The Art of Living Together: The Work of Caiozzama, Delight Lab, and LASTESIS during Chile’s 2019-2020 Protests

Authors

  • Jennifer Ashley George Mason University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica64220221545

Keywords:

dignity, conviviality, convivencia, art, protest, Chile

Abstract

On 18 October 2019, a protest over an increase in metro fares in Santiago, Chile transformed into a nationwide uprising against inequality. As the protests evolved, it became clear that the discontent stemmed not only from the economic effects of the neoliberal model put into place during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973 to 1990), but also from the modes of relationality that it had engendered. The messages that protesters scrawled on the walls of the city insisted on the need for more empathy, respect, and dignity. Chilean artists responded by creating works that framed these individual grievances as collective experiences of a crisis in what in Spanish is called convivencia, or the art of living together. In this piece, I review the paste-up graffiti of Caiozzama, the visual mappings of Delight Lab, and the feminist performances of LASTESIS to highlight how these artists supported protesters’ call for dignity and a new mode of convivencia.

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References

Contreras, Emilio. 2018. ““¿Este es su nuevo país?”: El furioso poema de Raúl Zurita por la muerte de Camilo Catrillanca” [‘This is Your New Country?’: The Furious Poem of Raúl Zurita for the death of Camilo Catrillanca]. BioBio Chile, 15 November. https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/artes-y-cultura/actualidad-cultural/2018/11/15/este-es-su-nuevo-pais-el-furioso-poema-de-raul-zurita-por-la-muerte-de-camilo-catrillanca.shtml (accessed 21 April 2022).

Gilroy, Paul. 2004. Postcolonial Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press.

Human Rights Watch. 2020. “Chile: Events of 2019.” World Report 2020. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/chile.

Wise, Amanda and Greg Noble. 2016. “Convivialities: An Orientation.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 37(5): 423–431. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2016.1213786

Jackson, Michael. 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Published

2022-12-19

How to Cite

Ashley, J. (2022). The Art of Living Together: The Work of Caiozzama, Delight Lab, and LASTESIS during Chile’s 2019-2020 Protests. Anthropologica, 64(2). https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica64220221545