AISTHESIS: Revista Chilena de Investigaciones Estéticas

Life as a Sapiential Event: Devotion, Gratitude and Good Living. Interview with the Chilean philosopher Gastón Soublette Asmussen

2023-07-13T07:13:17-04:00

Gaston Soublette's fascinating intellectual and spiritual life has made him a renowned philosopher in Chile. Today, at the age of 97, this musicologist, aesthete and expert in Eastern philosophy and Christian theology, is one of the most important references in the current Chilean intellectual scene.

This interview explored the various facets of his life, the beginning of his teaching and academic activity, and his existential motivations that led him to explore the themes of his research. Such as traditional indigenous culture, folklore, music, theology and oriental spiritualities. With more than a dozen books published, Soublette has left a deep impression on his hundreds of students.

During the interview, Soublette shared his experiences and learnings over the years. He stressed the importance of traditional indigenous culture and its value to contemporary society. He explained how these ancestral cultures can offer a deep and meaningful vision of human existence, encouraging greater respect for nature and a deeper connection to our human diversity.

The role of spirituality featured prominently in the conversation. Soublette highlighted the importance of preserving these spiritual expressions as a way of keeping alive the identity and history of a people. He also pointed out how the spiritual quest can be a powerful tool for personal transformation and the awakening of knowledge, beyond academicism.

Presentation dossier «Passionate images: Popular Unity, the people and Allendismo»

2023-09-13T14:39:52-03:00

Presentation of the dossier «Passionate images: Popular Unity, the people and Allendismo»

Forthcoming Images: Popular Unity and the Invention of Further Becomings

2023-07-05T10:42:01-04:00

The aim of this paper is to think the role of images and «invention» in the project of Popular Unity. If inventiveness, as a way of understanding collective work, arises in different initiatives of the Popular Unity in order to improve the living conditions of workers, while seeking to legitimize the socialist project by consolidating its achievements and its ability to function as an alternative to capitalist production models, invention as an «original combination of imitation rays» (Tarde) operates at the same time as an unprecedented form of associativity promoted by Popular Unity and, to that extent, the trajectories and relationships it arouses are less linear than what images, understood as a representational and capture mechanisms, allow us to understand. This is why the article proposes to think about other ways of narrating Popular Unity in which images function as machines or «machinic agencies» (Guattari), that is, as records of the multiple which emerges within a complex and constantly changing social formation. In the light of this, the text connects two milestones of Popular Unity which inscribe invention as an articulating axis for redefining the social: the book collection «Nosotros los chilenos», by Quimantú (1971-1973), and the UNCTAD III building (1971-1972).

Helvio Soto and the Capital-Cinema

2023-08-08T18:12:08-04:00

The article explores the question that underlies Helvio Soto's political cinema. A complex question, barely ajar, and which summarizes an era that seriously considered the question of the relationship between cinema and revolution. This question, which is the obverse of the one that Gilles Deleuze and Jun Fujita Hirose posed about cinema-capital, is an inquiry not only into the revolutionary becoming of cinematographic images, but also into the temporality of a world under construction. With materialist roots, this inquiry is that of the duration of images, of revolutionary images.

Optical Unconscious: Declassification, Image and Conspiracy. Anaconda Copper Mining Company (1970) and Map of Chile (Anaconda) (1975)

2023-08-17T12:53:05-04:00

This article will develop the problem of the image as a key to reading on the conspiracy against the nationalization of Chilean copper at the beginning of the seventies. By exploring the concept of damaged or degraded images that have been displaced from the line of historical continuity of the Popular Unity, two visual records will be analyzed: the declassification of documents related to the interests of the North American company Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1970, and the records of the work Map of Chile (Anaconda) by the Chilean artist, Juan Downey, at the Center for Inter-American Relations (CIAR) in New York in 1975. Thus, through this encounter between image, art and politics, a discussion on the optical and political unconscious will take place, as part of a critical thought on the images of the Popular Unity.

