© Barbara Marcel

© Barbara Marcel

© Barbara Marcel

© Barbara Marcel

© Barbara Marcel

© Barbara Marcel

© Claudia González

Carola: So, you didn’t use to go to the river?

Mati: No, it was just an estuary. We always went near the river, but when they sent us to gather the goats, the lambs - all those things that we had to gather in the afternoon, because the others all went out to work - we were the ones who stayed. But I think I must’ve been about 5 or 6 years old, 7 years old, because I remember that we went with my brothers, with two who were older, we were going to help them because the goats and lambs had to be locked. And they always went there, to a part that was near the river and you had to go looking for them, because they couldn't come back alone. But we always walked a lot when we were kids, we walked around those parts, we walked on the stones.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Mati: Nature!, because now, for example, the trees; wherever you look only trees that’ve been planted, for example, pines, eucalyptus. All those kinds weren’t seen before, they were all natural trees. For example, the peumo, the hazelnuts, where we lived when we were girls, the enthusiasm for going to pick hazelnuts, it was like just getting there and search. All those things were natural, but now you don’t  see that. Just pine trees, everywhere. Because if you go to Los Boldos, for example, only pines. 

Talo: All the way, only pines.

Mati: You wouldn’t see that before.

Claudia: What was seen before?

Mati: Only natural trees.

Talo: Everything, animals.

Claudia: What kind of trees and plants?

Talo: Which trees?

Claudia: What type of trees?

Talo: Once, on the hills: Quillay, Litre, Peumo, Boldo, Pine, Cahuén, Patagua…

Mati: All those were natural trees, nobody planted them, just emerged. Now you can’t see the Maqui along the edge of the street, that is, the road where one passed full of trees that gave natural fruits.

© Claudia González

Carola: Have not the seeds that they had before been preserved?

Talo: Before, you left seeds of what you harvested, you set aside and left seeds.

Mati: Now they are changing almost every year, you saw that the potatoes are changing from the same municipality. The other day Neno arrived, bringing potato and wheat seeds. Now you can see all the birds, see?, where you come out here, that's why you don't see the birds (laughs).

Talo: But before, they came in flocks.

Carola: And before they didn’t put anything, no chemical, to the sowing, and it grew the same?

Talo: And so good.

Claudia: And how did they control pests and stuff?

Talo: We didn’t have any.

Claudia: You didn’t have?

Mati: I think that since they put so much into the soil, so many things to sow.

Carola: They get sick.

Mati: Yes, I think so. For example, on the lot, there in the house, every year, so many things that they have to put on it.

Carola: And wild animals, before the reservoir, were there more or not? I don't know, I have like that ... 

Talo: In the wintering? Yes, there were bunnies, hares, partridges, little snakes…

Mati: Now you can’t almost see them.

Talo: In the vega, do you remember there was a large hawthorn at the entrance? There was a snake there, which every year left the leather outside, so big, but I never saw it, we just saw the leather when it changed every year.

Carola: Now it’s very odd to see snakes.

Mati: Do you remember when we used to go to Victoria's?, every afternoon, and a little red snake would come out, and it would stop like this (laughs). But now they aren’t see, well, we don’t come out too much now. But on the lot down...

Talo: But where does it go now, if there's no field? Everywhere is all populated (laughs) Where there are no houses at all?

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Carola: Hey, and the lack of water, might it also be what is there? I mean, those giant orchards that occupy all...

Mati: Yes, because they fill with water all night, they make big pools, and put plastic on it. That’s what I was saying the other day, how it’s like the plastic they put on? They fill the pools at night, leave all the water running there and fill the pools. The next day they put the engines and water everything. 

Talo: But that, I think it is because the lack of water, they have to water by motor. Before, they watered just by irrigation.

© Claudia González

Claudia: That was before the dams building?, those were your previous memories. And do you think that maybe, that lack of rain now is because the change on the river stream, for example, that they accumuated it, like you said about now being so cold, with the water accumuation on the dams and the evaporation?

