Reception and Contingency in Recent Art from Chile

Abstract

The re-edition of the book Margins and Institutions by Nelly Richard, a landmark in the study of Chilean art produced during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, reminds of how the original publication contributed to shape a particular reception of these ephemeral works that almost nobody witnessed. The images of the book appear removed from time and space and do not give much information about their original situations, yet this article discusses how, paradoxically, this has enabled an intimate reception of those works: the personal memories of the audience filled in the gaps left by the book, as attested by an ethnographic research project carried out to explore the constructed nature of this response. These ideas are discussed in relation to the recent process of internationalization of Chilean art, highlighting the differences between the contemporary context and the former one, and the importance of paying attention to the late receptor of these pieces.

Notes

¹ I am referring to art/culture specific archives here; another archive, that of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, which focuses on human rights issues, precedes these two.

² And therefore the writing about this – the main topic of the author's contribution to Copying Eden – was distributed ‘person by person and photocopy by photocopy – these were rough and ready affairs’ (Valdés 2006: 51).

³ An image of the burned cheek also appears in Zurita's book Purgatorio from 1979 – a collection of poems created from that act – but it is a very close picture of the wound, not of his whole face; interestingly, this text was republished by Ediciones UDP in 2007, and we see Zurita's entire face on the book cover, yet it is a different image from that of Margins and Institutions.

⁴ There are several texts that discuss the ‘mythology’ around Zurita's acts. Vicente Bernaschina and Paulina Soto's is a relatively recent one, from 2011, published on-line: ‘La Epica Artística de Avanzada: la Palabra Autoritaria’. Zurita discusses it again in a conversation with the artist Camilo Yañez recently organized by the on-line art journal Artishock. The whole recorded conversation is available at http://www.artishock.cl/2013/04/una-conversacion-entre-camilo-yanez-y-raul-zurita/ (accessed 30 July 2013).

⁵ Indeed he was working very closely with the theorist Nelly Richard at this stage of his career.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucia Vodanovic

Dr Lucia Vodanovic completed her MA and PhD in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, where she also worked as Visiting Lecturer. She is now Lecturer in Journalism and Media at Middlesex University. Her research interests revolve around issues of obsolescence, ephemerality, social aesthetics and the production and transmission of knowledge. Her edited collection, Disturbios Culturales (Ediciones UDP) appeared in 2012, and her work has also been featured in journals such as Invisible Culture, M-C Journal and Journal of Visual Art Practice.