Stasis Artifact

2023-08-24T16:09:05-04:00

With the figure of the stasis artifact, I would like to study the political design that unfolds during the Unidad Popular in Chile in relation to its objects of projection. In particular, I will focus on the documentary work carried out by Angélica Vázquez in the documentary Crónica del salitre (1971); Marilú Mallet in the documentary Amuhuelai-mi (1972); and Valeria Sarmiento with the documentary Un sueño como de colores (1972). These documentaries record the ways in which the Unidad Popular's politics is organized around socialist production, their gaze is one of militancy and complicity with the transformation process that is taking place. However, at the same time, these documentaries interrupt the very figuration of “labor” by the images themselves. In other words, they interrupt the idea of “production”. This interruption of the image by the image is what could be called a stasis artifact.

Trans*temporal Irruptions (50 Years after the Coup d’état)

2023-08-08T18:15:23-04:00

This article addresses some milestones in the biographical trajectory of Marcia Alejandra, a transsexual woman who began her medicalized process of «sex change» during the Popular Unity and managed to have her identity legally recognized in 1974, already in dictatorship, when her transition came to public light marked by the historical boundary of the coup d'état in Chile. In the first part of the text, I present the main theoretical framework of the analysis, starting from the notions of cistemporality and trans*temporality, as well as the concept of trans*historicities, to problematize the relationship between transvestite/trans* people and the Chilean State in the context of the 1973 coup d'état. In the second part, I approach Marcia Alejandra's story through the press of the period, to show how in these documents her story appears narrated in a cistemporal perspective. In contrast, in the third part, I go into interviews and informal archives to refocus her biography from a trans*temporal approach. I am interested in exploring what becomes (un)intelligible from these two temporal matrices, to think about what happens when we put in contact the transvestite/trans* and historicity, 50 years after the coup d'état.

The Military Metality of Neoliberalism and the Imaginary Possibilities of the Coup as Read from Mexico

2023-07-24T14:16:26-04:00

In this article, the relationship between the coup d’état, the problems of re-presentationand neoliberal militarization is considered through several images, among which the one of the war tank will be primordial to reflect on the violent origin of the new economic and vital regime that was deployed with the coup d’état. All the above is framed from the political imaginary of Mexico in the 1970’s, particularly through the regime of President Luis Echeverria and his unique relationship with the military element. The multiplicity of Mexican views on the Chilean coup are mediated by images. In this myriad of elements, there is an uncountable, anonymous, and excessive one: the plebeian

Chile, Year Zero. The Image-hope in the Cinema of the Popular Unity

2023-07-05T10:39:33-04:00

From a theoretical perspective close to the affective turn, these pages propose to reflect on the construction of hope in part of the Chilean Popular Unity cinema during the first months of Salvador Allende's government. We do not review in depth films about which everything has been said, but we study what can be called the image-hope. To characterize hope, a certain juxtaposition will be taken into account with what Georges Didi-Huberman called the «left image» in a recent debate with Enzo Traverso. We chose three films whose only common note is that they correspond in various ways to a kind of «zero year»: El primer año by Patricio Guzmán (1972), Voto + fusil by Helvio Soto (1971) and Palomita blanca by Raúl Ruiz, finished in 1973 before the coup d'état and released in 1992. In all three, it is possible to thematize a hope that seems to raise more questions than reassuring options even when, as Guzmán said in the filming diary of El primer año, «Chile was a party».

Cinematographic Portraits of Salvador Allende: Tensions between Times, Voices, and Images

2023-07-04T19:45:19-04:00

The article explores three documentary films about Salvador Allende from the point of view of the portrait genre: Compañero presidente (Miguel Littin, 1971), Salvador Allende (Patricio Guzmán, 2004) y Allende, mi abuelo Allende (Marcia Tambutti Allende, 2015). In each one of them, the study of the way in which the films are inscribed in the vast tradition of this genre is privileged, resorting to theoretical texts dedicated to investigate the history and contemporary inflections of the portrait. At the same time, it seeks to problematize the political relevance of the portraits of Allende from the different production contexts and the aesthetic and political choices present in each case. As a result of these divergences, a series of notions are proposed: the «intervention portrait» to think the particularities of Littin’s film, the «funeral portrait» to evaluate Guzmán’s documentary and the «private-public portrait» to think the most conflictive dimensions of Tambutti Allende’s audiovisual work.

