Pacífico, 2010
Still: Courtesy the artist
Collection
Single-channel video installation (transferred from Super 8 film), color, sound
12 min 45 sec
A massive earthquake erupts over the Andes, detaching Chile from the South American continent. As a consequence, the sea returns to Bolivia restoring its lost coastline, Argentina gains coasts with both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, and Chile becomes a floating island adrift in the seas. In my recent visit to Bolivia, I was affected by the way the loss of the sea to Chile in the bloody Pacific War (1879-1884) was a delicate subject, unresolved, a real historical taboo. Even the smallest Bolivian bookshops sell educational material for schools that didactically show the injustice of what was done, Chile’s cowardliness, the need to regain the lost sea and to defend the coast’s sovereignty. In Chile, the existence of the war is not emphasized: generally, it is taught that the whole coast has always been Chilean. In this project, the idea of the construction of truth and feelings about historical events interests me. Moral and civic didacticism is linked to my decision to work with paper and styrofoam, as they are the materials originally used for teaching in these regions. This aesthetic approach allows me to touch upon some other topics: the notion of truth as an ideological construction, the document’s relative trustworthiness, the historical resentment as a social feeling, and the fabrication of mass commotion/emotion as political artifice. The film experiments with delirium for what only could be possible with war and violence. The possibility of an armed conflict remains in the official agenda in the tense present Bolivian actuality. However, in this film’s reality, everything is solved in the course of a still moonlit night. It is all the work of nature, movements of tectonic plates; there’s no panic and everybody sleeps. No one is aware, until the sun rises, and the sea appears all around. (Jonathas de Andrade)
*1982 Maceló, Brazil | Living and working in Recife, Brazil
12 min 45 sec
A massive earthquake erupts over the Andes, detaching Chile from the South American continent. As a consequence, the sea returns to Bolivia restoring its lost coastline, Argentina gains coasts with both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, and Chile becomes a floating island adrift in the seas. In my recent visit to Bolivia, I was affected by the way the loss of the sea to Chile in the bloody Pacific War (1879-1884) was a delicate subject, unresolved, a real historical taboo. Even the smallest Bolivian bookshops sell educational material for schools that didactically show the injustice of what was done, Chile’s cowardliness, the need to regain the lost sea and to defend the coast’s sovereignty. In Chile, the existence of the war is not emphasized: generally, it is taught that the whole coast has always been Chilean. In this project, the idea of the construction of truth and feelings about historical events interests me. Moral and civic didacticism is linked to my decision to work with paper and styrofoam, as they are the materials originally used for teaching in these regions. This aesthetic approach allows me to touch upon some other topics: the notion of truth as an ideological construction, the document’s relative trustworthiness, the historical resentment as a social feeling, and the fabrication of mass commotion/emotion as political artifice. The film experiments with delirium for what only could be possible with war and violence. The possibility of an armed conflict remains in the official agenda in the tense present Bolivian actuality. However, in this film’s reality, everything is solved in the course of a still moonlit night. It is all the work of nature, movements of tectonic plates; there’s no panic and everybody sleeps. No one is aware, until the sun rises, and the sea appears all around. (Jonathas de Andrade)
*1982 Maceló, Brazil | Living and working in Recife, Brazil
Excerpt of the video Pacifico