Intertextual Explosion, Inter- Subjective Poliphony, and Countervisuality: Cooperative Artistic Practices in the Latin American Spring

Abstract

Experimental documentary Fragmentos porvenir (Miguel Alfonso-Bouhaben and students from Cine de UArtes 2020), as well as the digital platform and printed book La ciudad como texto (Carola Ureta Marín, Chile, 2020) are creative devices that refuse forgetfulness and which fix, in interwoven images, the popular energy that broke into public space in both countries in 2019, during what some media have called the Latin American Spring. This energy was generated by an anonymous and shapeless mass that does not claim authorship, but which shares with art the power of the intent to say something, to commit to a transforming point of view and which discovers, in its realization, a shared hope that turns it into an organic and political community. Both projects express surprise at the "event" and a certain reverence for the impressive power of the people that explodes, destroys, creates, and re-creates. The goal of Fragmentos por venir is the rupture of the hegemonic discourse of the media through the tactics of collage and reappropriation. La ciudad como texto is a collaborative and self-managed work to preserve the memory recorded on the walls of the avenue where the protests in Chile took place during the social uprising. Both projects offer alternative communication spaces that counteract the omissions and silencing of the mainstream media, through a critical process of deconstruction, remembrance, and reimagination through the transformation of images.