Historical and Social Studies on Collective Trauma:

2023-08-17T13:06:48-04:00

This research paper explores the concept of collective trauma and its application in the historical and social context of Latin American societies. The transfer of the term "collective trauma" from the field of psychological knowledge to the social and historical sphere raises questions about its legitimacy and conceptual framework. The study examines the fidelity of this conceptual transfer and its relationship with the early psychoanalytic understanding of traumatic phenomena. The European cultural context of the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided the basis for theorizing the consequences of intense and violent experiences, resulting in the concept of "traumatic neurosis," influenced significantly by Freud's work. The article discusses the appropriation of psychoanalytic tools in historical and cultural criticism to comprehend events that challenge traditional frameworks and social intelligibility, such as the Holocaust. The notion of trauma as an enigmatic and recurrent force in historical experience is explored through the lens of trauma studies. The article highlights prominent scholars in this field and their use of psychoanalytic concepts, demonstrating the preservation and meaningful application of these concepts in understanding historical and collective phenomena. By bridging the gap between individual psychological experiences and collective traumas, trauma studies offer a unique approach to interpreting and representing events that resist traditional historical narrativas.

Jorge González: Synthesis and Hinge of Chilean Popular Music

2023-03-30T12:46:40-03:00

This article aims to propose that Jorge González, his music, his iconography, and visual aesthetics in general, as well as his discursivity and public role, or what we will call its locus of enunciation, produces a synthesis of Chilean popular music. From the album La voz de los 80, González rethinks the critical inscription of the history of Chilean popular music, from the 1960s to the present but also for producing a unique encounter between the lyrical tradition that cemented the Nueva Canción Chilena with La Nueva Ola. However, this reading is an effect of the political events that occurred in Chile during the October 2019 revolt, where Jorge González rose as an icon and some of his songs were sung and performed in the massive protests. Confirming, finally, its critical resistance to neoliberal culture, which since the 1980s tried to make disappear the previous musical past.

«Museification» of the political community in Boris Groys:

2023-08-18T18:30:09-04:00

Groys' aesthetic thought encourages the approach of the critique of neoliberalism from a point of view that is alien to the modern question of the subject. As opposed to the hegemony of the neoliberal subject identified with the entrepreneur of the self from a Foucauldian perspective, Groys shows that the iconoclasm followed by avant-garde art and museums offers an alternative: the conception of the individual as a "work of art", that is to say, as a dysfunctionalised "object", valuable in itself or independent of their job and social function. This alternative is completed with the retrieval of the main proposal of cosmist thought: the transformation of museum technology into biopolitics so that the individual of our time becomes an object of permanent care. Finally, the power and limits of the aesthetic-political metaphor of "museification" is analysed in order to think of an effective democratic alternative to neoliberalism.

Scene of a Bedroom: An Unpublished Painting by Adolfo Couve and the Poetry of Meditation

2023-08-09T12:20:26-04:00

This essay is a product of an investigation in the field of the theory and history of art and is concentrated on the analysis of the unpublished painting Scene of a Bedroom (c.1985-86) by the famed Chilean painter Adolfo Couve Rioseco (1940-1998). The artwork came to light in 2021, and its study not only permits engagement with problems of authorship, technique, and pictorial gestures, but also comments on the domestic spaces and familial relationships of the author. Above all, it permits a deepening of his visual affiliations; in this particular case, his interest in oils such as Rembrandt van Rijn’s “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem” (1630), Paul Cézanne’s “Boy in a Red Waistcoat” (c.1889-90), and the still lives of Italian Giorgio Morandi, from which Couve likely constructed the thus-far unstudied painting which is submitted to scrutiny here.

Museum design: aesthetics and education heritage on the Silk Road

2023-06-14T13:00:17-04:00

This article presents the results of an investigation based on the analysis of the aesthetics of museums created in cities that are part of the Silk Road. The approach to these museums is based on the observation of educational and patrimonial aspects, elements that characterize the essence of these institutions. UNESCO has been promoting, since 1988, actions related to the Silk Road, a commercial route now converted into a path of dialogue between different cultures. We have observed that each museum studied insists on those issues of local and national rank that characterize its idiosyncrasy. Each museum enhances the educational facets from the tradition of silk production, and also heritage issues to strengthen the characteristic features of each community. We have interviewed their managers, and observed their buildings and collections. We detected that, in spite of the international influence of the initiative, or precisely because of it, in each case studied it is decided to influence the local differential factors, giving priority to the aesthetic arguments of cultural identity. We examine the specific case of the Valencia Silk Museum, the most recent creation, but which houses the oldest institution.