D: And the evaporation by. Yes, I think so, becuase I don’t know, that's what I think because before, like I say, we used to have, it was all so different. But now you can’t find water almost anywhere. So it’s ok, but that’s what people complain: it’s ok to have electrical advances, and they’re selling them and all that, but happens that we need water for everything else, it’s essential, the food of agriculture. SO that’s what it is said: Colbún SA or Endesa have more shares than what corresponds, and they leave people without water, the irrigators, and they hve so much more, than all the shares (don’t know how they call it) than what corresponds as a company.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Claudia: And where were you born?

Nelly: Well, Colbún is big and the commune of Colbún has several sectors and within those sectors there is Colbún Alto, La Guardia, Los Boldos. I was born in La Guardia, La Guardia is the name of the sector where I was born and in La Guardia, well, on the banks of the Maule River, there is a lot of life there on the banks of the river.

Claudia: La Guardia is well upstream?

Nelly: Yes, it is about 15 kilometers, I think, from here upwards. The sectors go along the river bank, so the first one is Colbún Alto, La Guardia, Los Boldos and so on up to the sectors that were adjacent to the Maule River. So the great majority of the people who lived there had a history with the river, yes, everyone, because if we went for a walk we went to the riverbank, all the things, if those who went to make their farms, their things to feed themselves were also related to the river because that was where the water for irrigation came from. In addition, the riverbanks were fertile and were pastures, because nowadays, if you go to La Guardia today they are mounds and the highest parts are the ones that were not under water.

© Claudia González

D: I have, I mean, I had some water affairs. That’s one thing. In front of my house there was this channel and I loved swinging on the trees, up and then into the water. A neighbour saved me twice. Then, and as the water came through the trickles and in my house were big bridges, one day a tube was swallowing me –because of the volcanoes, it carried a lot of pumice. So I lied on my stomach on a bridge, to get some pumice, and throwing them out, since they’re so light and that. But in my memories of rides to the river, among all of the girls, we didn’t use to have swimsuit, you just bathed using a skirt, a dress, or a short, with anything, and it wasn’t in the dangerours part either, because there, we used to do little ponds and played with water, things like that. That joy you felt, waiting for the next week end to go again. It was a joy, but I don’t know how to tell you, that it was the biggest thing we had on those days, because we didn’t even have a plastic pool. As much, if you wanted to get into water, if  you had those wooden tubs to wash clothes, you know it’s true. But we prepared those trips in advance, because we carried all the humas we used to make, tomatoe drawers, as we were so many. And not only the 7 kids and mom and dad would go, but also granny, that other friend, and many more. But it was so beautiful.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Gerthy: modifications that I have seen in the landscape. Well, to start, I’ve seen more towers than ever, since I have childhood and memory. They seem to grow like plants now, that is, you can see more towers than trees basically. I can see some intervened hills, and a dry river. The Maule river was a huge river, if you remember, I mean, it’s on history to be one of the strongest rivers in Chile, and now is totally dry, no animals, I mean, you can’t see any, neither go fishing, you see? Like, all of that is dead.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Claudia: How did you remember the sounds of your childhood? And it was wonderful, because you started talking about what you heard when you were a girl.

Gerthy: Yes, those are like things that get stuck on you, I think, and there you notice how things are changing, when you get the absence of those things, that used to seem so simple, but actually you can feel it. And now, the sound is like a buzz, going on all day long. I mean, here is like a shelter to avoid that sound, inside my house. Then imagine; I left of being so open and now I just feel safe inside my house, so it’s a big change, it´s huge.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

ANTENNA SOUND

Nelly: of course, when they have enough, maybe they will be obsolete, how many things are happening and are remaining that we thought would never remain and are going to remain? Because today maybe I am going somewhere else, but let's take the example, I think that the buildings where the biggest malls are, as we are today, are going to be built, yes. And they have also invaded the city and everything, and maybe why? Because nowadays the internet and everything has changed, so these things change so fast, maybe we won't even realize it when we are again with the river downstream. I don't know, what you think?

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Claudia: you like the water very much, the river, do you feel something special when you visit the river?

