Valeria Fahrenkrog & Mitkunstzentrale, Berlin

Kiosk

The kiosk, an installation object made with recycled material, is a central point in the museo de la democracia; A mutant dispositive where there are works that address the parameters of meaning framing the founding narratives and the constitution of cultural, political and social life in the Latin American republics.
The kiosk offers objects for immediate consumption: postcards, videos, books and publications that change and overlap throughout the exhibition’s duration.  Kiosks are central nodes in the urban grid, and act as a point of reference in the experience of life in the city. Here, the kiosk becomes a point of dislocation in the social and territorial order, a place for reinterpreting and activating public and private life.

Valeria Fahrenkrog / Asunción, Paraguay, 1980

Valeria Fahrenkrog (Asunción, PA, 1980), visual artist and publicist. Studied fine arts at the Univ. Católica de Chile, media art at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Master’s degree Art in Context at the UdK Berlin. Various exhibitions and projects since 2004. In 2016, together with Joerg Franzbecker, Erik Göngrich, Heimo Lattner, Katja Reichart, Ines Schaber and Florian Wüst, she founded the Berlin booklets on the history and present of the city. Project participations in the nGbK: “Ene Mene Muh und welche Stadt du?” (2016), “40 Jahre Kunst im Kontext” and “Spielclub Oranienstraße 25” (2019). She lives and works in Berlin.

http://dreipalmen.com/ 

Mitkunstzentrale / Berlin, Germany

The MITKUNSTZENTRALE is a place of encounter, exchange, collectively developed knowledge production, concept sharpening and collaboration on climate-sensitive artistic objects and ways of working. Exemplary uses are to be developed in a collectively developed space, which, together with a wood workshop, textile showroom, open-air baking oven, discourse and exhibition spaces of various initiatives, are now located in the Haus der Statistik and are to remain on site for the future!

A project by Erik Göngrich and Valeria Fahrenkrog

https://hausderstatistik.org/pioniere/mitkunstzentrale-2/

Decolomania

“Arts of the Working Class” is a Berlin journal, distributed on the streets, through the art circuit as well as internationally. The journal looks to re-position the concept of “working class” inside society through self-reflective actions about the art world precarious conditions. Arts of the Working Class is focussed on discourses about contemporary social dynamics in different languages and from different regions of the world.

Arts of the Working Class / Berlin (Germany)

Edited by artist Paul Sochacki, critic María Inés Plaza Lazo,  and curator Alina Ana Kolar.
Founded 2018 in Berlin.

http://artsoftheworkingclass.org/

Exhumed

The costume was based on the oil painting that Jean Baptiste Guerin painted of Bolivar in 1842, twelve years after Bolivar’s death, at the order of the Venezuelan government to celebrate the burial of Bolivar’s remains in Caracas. The heart-shaped red part of Bolivar’s uniform is perhaps one of the most used symbols to represent him, and thus serves as one of the main features in his iconography today as well. Equally important features are the hair and sideburns that make Bolivar’s figure ubiquitous and instantly recognizable.

Simon Bolivar-Museum

The aim of the collection is to analyse the significance of the historical figure Simon Bolivar for South America in the past and present. The Simon Bolivar Museum would like to make this development visible, starting with the historical figure, through the glorification from the 19th century, the subsequent mystification, to the banalisation and thus detachment of the person Bolivar from the historical context.
The artist presented this installation as part of his research thesis for the MA Kunst im Kontext at the University of the Arts Berlin (UDK).

Zoltan Kunckel – Caracas, Venezuela, 1975

Zoltan Kunckel is a visual artist from Venezuela. Studied photography and sculpture at the Moholy-Nagy University, Budapest, and Art in Context at the UdK Berlin. His works consist of sculptures, video, installation, photography and performance; they reflect on national and cultural identity, dealing with migration and the emergence of violent structures of power. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

http://zoltankunckel.com/ 

The real story of The Superheroes

After 9/11 the notion of “hero” loomed large in the public consciousness as those who sacrifice a life and do a job for others. The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is an unnoticed hero, working in extreme conditions for low wages that are saved and sent back to their families and communities in Mexico. Mexican economy has become dependent on that remittance, while the U.S. economy today depends on those workers. Pinzón photographed 20 Mexican and Latino immigrants in U.S. and Mexican superhero costumes. The project portrays the worker/superhero in their work environment, accompanied by their name, hometown and the amount of money sent each week.

