Sanctifying the memory of victims is an exceptional way of depoliticizing the present and deprives the reestablishment of neoconservative ideals under the Chilean dictatorship of its significance by covering it with a sort of pious membrane that blocks the possibility of disagreement.

Another hypothesis that I’ve put forward regarding the issue of victims, which highlights the connection between the present and memory very visibly, stems from the broadening of meaning behind the notion of establishing victims. Initially used by leftist militants in the 70s and 80s who suffered from repression during the dictatorship, and it was subsequently applied to generate a victimized understanding of the poor within neoliberalism.

The focalized social-spending policies of the State view victimization as a method that provides ways of reaching a depoliticized consensus on the management of inequality in Chile’s advanced form of neoliberalism.

Nancy Garín: Can one view the working process established in this project as the shaping of new pedagogies? If so, how?

Miguel Benlloch: If a new pedagogy is understood to mean experimentation with forms of knowledge, a capacity for transduction, then I think that is certainly there, but it nevertheless gives me the shivers, perhaps because I don’t really know what is meant by pedagogy. I love the etymology of words, but I’m repulsed by the etymology of pedagogy, which is the slave who took children to school. I just looked it up because it gave me a bad feeling and of course “paidos” is almost more a son than a child.

I am both with Equipo re.Other experiences stemming from studying the project in Chile have either opened cracks in my discourse or broadened my knowledge not just of Chile but of myself. So I shall flunk like a bad student who has to take the course again in the next school year.

Leslie Fernández: From my role as a teacher in the field of the arts, I’m interested in discussing the topic of the political body with my students because it’s not easy for somebody just entering university to understand the meaning of performances. In order to do that one needs an introduction or a subsequent explanation for ideas to fall into place. In fact for me the Concepción seminar meant explaining and putting into context for first-year visual arts students the meaning of what they had just seen, particularly because unlike being in an academic drawing class, they were witnessing performance work. This was very new to them, especially those who had been taught that art entails just working with clay or painting. Some of the courses in the visual arts degree involve reviewing the actions and political art groups of the 70s in Chile, but that includes an introduction that I hope helps students to make the connection.

Equipo re: In addition to the specific research we put forward, one of Equipo re’s ongoing concerns is the formats and construction of knowledge in which we delve. This is why we view the project as a possibility for engaging in collaborative, flexible and affectionate work, which is an approach we’ve extended to the actions carried out in Chile, in which various agents have become involved in the measure of their possibilities. Moreover, on working outside the confines of an institutional initiative, the response we had to provide was reduced to research and in that sense we’ve had a wide margin of references, dialogues and digressions. We believe we can articulate these as a new exercise in pedagogy. From there we’ve been thinking of new steps to be taken in the future process stemming from this experience.

Rodrigo Ruíz: On the day I gave my presentation at the seminar a young man of about 20 came up to me during the break. My talk on memory and Chilean documentary cinema called his attention. He is a visual arts student who, so he told me, was making a short documentary on his community. The documentary took place in the middle of the social commotion in Chile and the student wanted to portray the youth of a low-income neighbourhood in Santiago in greater depth than the visual predominance of university students in the capital.

He showed me several frames from the documentary printed on paper and a sort of timeline. We talked about Benjamin’s and Eisenstein’s ideas of staging, and he asked me for concrete ideas regarding his documentary and its staging, which I preferred not to give. The project is his, as is his search. I think preserving autonomy is of fundamental importance. However, we engaged in a two-way dialogue that made it possible to share and expand on the ideas stemming from the reflections I made on sanctifying victims to think about them together. To engage in a specific audiovisual creation exercise with which to portray those other marginalized individuals who were also victimized by the ideological management of neoliberalism. Can one call that a “new pedagogy”? I think it comes close in the measure that it stems from an initial situation of talking and listening and provides the possibility of developing a more precise, joint reflection on creative processes through horizontal dialogue.

Nancy Garín: And the continuity of the project?

Rodrigo Ruíz: I’m not sure what to answer here.I’m interested in staying in touch, continuing to get to know Equipo re and continuing to have the possibilities I’ve already had of exchanging views with you, but I don’t know if that has a bearing on the project’s continuity. This has been more of a one-time contact through a seminar, which I nevertheless feel has been enormously positive.

Equipo re: Equipo re remains involved in and continues to pursue reflections on “politics of the body,” a field that we view as unfinished business and that must be urgently addressed from different perspectives due to the defining effect on our lives of the neoliberal management of bodies.

We’re currently in the process of looking at the AIDS phenomenon through a magnifying glass –or rather several—as a specific exercise in biopolitical management by different agents, and we’re establishing a series of proposals to that end that will enable us to multiply our approaches to the complex research involved. We also want to continue strengthening the alliances arising from the “Politics of the Body” project, since they provide a wealth of possibilities.

Notes:

(1) Equipo re views research as a political practice based on the establishment of partial, contingent and temporary connections between people, forms of knowledge and places. Equipo re works on the basis of specific situations and contexts, and our activities bring together curatorial practice, the organization of meetings and workshops, publishing work, action in the milieu of the archive, the production of narratives as a research method and the informal exchange of experiences, among other initiatives. The group is currently made up of A