Nelly: yes, it is different because you see how the water flows, you see how, I don't know, it has other colors, I don't know, that nature is more alive. The idea of seeing the river is something, the noise, everything that surrounds it is different, because the water runs strong and the river was very, I always say, the Maule River was a beast, I don't know how they stopped it because it was one of the most torrential rivers in Chile. It came with a lot of force and a lot of water because it rained a lot. Now that has also happened because over the years the climate has changed so much that we see less water, besides, with the reservoirs that are further upstream it will be difficult to have it as it was, I do not know if someday they will return it, I have not seen the mouth of the river because I do not know if they return the water there or what happens, I do not know.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Claudia: How do you feel the landscape has changed from those years until now, how do you see it?

Nelly: Very different, because maybe I lived there and I knew the corners that are flooded now, I can see the parts that I knew because they were, some of the marshes that come from the hill, that the waters come down from the hill, those marshes are flooded. So when I see the lake coming down, I realize that there was a lot of vegetation, a lot of trees. There were fruit trees, for example, we had many fruit trees that were lost and we have others that, I do not know if it is because of the pine plantations or also because of the lake, that do not give the fruits that we had when we ate the wild fruits. So we have lost a lot of these things, so many things happened when the lake began to fill up. The lake began to grow, to rise and not everyone took the animals out. The wild animals, for example, were locked in and died because they were trapped and could not get out. I think that, in that sense, there is a very big debt with the native trees because I am a nature lover, I love nature and everything that was lost has not been returned.

© Claudia González

Nelly: don't you know?

Carola: You don't know in winter

Nelly: No, what happened is that the big work that was done here was to build the dam, to make a dam where the river would be cut off. That is the big work that was done and a parapet was built on the other side, on the other side, by the colorado, which was also where the water was going to overflow, to dam it, it could surely flood because the other parapet is big. So, here is where the water was cut off between two hills where it was the narrowest part, in fact.

Claudia: Where we could see there from the reservoir, we could see the source of the reservoir.

Carola: That is the Colorado. And on this side there was a hill.

Nelly: Yes, two hills.

Carola: It is as if this was the hill and those were the valleys where the houses were, so they just filled with water.

Nelly: And the water was damming backwards and covering it. What happens now is that the lake goes down and then rises again because in January....

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

So, what happens? I told her, “look, it’s easy, you buy a can of Nido milk, or a can of Soprole milk, or any other brand, and you drink that cup of milk and you’ll get sick, and I’ll tell you why”. Why? “because that milk, that cow where they took the milk you’re drinking, that cow is feeded with fish flour, feeded with alfalfa and full of hormones. What about the milk we used to drink? That milk was good for our health, but why?, because the cow my dad raised on the fields used to eat mint, blackberry leaves, llantén (plantago), pennyroyal and all the wild herbs around, good for her stomach, and all that was on the cow’s milk. So I drank that milk, I got medicine, and at the same time it wasn't bad. But what you’re drinking here, the same milk on cans we drink, you’re having fish flour, because that’s how they feed them. The same with the meat; a country cow has all the proteins you need, because that cow is eating grass from the hills, quila, medicinal herbs and everything else. But you go and buy a hatchery pork, raised in trash, because porks, sadly girls, that’s how it is. They raise chickens and feed them with fish flour, they shit on it, they get them on trays, they stir it with pork concentrate, and feed the porks. And they eat that filth, and that’s what you’re eating, besides all the hormones they get. So, that’s what is getting humanity sick: the very science of man will destroy man.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Claudia: Carola told me you work in searching water?

Marcela: Yes, since a long time ago. Well it all started, how I found out I had this gift for searching water, because my grandmother was a water searcher; she used a wicker rod, a copper rod. So one day she made us a test, my grandmother, we were all kids, about 10 grandchildren she had, and she held us all a rod to search. So she said to us “<Ok, now I want to know who among all my grandchildren will get my gift>” And she had searched for water already, she knew where was the water in her land. So, we all started searching, searching, and getting close to the water well, the only rod moving was mine. So there she said to me, “<you have the gift>”. I was like 9 years old. And then I started, she taught me the knowledge of how to look for water, how to see the depth of the water, the width of the slope, and all that.  It’s a sensation that you connect with the energy, how’d I tell you? It’s something that you feel, the water energy running under your feet, you know, you connect with that, you can feel it: you know the width, depth, and that's nice. We are very... how’d I tell you? For example, when it is going to shake, it happens to me a lot that I’m standing and I know it’s going to shake, because I feel the vibration of the ground before, just... Tremors may be very small, but I feel them, with shoes, standing, steady, I feel how it moves.

