, polyphonic in its struggles; with a second, authorial and disciplinary, contained in the same curatorial exercise, in the 36 footnotes that are presented on the tour, and in this same text.

Both dimensions contrast in languages, tones, rhythms, reflections and aesthetics. The city is then traversed as a double text, from the anonymous traces of the “first line”, protesters and passers-by among abbreviations, neologisms and doodles, and in the author's voices of intellectuals, artists and critics.

This action, which turns the ‘archive city’ ’into ‘archive-artwork’, allows us to see the tensions of an inhabited Santiago in multiple dimensions that are hardly related symbiotically. At this point, it is the same kilometric photographic record of the 'archive city' that calls to rethink the existence of these parallel dimensions, to transform them into an ecology and interdependence, in constant exchange and mutual transformation as a collective body.

Nicole Cristi, Designer and Bachelor of Aesthetics / MA Material and Visual Culture / PhD Candidate in Anthropology in Material Culture (1987)

KOWKÜLEN

Inaltu lafken mew.

Ngen ko, Arüm ko, Ngürü filu, Kay kay.

Ingkañpeafiel trayenko, witrunko, traytrayko.
Tüfa taiñ duam, pikeiñ.

Mapu kishu angkükelay, kakelu angkümmapukey. 
Rulu mapu, lewfü, trayenko, tray tray ko.

Itrofill mongen.

Kurake lawen.

Ad mongen, Itrofil mongen.

KOWKÜLEN [LIQUID BEEING)

The history of the peoples
Settled historically
Inaltu lafken mew [near the ocean]
Next to the water
 
I have been here
In a liquid state
Running through different basins
Ngen ko, Arüm ko, Ngürü filu, Kay kay,
[“Owner of the water”, “frog owner of the water,
“fox-snake”, “kaykay snake”]
Witnesses of this journey
 
My body is water.
I merge myself into it.
That is my policy
Ingkañpeafiel trayenko, witrunko, traytrayko.
Tüfa taiñ duam, pikeiñ.
[To defend the fountain, the stream of the water,
the waterfalls, that is our need, we say]
Water is territory
 
Neoliberal extractivism
The market over life,
20 liters, 20 liters, 20 liters, of water daily.
Eucalyptus, pines, avocado.
Mapu kishu angkükelay, kakelu angkümmapukey.
[The land does not dry up on its own, others dry it up.
“It is not a drought, it is a looting”, that was the proposal]
 
Wetlands, rivers, fountains, waterfalls.
Rulu mapu, lewfü, trayenko, tray tray ko
[Wetlands, rivers, fountains, waterfalls.]
Our bodies in the water
Minimal parts of a whole and, even though, still present.
 
Ecosystems, species
Itrofill mongen [the different lifeforms]
 
I want to be a fish
Without a sex to be reckoned with
As shumpall, interstice of man, of woman.
Non-binary waters
Which go through basins
Which clean (themselves) with the rocks.
Healing sediments
Kurake lawen. [medicine of the rocks]
 
To look through the water.
Not to deviate the flow of our gazes.
Becoming landscape.
Liquid, historical ties.
To know that I am part of the territory.
Ad mongen, Itrofil mongen.
[Laws of the life, different classes of life]

https://vimeo.com/425710389/818ac78e87

Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste, Visual Arts PhD / Part of the Rangiñtulewfü Mapuche Collective (1991)

"Püchi zomo gefun ta ñi chaw gütxamkaenew pu winka weñepafiegun ta Leftxarü ka teyfupaygun Leftxarü ñi reñma. Fey ti weche wentxu kimpay pürakawell mew. Fey mew kiñe antü amuy ñi lof mew kimeltukefuy ñi pu che, chumechi nentual pu winka ta yiñ mapu mew. Fey pienew ta ti kawell niey fillke az, ta ñi kawell cámara geafuy. Femechi chillkatupan cine tüfa chi mapu mew, falikey chillkatual pu ka txokiñ che egu. Turpu küme felen waria mew, fantepu ka küme felelan, ta ti katxüntukuwe wirarikey ta yiñ wall mapu re mapuche mülealu, ka Kaxüllanka ñi az ka Lemun ñi az küñatugen".