Dulce Pinzón. Mexico City, 1974

Dulce Pinzón was born in Mexico City in 1974. She studied Mass Media Communications at the Universidad de Las Americas in Puebla Mexico and Photography at Indiana University in Pennsylvania. In 1995 she moved to New York where she studied at The International Center of Photography.
Her work has been published and collected internationally. In 2001 her photos were used for the cover of a publication of Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States”. In 2002 Dulce won the prestigious Jovenes Creadores/FONCA grant in Mexico for her work. In 2006 she won an Honorific Mention in the Santa Fe project competition and she won the 12th edition of the Mexican Biennial of El Centro de La Imagen. Dulce was a 2006 fellow in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a 2007 for the Bronx Museum program Artist in the Market Place and a Ford Foundation grantee in 2008.
Dulce lives and works between Mexico and New York.

https://www.dulcepinzon.com/

Social Shirt Project for people with difficulty identifying left from right side

This project is a set of video works, objects, performance and garments, which arise from the artist’s inability to deal with his sense of Left-Right laterality. The discussion is mixed with the political sphere as a reading of the current ideological polarisation in Brazil and the world. The video, filmed with a drone, shows the artist performing as an automaton and confused traffic warden at an intersection in São Paulo, indicating random directions to cars. His work questions the conduct of the body and the subject, ideological manipulations, pointing to nihilistic and cynical horizons in politics and life.

Victor De La Rocque. Belém do Pará, Brazil, 1984

Victor de La Rocque (1985, Belém-PA, Brazil) is a multiple artist, he studied music at Carlos Gomes Conservatory, performing arts at the Federal University of Pará, undergraduate and graduate in visual arts at the University of Amazônia and mastering in visual arts at UNESP. He has been participating in exhibitions, festivals and artistic residencies in Brazil and abroad. Artistic Residency at FAAP (São Paulo), Grand Prize of Arte Pará 2008, exhibition Chaos and Effect, Against Wild Thought (Itaú Cultural), Performance Arte Brasil (MAM-RJ), Amazonian Video Art (CCA Glasgow), Pororoca: a Amazônia no MAR (Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro), Amazônia – Ciclos da modernidade (CCBB-RJ), Amazônia: Lugar da Experiência, had his first solo exhibition at Paço das Artes/MIS (São Paulo), The Performance Arcade (The Papa Museum-New Zealand). His works are in the collections of the Museum of Art of Rio de Janeiro, MACRS (Porto Alegre-RS), Defibrillator Gallery (Chicago-USA), Museu da Universidade Federal do Pará (Amazoniana Collection), Casa das Onze Janelas (Belém-PA) and Fundação Rômulo Maiorana (Belém-PA). He lives and works between São Paulo-SP and Belém-PA.

http://cargocollective.com/victordelarocque

Demonstration

Michael Wesely experiments with overexposure in long-term analogue photographic processes and captures images that accumulate movements and processes of the city. The photographs in the Museum of Democracy were taken in São Paulo, Brazil, on 17 April 2016, when the Chamber of Deputies voted to open impeachment proceedings against former president Dilma Rousseff, elected in 2014. Wesely photographed street rallies in Vale do Anhangabaú, where an anti-impeachment protest took place, and on Paulista Avenue, where a pro-impeachment rally was held. The images capture the democratic schism that still plagues Brazil, and a historic moment that will take time to assimilate.