© Claudia González

Marcela: It’s an energy, like, when you get electrocuted, but softer. You feel like, when you’re searching for water, you feel that energy, when the rods start moving is because they get water contact, and you see the width, you can measure the width and it depends on the force and pressure of the underground stream, you can see the amount of water. Sometimes there’re watersheds with just a few water running under, so it's one thing that the stream doesn't give you much, but later when there’s a lot of water, and the rods move really fast, and that reflects on your hands; you squeeze the rods and they just move.

Ángela?: How do you feel that energy?

So sometimes you need, sometimes the stream is so much, that I’ve burned juicers, blenders, made short circuits, touched the iron and, Paff! One day I was beating eggs and there all the guts of the (unintelligible). So, what happened?, a lady gave me a secret: whenever I felt charged, she told me to rub a copper bar, and that’ll do, because it was too much. So I took a copper bar and started rubbing in my hands to take me out some energy, because I had too much.

© Claudia González

© Claudia González

Nelly: nostalgia because I would like to see it again as it was. I think it will be many years, maybe, with the years, maybe someday they will come back, but it will be a long time. I think that progress, well, we all need light, when we don't have light we also get angry, that's why we also have to understand that there are things that have changed for the welfare of the great majority, not for the minority. So maybe in that sense, although I feel sorry for it, I have to accept it, but I tell you that the first times I started to go, it was hard, it was sad. One, because when I went to my grandmother's house, for example, I shared with all the old families there. Even Carola's family, who also came from there, the grandparents, all those people. When the aunt who worked in Santiago came, we went to visit all of them because the aunt, she took the trouble to visit the whole family, she went to greet everyone, the whole neighborhood. So I was like a little girl, very young, but I knew them and I participated and these are things that are not erased. Then, when I went later, it was a long time after I stopped going, I got married, and it was hard for me to go out. I cried, but I cried because I missed everything, I missed my ancestors, my walks to the river, my things.

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile
Digital photography

© Claudia González

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in Collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, ifa-Galerie, Germany

© Elisa Balmaceda

in collaboration with: Rodrigo Ríos Zunino 

Exhibition documentation, bosquemuseo, Chile

© Elisa Balmaceda

In República (Republic), a captivating short fiction written, directed, and performed by Grace Passô, a house becomes a strange theatre. It is the pandemic house during the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine. Shot entirely in domestic space, located in São Paulo’s downtown neighbourhood República, the film alludes to the lived experience of social distance and isolation, and to the possibilty of making something "public" again—in a country going through an ethical crisis which is further enforced by the necropolitics of its colonialist government.

For The Nth Degree, Swedish artist Emanuel Almborg initiated an exchange between young people from Hackney, London, and Mid Powys, Wales. Through theater workshops inspired by Konstantin Stanislavski’s method of acting, they developed a play that connects two historical moments: the Rebecca Riots, a peasant revolt against privately owned toll gates and enclosure of the commons in 1840s Wales, and the more recent London riots of 2011. The exchange between the two groups fostered an understanding of the riots, framed by attendant issues like race, class, and inequality.

This Place is Every Place consists of a staged dialogue between two Swedish women of Middle Eastern origin. The Arab spring is a backdrop for their conversation, which takes place in the suburb of Tensta in Stockholm, and the film puts forward a connection between the global protest movements and the May 2013 riots that emerged in Husby, another northern suburb of Stockholm mainly inhabited by ethnic minority groups. This Place is Every Place studies the relationship between political and personal crises, pointing to a widespread lost faith in alternative social organization.

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad

DADAnarchische Interventionen, 2022

© Elektra Wagenrad