Avoidance and Tension in the Productive Landscape Photography in Chile (2000-2020)

2023-07-07T14:02:31-04:00

Photographic practices in the territories associated with production and their consequences in contemporary Chile are reviewed, including how the selection and categorization of the field were done to construct a body of study of 28 cases. Within it, a critical analysis is conducted, updating it within the ongoing discussion that places photography in tension between the production of «artwork» and of «documents», and drawing upon the «poetics of landscape photography» proposed by Santos Zunzunegui. This reveals how the aesthetic overlay on photography allows us to see, beneath it, the disturbing pain of landscape des-truction, and the selected works become either artworks or documents, both to capture the viewer’s gaze and, when observed, highlight the human impact on the landscape.

A Fleeting Glance at the Use of Masks in Rapa Nui, 1914

2023-04-11T17:14:32-04:00

This research is presented as a contribution to the cultural studies of Rapa Nui from a case analysis: the series of photographs of 1914 that document a multitudinous event in Rapa Nui, where several people appear disguised with canvas masks. Complementing diverse sources and methods–such as photographs, drawings, visual analysis, bibliography, and interviews–this article seeks to clarify the context and possible meanings of what we have called a puzzle-scene, that is, a scene from which we seek to reconstruct a public image by searching for fragments in different sources of information. In this work of unmasking, we characterize this event as a festival of national character, which included elements of the contemporary cultural repertoire of the Rapa Nui people.

Anarchival Poetics.

2023-06-14T11:13:12-04:00

Throughout the 20th century and up to the present day, many artists have addressed the archive by questioning its function, classification systems, legitimacy, registration technologies or inclusion/exclusion protocols. Considering that within digital culture, AI has become a key factor for information management, this article explores how the use of these technologies in art is offering new perspectives to think about the archive, heritage and memory.

Within the meshwork of existing practices and approaches that operate creatively challenging traditional hierarchies and protocols of the archive, we will pull from two strings: 1) on the one hand, the group of appropriationist-type tactics that operate by activating new interpretations of already constituted archives; 2) on the other, those that propose the creation of new archives, generally dealing with scattered elements that were previously ignored or discarded.

We will delve into these two anarchival strategies by focusing on two case studies that address critically the filmic and audiovisual heritage: Jan Bot: bringing film heritage to the algorithmic age and the Oráculo de Capturas de Pantalla (OCP). In both cases we will study the strategies by which other possibilities are opened up for history, and the place given to algorithms in their construction.

Review of Modalidades de memoria y archivos afectivos: Cine de mujeres en Centroamérica - Ileana Rodríguez

2022-09-17T17:36:00-03:00

San José, CIHAC/CALACS, 2020, 100 p, https://repositorios.cihac.fcs.ucr.ac.cr/repositorio/handle/123456789/590

Esteban Buch and Abel Gilbert: Silence, Music and Dictatorship in Argentina. Review of Esteban Buch - Música, dictadura, resistencia. La Orquesta de París en Buenos Aires and Abel Gilbert - Satisfaction en la ESMA. Música y sonido durante la dictadura (1976-1983)

2023-06-25T23:25:53-04:00

This is an unpublished review that brings together two different readings that share a common connection between the dictatorships in the Southern Cone, specifically Argentina. The objective is to identify their common points and establish differences that are revealing and clarifying for the readers.

Esteban Buch - Música, dictadura, resistencia. La Orquesta de París en Buenos Aires

Abel Gilbert - Satisfaction en la ESMA. Música y sonido durante la dictadura (1976-1983)

The Zero Degree of Listening. Elements of a Materialistic Acoustics. Review of Filosofía y experimentación sonora - Gustavo Celedón

2023-07-08T17:08:21-04:00

Review of Filosofía y experimentación sonora - Gustavo Celedón

Review of El revés del rostro. Figuras de la exterioridad en la cultura argentina - Nora Domínguez

2023-07-18T16:08:54-04:00