El Borda y Valparaiso
The murals in the Borda hospital have evolved I think from an age-old phenomenon that people often forget about--something that is often debated even now, and that is the power of art. Not even just art though as in visual arts, but also with performing arts or the power of music like the piano of Martín Perino from the article that onlookers said "relaxes your body, brings you to another world, and makes you forget all your problems." Specifically the murals in El Borda stem from this movement called desmanicmialización, which "seeks to restore dignity and respect to the mentally ill and to de-medicalize and de-stigmatize treatment for them." The walls are there to be painted on for the people inside them to be able to express themselves and, while finding healing for themselves, to also be able to show the world that they are not just their diagnosis and that they are capable of creating beautiful or at the very least, thought-provoking work. I think the radio, La Colifata, also sounds like a great way for these people to be able to talk about themselves and their experiences and also just generally discuss the many varied issues of our world in a controlled, safe environment.
These two murals were my favorites from the collection of El Borda murals, and in case you can't read the first, I believe it says "Que el miedo a la locura no baje las banderas de la imaginación," which translates roughly to, "Don't let the fear of crazy bring down the flags/banners of imagination." And the second, which was mentioned in our text, says that "Art is the sanest madness." I liked these two because they really get to the heart of the goal of these exhibitions. The point is to use art and imagination and the human creative juices to heal and to create, which is something that doesn't seem quite feasible with all of the stigma and fear and misunderstanding of mental illness that exists in society currently.
I also loved exploring the history of the Ramona Parra Brigade and seeing the evolution of what street art was like then to what the situation today is like. The BRP is an artistic collective from Chile that was named after a young woman that was killed during the a labor union protest at Plaza Bulnes in 1946. In the 1960s and early 1970s they acted as a leftist group that helped endorse Salvador Allende but were forced to continue their work very clandestinely, if at all, once Pinochet's military regime seized power. After the end of the coup and return to democracy however, the BRP has experienced a resurgence of great proportions that has included new works concerning current issues (and issues that never seemed to become 'fixed') as well as revitalization of a few iconic old works, that I would posit have to do with the preservation of cultural memory like we've mentioned in class.
Valparaiso on the other hand was presented to us as a bit of a different side of things. Evidently in the 90s and 2000s is when Valpo really came into its own as a sort of graffiti haven. It seems that really the most important thing now is just to get permission to paint, but as the narrator of the video said, "here, people are open to that idea." Perhaps not the government as much, but you can just knock on doors and ask to paint on someone's wall, and a good portion of the time, they are alright with that--it's become the culture there. Or, like they were doing in the video, you can ask someone to paint their truck, which to me, seems like a great idea not only because the government may be less likely to be able to erase it, but also because it's mobile, which reminded me of the graffiti on train cars in the Bronx that Rebel Diaz showed us and told us about. So overall though I guess it just looks to me like, although yes there is a bit of control demonstrated with the graffiti in Chile today, it also seems to have embraced the culture a little bit, and it certainly seems that it was never as bad of a negative reaction as some of the other cultural examples we have seen thus far.
These two murals were my favorites from the collection of El Borda murals, and in case you can't read the first, I believe it says "Que el miedo a la locura no baje las banderas de la imaginación," which translates roughly to, "Don't let the fear of crazy bring down the flags/banners of imagination." And the second, which was mentioned in our text, says that "Art is the sanest madness." I liked these two because they really get to the heart of the goal of these exhibitions. The point is to use art and imagination and the human creative juices to heal and to create, which is something that doesn't seem quite feasible with all of the stigma and fear and misunderstanding of mental illness that exists in society currently.
I also loved exploring the history of the Ramona Parra Brigade and seeing the evolution of what street art was like then to what the situation today is like. The BRP is an artistic collective from Chile that was named after a young woman that was killed during the a labor union protest at Plaza Bulnes in 1946. In the 1960s and early 1970s they acted as a leftist group that helped endorse Salvador Allende but were forced to continue their work very clandestinely, if at all, once Pinochet's military regime seized power. After the end of the coup and return to democracy however, the BRP has experienced a resurgence of great proportions that has included new works concerning current issues (and issues that never seemed to become 'fixed') as well as revitalization of a few iconic old works, that I would posit have to do with the preservation of cultural memory like we've mentioned in class.
Valparaiso on the other hand was presented to us as a bit of a different side of things. Evidently in the 90s and 2000s is when Valpo really came into its own as a sort of graffiti haven. It seems that really the most important thing now is just to get permission to paint, but as the narrator of the video said, "here, people are open to that idea." Perhaps not the government as much, but you can just knock on doors and ask to paint on someone's wall, and a good portion of the time, they are alright with that--it's become the culture there. Or, like they were doing in the video, you can ask someone to paint their truck, which to me, seems like a great idea not only because the government may be less likely to be able to erase it, but also because it's mobile, which reminded me of the graffiti on train cars in the Bronx that Rebel Diaz showed us and told us about. So overall though I guess it just looks to me like, although yes there is a bit of control demonstrated with the graffiti in Chile today, it also seems to have embraced the culture a little bit, and it certainly seems that it was never as bad of a negative reaction as some of the other cultural examples we have seen thus far.
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