Michael Wesely / Munich, Germany, 1963

Michael Wesely (born 1963 in Munich) is a German art photographer who is best known for his photos of cities, buildings, landscapes, and still lives of flowers taken with a special ultra-long exposure technique. Wesely has received several awards and honors for his work, including a 1995 scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD to produce photographs in the Netherlands, and a scholarship by the Free State of Bavaria for work in the US in 1999. In 2004, he was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York to produce a large-scale project titled the Open Shutter Project. He has participated in many international biennials and have had several solo shows worldwide. Born in Munich, Germany in 1963, he lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

https://wesely.org/

VIDEO INSTALLATION

A surveillance camera from inside Galería CIMA is focused on the Plaza Italia/”Plaza Dignidad” (Italy/Dignity Square) in downtown Santiago, the epicentre of the social revolts. In spite of excessive police violence and repression, the movements achieved to move forward a referendum for writing a new constitution that will replace the one existing since 1980. This was composed during the civic-military dictatorship lead by General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). 

MILESTONES
24 | 10 | 2.019 On the seventh day of the social outbreak, the CENTINELA camera begins its transmissions from the Plaza de la Dignidad through the YouTube channel of Galería CIMA.
25 | 10 | 2.019 The largest demonstration in Chile takes place, with the participation of more than 1.2 million people in Santiago and more than 3 million throughout the country. The slogans are aimed at ending the policies inherited from the military dictatorship, which ended “democratically” 30 years ago.
04 | 10 | 2.019  Two policewomen are hit by Molotov cocktails in the middle of a demonstration in Plaza Dignidad.
08 | 11 | 2.019 A banner reading “Plaza de la Dignidad” is hoisted for the first time. On the same day, Gustavo Gatica loses his sight when he is hit by police repression tools.
09 | 11 | 2.019 President Sebastián Piñera says he has received information that foreign governments have intervened here.
12 | 11 | 2.019  The light collective TRIMEX performs a laser projection on the buildings around the Plaza de la Dignidad, in allusion to the increase in victims of eye trauma.
21 | 11 | 2.019 Amnesty International publishes its report after observing the violence in the area and states, “The deliberate policy of harming demonstrators points to the commander’s responsibility.”
25 | 11 | 2.019 After an emergency meeting, the political parties agree to call a referendum on the drafting of a new constitution and sign the “Agreement for Peace.” On the same day, the Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich, affirms that “our health system is one of the best and most efficient on the planet.”
26 | 11 | 2.019 Fabiola Campillay is blinded by the police in the early hours of the morning. Together with Gustavo Gatica, they become icons of human rights violations.
27 | 11 | 2.019 Mauricio Fredes is electrocuted to death when he falls into an electrified pit, while police repression is exercised in the middle of a demonstration in the Dignidad-Alameda axis. The same day the cultural center “Cine Arte Alameda” burns down.
29 | 11 | 2.019 The feminist collective LAS TESIS performs the intervention “The Rapist in Your Way,” a performance that has been replicated by women around the world.
06 | 12 | 2.019 The light collective formed by Daniela Valenzuela and Anonilux performs the intervention “Lights for Memory” as a tribute to the 27 people who lost their lives to the repressive measures of the state.
11 | 12 | 2.019 The constitutional accusation against the Minister of the Interior, Andrés Chadwick, is approved.
01 | 01 | 2020 The people of Chile gather in the Plaza de la Dignidad to celebrate the New Year, as a sign of optimism in the face of the reform process taking place. From the Galería CIMA, illuminations are projected on the Plaza and interventions are carried out together with the collectives Daniela Valenzuela/Anonilux and Delight Lab.
28 | 02 | 2020 The Violeta Parra Museum burns down during the demonstrations in the Plaza de la Dignidad.
08 | 03 | 2020 The gathering of more than two million women in the Plaza de la Dignidad becomes a worldwide reference for the feminist struggle.The gathering of more than two million women in the Plaza de la Dignidad becomes a worldwide reference for the feminist struggle.
21 | 03 | 2020 The Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich, pronounces his famous phrase in relation to the covid-19 pandemic “what happens if the virus mutates and becomes a good person?”.
03 | 04 | 2020 President Sebastián Piñera strolls through the Plaza de la Dignidad while Santiago is under a strict lockdown.
18 | 05 | 2020 The light collective Delight Lab projects the word “hunger” on the Telefonica Tower in Santiago, alluding to the solidarity soup kitchens that have spontaneously formed in vulnerable areas of the city.
24 | 06 | 2020  Day of the Indigenous Peoples, an issue repeatedly addressed in the national contingency due to the territorial conflicts that have been dragging on since colonization.
25 | 06 | 2020 Santiago is under quarantine.
25 | 10 | 2020 The national referendum results with a large majority in the drafting of a new Constitution under the direction of a Constitutional Convention composed of democratically elected members. The Plaza de la Dignidad once again became the center of celebration, and from Galería CIMA the word RENACE (“be reborn”) was projected by the Delight Lab collective.
02 | 11 | 2020 The Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage, Consuelo Valdés, affirms that “a peso put in culture will not be put in another program or need of the citizens.”

