Memoria, narración y representación en Neltume señala el camino del Colectivo Catrileo+Carrión, 2016- 2018

Abstract

Neltume show the road is the tittle of an artistic intervention by Catrileo+Carrión Collective that took place in Londres 38, Santiago de Chile, between 2016 and 2017. This work derived - as a kind of epilogue – in another intervention, which was held in Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi in 2018. Its background is the work “Prolegómenos para una geología política de Neltume” [Prolegomenena for a political geology of Neltume], which was presented at the Metropolitan Gallery, Santiago de Chile, in 2015.

The intervention reflects on the traces of violence in Neltume, a zone located in the Ninth Region of Chile. They proceed by inquiring on me violence’s layers upon the materiality of sawdust, an element on which pivots the Collective’s artistic proposal. This channel is used to reflect around the processes that have historically affected that zone. That is to say, since the conquest and colonisation of the Mapuche territory to the present, involving milestones such as the Agrarian Reform, in the 1970s, and the Return Operation against Pinochet dictatorship by the Movement of Revolutionary Left in the 1980s.

From a Benjaminian perspective, this work proposes an interpretation of the ‘Neltume shows the road’ intervention by addressing problematics related to memory, representation and narration. By this way, it explores the crossroads, overlaps and tensions amongst different forms of violence, their traces and memories exposed in the work, and reflects on the forms of memory representation in the contemporary Chilean society.