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Building on analyses of the relationship between race, aesthetics and politics, the volume elaborates on the epistemological possibilities arising from collaborative and decolonial methodologies at the intersection of ethnography, art, performance and the urban space. It moves from practice-based and collaborative research with young Mapuche and mestizo artists and activists in Santiago (Chile), drawing together a range of different materials: from artworks to theatre and performance; from graphics to audio and visual materials. An edited collection, the book is constructed by shifting between different authorships and changing perspectives from the individual to the collective. This approach, while to a certain extent within the classical structure of editors/authors, plays with the roles of researcher/research participant, highlighting the ambiguities, frictions and exchanges involved in this relationship. Elaborating on indigenous knowledge production, the book thus addresses the possibility of disrupting the social and material landscape of the (post)colonial city by articulating meanings through artistic and performative representations. As such, the essays contained in the book put forward alternative imaginations constructed through an aesthetic defined by the Mapuche concept of champurria (‘mixed’): a particular way of knowing and engaging with reality, and ultimately an active process of home- and self-making beyond the spatialities usually assigned to colonised bodies and subjects. Actively engaging with current debates through collective writing by indigenous people raising questions in terms of decolonisation, the book stands as both an academic and a political project, interrogating the relationship between activism and academia, and issues of representation, authorship and knowledge production.
occasions. (Paula González Seguel) It is not easy to address the experience of collective and creative work within MapsUrbe. The Collective was conceived as an exercise in the discovery of Mapuche memories and identities in the city of Santiago, based on David Aniñir’s work, Mapurbe . However, on a personal level, it also implied an exercise in mnemonic openness, as well as academic and sentimental socialisation. This piece seeks to reflect on the meanings entailed
step I take, I perceive how local people connect with each rock shaped in the architecture, blending with the smells of food, their bodies and the colours of their clothing. In their walking, I imagine the history of their ancestors, while different materialities vibrate on a similar note as if they were music. Everything is intertwined in wandering time. After travelling from the coast to the Andean mountain range in Wallmapu , I became fascinated with the genesis of Mapuche jewellery and its strong
Mapuche women, and their stories are completely erased from these urban areas of privilege. During the MapsUrbe project, we sought precisely to stress that invisibility, circumventing denial through an exercise of minimal commemoration of these biographical trajectories. It was an ephemeral, transitory exercise: the fact is that places of memory are traversed by power relations that are inexhaustible as long as the hierarchies that forged these unequal experiences are still active. As in Benjamin
T HE APRON Claudio: What struck me the most was how that woman, who was surely the owner of one of the houses there on that street in Providencia, told us, ‘Look, she belongs to our family. Our nanny is Mapuche; she is super Mapuche, but she doesn’t identify as such! I don’t know why she doesn’t’. It’s crazy because in one’s ear those phrases generate a lot of discomfort, while on her tongue, on her lips, in her own ear
A GAINST THE ETHNOGRAPHIC LENSES: EMPLACEMENT AND RE-PRESENTATIONS Claudio: We are here at the Quinta Normal because this is a place – though not the only one – very much present in Mapuche memories here in Santiago, especially of the people who arrived in the city in the 50s and 60s. 1 It was an important space for socialising; our people came to get information about finding a job, a room to rent … Rodrigo: To make
inner voice told me. Or perhaps it was the voice of others – both Chilean and Mapuche in unison – that haunted me like a ghostly shadow, while I programmed the beats of my own pop songs in front of the computer. Inherited from what came before me, the origin or nationality of the voice was ultimately not important. Wherever it came from, it was me. I had made it mine. After several years of making music and taking part in projects of different musical styles, my career was entering a new phase
distribution is dominated by Hollywood and the audiences can be small. 2 Following recognition at the Chilean Academy Awards, Play was presented as the Chilean entry at the Oscars 2006. Cristina (Viviana Herrera), a young Mapuche working in domestic service to an ailing Hungarian, Milos, spends her free time playing video games. She finds a briefcase belonging to Tristán (Andrés Ulloa), a yuppie architect
E NCOUNTERS Recollecting and narrating, strolling down memory lane and having nütxamkan – that is, recounting one’s own or one’s family’s lived experience – is one of the most valued activities of Mapuche life. Memory traverses spaces and margins – latent or dreamed – be they experienced first-hand or second-hand through a mother, a grandfather or a brother. To narrate is also to define oneself. To be able to tell of a place and how its spaces appear to us – a river, a txayenko
O N THE BUS: ‘SINCE THAT FIRST MOMENT, WE WERE FILLED WITH TENSION’ Olivia : It is not easy to recall it now. It was a tough moment. I remember when we met … Well, I was coming from attempts with an urban Mapuche organisation that had rejected me very decisively. I was looking for someone who wanted to participate in my project, and I naively thought that, as my idea was collaborative work, people would naturally want to collaborate . It was naive of me to think that