Miguel Benlloch: I’m assessing ita reductionist word, in process. This interview is part of that process. I’ll leave others to interpret what was said at the seminar, I don’t have any points of view. Today I can assess very little, due to my memory, my laziness in taking notes, my absences, and the non-presence of all participants in all the places. I need to re-view, re-read to interact with more time, in time, and continue talking clearly about what’s being proposed and how each action fits in with what the others are doing. For me this question has to do with Equipo re’s theoretical development which in turn is made up of the union of experiences and forms of knowledge we have experienced jointly, theory and action, continuity, opening up spaces.

It also deals with my experience with the Movimiento por la Diversidad Sexual, MUMS, and its members, with whom I had greater contact. My action in their headquarters was an opening for action. I entered and found, not everything, but a well-organized organization which operates with an acceptable level of democracy: an open, evolving organization since it was founded. An organization that implicates itself with everything it connects to and acts with, in addition to an anti-capitalist position committed to “the political” as a whole. This makes me very interested in their work and hope for something similar in our reality, so weak of discourses in the system’s organizations. I realized this while speaking openly with some of them.

Equipo re: By way of an example that illustrates the basic importance of the alliances made, we too would like to emphasize the relationship of collaboration, complicity and exchange we established with MUMS. We initially contacted them due to their wide-ranging experience in the fight against HIV/AIDS, as possible guests to the round table we were organizing on that topic. However, the response we received exceeded all our expectations and they not only took part in one of the roundtables at the seminar but also provided some of the most significant contributions to the debate. Furthermore, they let us have full access to their organization by providing human and material resources and inviting us to make use of their offices as a work center. In addition to the activities of the seminar, they also discussed possible future projects, ideas on the construction of the archive and real and strategic alliances for support and collaboration. We trust that our relationship with them will continue to develop and we have already thought of ways of inviting them to Spain to carry out joint actions.

We created many interesting alliances and networks during the process of establishing the project, with both academic and institutional spaces that extended their support to us and took part. We also worked with collectives such as the Corporación Artistas del Acero, with spaces for community organization, and independent spaces for art production such as the research space Caja Negra or the La Curia in Buenos Aires. Specific alliances and others that are maintained and continue to be maintained over time on a par with the development of the different projects under way.

Leslie Fernández: Equipo re’s coming to Concepción led to the organization of a meeting that was also attended by other researchers and artists, many of whom are from Santiago, but the idea was also to highlight the local scene. This made it possible to do exactly that, to open up the locality, which often remains in the background, to the central issue of dealing with the body. And to do this from the standpoint of its significance as a symbol and a vehicle for communication, which has been very present in local and national art practices during the past 30 years.

The idea of carrying out the activity at the Universidad de Concepción was to open up the topic to other areas of study. Unfortunately, despite our efforts this did not have the desired results. More specialists pertaining to other areas such as sociology or history were needed, since such fields are fundamental to the debate on “body politics”, and we hope this will take place on some other occasion.

Nancy Garín: What of the relationship between time/territory, memory/present, institution/self-management?

Equipo re: One constant that we were excited to see in the different cases presented in Chile was the participants’ difficulty in separating themselves from the current moment, from the struggles being waged in the streets, which on the one hand reflects the open tensions in historical-territorial relations, and on the other the importance of articulating memory as a component and agitator of what we are today. Exercises in self-management came to the fore both in the narratives and the project itself, i.e., in that memory/present relationship and what we witnessed as the space for experimentation, creation and doubt stemming from self-management. We also considered the contribution that an institution can make as a support when it becomes involved as an interlocutor rather than just as a narrator or as a container.

The binomial readings that were permanently inserted into art and militant discourses were set aside to make it clear that the processes of developing and shaping thoughts on art and alternative options are dialectic.

Leslie Hernández: Part of the local research that remains pending is to compile background information on the art scene in Concepción from the coup d’état to the renewal of democracy. Unfortunately that information is not documented, but thanks to numerous narrations we know that there was intense activist and artistic activity in this city.

We have extended the fragility of being a seismic country to our memory, in which governments or political groups in power seek to change the truth about our history. This is currently happening with the questioning of the Museo de la Memoria by the Directorate of Libraries and Museums (DIBAM), which seeks to justify the victims of the dictatorship with those in power for over 17 years.

Rodrigo Ruíz: I’m interested in the issue of memory, which is always an issue of the present. Those who draw up a memory are engaging in a profoundly political act. The main thing at stake in social memory is the confrontation regarding the roads to self-understanding of societies and their programming.

In Chile, the construction of the “victims of the Pinochet dictatorship” was mainly developed as a State policy conducted by the governments that were in power after the dictatorship, who centered on the civil administration of the neoliberal changes imposed by Pinochet. The issue of memory and particularly the technocratic and ideological management of victimization have formed part of the development of the so-called “democracy of consensus-reaching”, i.e., of a system of civil governance that is possible for neoliberalism, which is what has brought about a crisis since 2010.