The origin of the VIENAL " Approaches to political poetics project carried out in 2008 sprang from a reflection on Valparaí­so as an anomalous field of cultural production. It also bases its investigation on the absence and presence of the Municipal Museum of Fine Arts in the port's cultural imaginary. The Museum has actually been closed for more than 10 years, which is why we are resorting to the use of this place and its physical and imaginary location as a means of presenting poetics, experiencing policies, rethinking and approaching our ways of understanding art in a specific space and time.

The project's first sign of existence was its participation in the Sixth Art Biennial of the National Museum of Fine Arts, held in Santiago de Chile from January to March 2008. The artists included were Anamaria Briede, Ricardo Bagnara, Peter Kroeger, Javiera Ovalle and Manuel Sanfuentes.

A second showing was the same five artists' "VIENAL" collective exhibition at the Galerí­a h-10 in Valparaí­so,(5) under a set program that coincided with the Museum's exhibition dates. The gallery exhibited individual artworks by installing mirrors that either reflected toward the exterior or expanded the interior. Its main strategy lay in remaining rooted to its place of origin, thus establishing connections between exhibitions at the National Fine Arts Museum and those at the h-10 gallery. The project did not seek to represent Valparaí­so at the Museum, much less depict it at the gallery, but instead sought to highlight ways of interpreting the port's artistic practices and the impossibility of establishing a homogenous cultural fabric.

3. LIVING TOGETHER

Talking of a city is not easy, and representing it no less so. Cities have forms that can be drawn, painted, deployed, or photographed, so as to place them in the collective global imaginary and point out the aesthetic characteristics of each. However, their indeterminate form is where possibilities of referring to them from a critical standpoint lie. The informal aspects of cities may have different names and be signaled out in very different ways. But those aspects; the design of its buildings, its spatial order, given ways of habitation, its citizens or public spheres, an indeterminate blend of each of those elements, is what makes up what we call a city.

It is possible to think that the complexity of the urban experience opens up a wide range of reflections for artistic discourse and for reconsidering the practices and models to be applied in in the work of art. Artwork not based on a theoretical approach to practice, but on a critical practice, where residing in a place can be turned into micro tactics for action and thought.

How can one view residency " where one resides - as a way of thinking? How can one negotiate when the history of a place and its cultural memory is imprinted everywhere?

We know that contemporary art practices have contributed to many other disciplines of contemporary thought, and this has led to a trans-disciplinary approach in addressing a series of crossroads that the road to modernity has created. This, however, is not replicated or repeated in the same way in other latitudes, as Hal Foster points out: "There can be no doubt that the problem of the politics of representation is of a strictly contextual nature: what may seem radical in Soho may be counter-revolutionary in Sandinista Nicaragua".(6) The contextual nature of the politics of representation becomes a problem in identifying the aesthetic or cultural production of different countries and cities within contemporary geography. It also becomes an ongoing struggle against the standardization and homogenization of culture, on the basis of a strong productive resistance, since there is no option other than disagreement.

That is to say that the productive approach that determines this position is established as a deferred presence, a displacement of the cultural practices regarding that construction of place. In the case of our work experience in Valparaí­so, the notion of artistic production and self-management is redefined by the urban and human context. I would like to propose, examine and delve into a number of issues on the changes made to cities and their effects on the social fabric, but I realize it would entail an extensive process with multiple interlinking factors and voices, thus giving rise to another context. I do not pretend to defend contemporary cities, nor represent a country or even a city, since they have strong identities that can be self-represented.