“As a child, my father told me how Leftraru, after being kidnapped by Spaniards and seeing his family tortured, learned the techniques of the enemy, especially the use of the horse. One day he managed to flee and teach his people everything to expel the invaders. My father told me that the horse can take many forms and, in my case, it could be the camera. Thus I came to study cinema in an inhospitable terrain, where the inequality of classes became clear to me. I have never felt comfortable in the city and even less in this one, until now, now that the walls scream free Wallmapu while the faces of Catrillanca and Lemun accompany me"

Claudia Huaiquimilla, Audiovisual Director (1987)

PREFACE 1

Santiago's skin:
A collective, anonymous, street and popular work

The Social Uprising of October 18th, 2019 has been seen as a social response to decades of systemic subjugation evidenced in one of the most stark scene of the neoliberal system, precisely in Chile. System implemented during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

One of the most striking and beautiful things about the Social Uprising has been, in my opinion, the collective and unifying force it has had. This collective strength has been evidenced in the fact of not identifying with a leader or leadership groups, which has hindered a possible dialogue with the current political fabric and government. Beyond the complexity of dialogue from the perspective of established institutions, it is amazing that a movement or action is proposed that transcends unitary leaderships and that rather looks at the community, at a multiplicity of voices, demands and slogans, shaping a polyphony with a view to a fairer and more equitable country. This polyphony, which in turn has led to spontaneous neighborhood organizations, has been expressed directly on the street, in the public space – both physical and digital - where the city has dressed in a skin conveying voices that have historically been neglected. This dialogue has been channeled through the occupation of public space, materializing in the graphic skin, extremely mutable, but later amplified in social networks. It is an indirect / direct dialogue, public and polyphonic, expressed by and from the street.

Talk about the skin Santiago city in the journey that the designer Carola Ureta and the photographer Daniel Corvillón documented the southern sidewalk of the Alameda, from Seminario streets to Nataniel Cox, on the 23th of November, 2019, in full context of demonstration by the Social Uprising, is to speak of a political skin. The slogans, tags, graffiti, murals, stencils, posters, among others, that are observed in this ‘virtual walk’ allude directly to the event, to the context, to the moment we are living, but they are also the image and expression of collective demands anchored for decades in the citizenship. It is a temporary snapshot of the present, which in turn highlights the past with a desire for future. Many of them are denunciations of an event, of entrenched bad practices, they are voices of pain and hope. This mutable skin calls us both to action and to not forget why it goes out, why Chile can and should be better. The panorama is powerful from the point of view of being a record of the collective expression of a historical moment that transcends time.

This is why we must never forget that this skin is a collective, anonymous, street and popular work. Therefore, we must rather situate ourselves from "we" and not from "I". The collective and anonymous nature emphasizes the recently mentioned; that of being a street skin, exalts the dichotomy between public and private space, where the public passes by presenting itself to all passersby without restrictions on access; and finally, the character of popular involves talking about a work located on the street that gathers the clamor of an important and broad segment of the population in opposition to the elites.

Therefore, the overview presented in this book The City as Text, is a look from "the sidewalk in front", a location that allows observing and analyzing a collective action as described, namely, the content of the photos exposed here, as "collective, anonymous, street and popular". In this book, 36 voices from various disciplines have related their experiences, memories and reflections, replacing the images towards the personal and subjective. From this perspective, both the book and the project are presented in an authorial way, although rescuing different views in each of the exposed footnotes.

The proposed readings are multiple, leaving a space for future discussions around the limits of the collective and the anonymous, versus the author. In this sense, this city skin written, tattooed, blotted and torn will never stop challenging us on different levels, in different layers, just as the walls / canvas of our city have been mutating.

Simoné Malacchini Soto, Designer / Academic / MA Material and Visual Culture (1985)