Dialogue on anger
collettivoSERRA on BARRIKEA by Alfredo Da Venezia
​
​
Red. Red that burns,
that explodes, that shouts.
Red that is anger, love, struggle, revolution.
The red of spilled blood, of raised flags, of barricades
erected to stop the heavy march of oppression. The red that does not bend.
It does not retreat; it becomes a voice. A body.
​
October 2019. A million voices set the streets of Santiago de Chile on fire, a million steps that shatter the ground. The increase in the subway fare was the spark, but beneath the ashes the fire was already raging: No son 30 pesos, son 30 años.
Thirty years of open wounds, of wages that are never enough, of pensions that do not exist, of healthcare and schools turned into commodities,
of a normalcy as sharp as a razor-thin blade.
​
Barricades are everywhere: they play a central role in the protests. Pieces of the world torn from the world, scraps that become bulwarks.
Wood Iron Tires Glass Debris
are the material manifestation of rebellion,
the writing of bodies on the streets, their declaration: here we are, here we remain, here we fight.
​
Plazas become assemblies and the barricades ignite the night, a theater of anger and dreams, of fear and hope. The people want to change the times, to rewrite the future: a new Constitution, healthcare that asks no pledges, a school that is not a luxury. They demand what has been denied, what is owed to dignity.
The state’s response is violent: arrests, torture, open wounds.
Yet history does not kneel.
2020. The people vote yes to a new Constitution.
​
And yet time is like sand. The mechanism jams, reforms empty themselves, and the old Constitution remains, a scar that does not heal. And the barricades, which once etched the struggle in the streets,
remain suspended between admonition and memory.
​
WHAT REMAINS OF THE STRUGGLE WHEN THE STRUGGLE IS CONSUMED?
​
BARRIKEA takes the barricade, disassembles it, and rebuilds it with the materials of globalization. RED chairs, plastic, and order are transformed into disorder and subversion. An everyday object that changes shape and becomes a sign.
Capitalism is an animal that devours everything. The barricades become aesthetics, become furnishings, sterile images that fill the pages of books. And the artwork questions: is it possible for resistance to elude the mechanism that engulfs it?
​
​
Reading recommendations: Kristeva, J. (1999). El porvenir de la revuelta. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica; Check out the works of Ingrid Calvo Ivanovic and José Solís Opazo; https://www.barbarie.lat/post/qu%C3%A9-hacer-con-la-memoria-de-octubre-1; https://artes.uchile.cl/noticias/206029/academico-sergio-rojas-lanza-su-ultimo-libro-en-sala-sergio-aguirre