TEAM:
Idea & Production: Trinidad Lopetegui, Daniel Aguayo Mozó
Audiovisual documentation: Sebastián Rojas
Editing, montage and post-production: Harold Illanes

Galería CIMA / Santiago de Chile (Chile)

We are a cultural space located in Plaza Dignidad. After the social outburst that led to the paralysis of all our activities, we installed a camera that has uninterruptedly transmitted what happens in the square, consolidating itself as a truthful and impartial coverage of the demonstrations, where several milestones have been recorded, such as the historic march of October 25th, New Year 2020, and 8M.

Team: Trinidad Lopetegui, Daniel Aguayo Mozó, Sebastián Rojas, Harold Illanes

Galería CIMA
Merced 22, of 1101
Santiago de Chile
WEB
INSTAGRAM
YOUTUBE

Act of Mourning

On July 3, 2007, nearly 24,000 candles were lit in Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolivar in response to the homicides of the Valle del Cauca deputies who were kidnapped and taken hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on April 12, 2002. Over the course of six hours, the candles were slowly and deliberately placed in a grid-like pattern in the main square. Salcedo noted that, due to Colombia’s political situation – which has dragged on since the beginning of the civil war in the 1960s – and the volume of massacres and disappearances during that time, as a nation they have become dehumanized and are no longer able to respond. “Acción de Duelo” (“Act of Mourning” aims to teach how to mourn.

Doris Salcedo / Bogotá, Colombia, 1958

Visual artist and sculptor, she develops a work of resistance based on the experiences and testimonies of the armed conflict in her country. Her proposals reflect situations of loss, trauma and pain, seeking to restore the memory of the victims. She works with everyday objects such as furniture recovered from devastated houses, clothes of the disappeared and elements such as roses and candles. Solo exhibitions include Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2017); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, touring to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2015-16); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2014). Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Velázquez Visual Arts Award and Hiroshima Art Prize, among other important nominations. Lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.

Ecuestre n.º 5

Between 2014-2017, Durán researched public monuments commemorating independence from Spain in Latin America, erected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which helped to build and reinforce a new national image and identity. The ruling class followed European aesthetics for these monuments, and today, most citizens no longer know who they represent. The heroes of the past have become anonymous sculptures. Here, the artist creates a mock monument from an image of a Simón Bolívar statue in La Paz, Bolívia. The photos are digitally edited to create a fiction, which frees these monuments from any specific narrative and enhances their pure sculptural form.

Andrés Durán / Santiago de Chile, 1974

Andrés Durán Dávila is a visual artist and teacher. He holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Artistic Practices from the Universidad Finis Terrae and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the Universidad ARCIS. His work has been exhibited in Chile and abroad, including: Monumento Editado: Chile-Peru-Bolivia-Argentina, Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago (2019); Avenue of the Americas, Y Gallery NYC (2016); Guatephoto Festival, Guatemala (2015); Voces, Latin American Photography 1980-2015, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London (2015); Monumento Editado, Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago (2014); Ejercicios para distraer la Mirada, MNBA, Santiago (2012) and Mensulás, IV Bienal de Mercosur Brasil, (2003).
He has been awarded the Descubrimientos PhotoEspaña Prize 2016. In 2015 he won the first place in the CCU Art Scholarship, and a residency at ISCP in NYC. In 2005 he was nominated for the Altazor Award, in the category best installation and video art.

www.andresduran.cl
www.monumentoeditado.com