What about new challenges?: Technology

When we talk about new challenges in arts areas, we can find a lot of topics.
For examples, like an Art Historian, our work is not only in a room with books. We need to go outside and to be connected with persons around the world to share investigations, information, studies, and ideas. So, we have to use internet and all their tools and social net. To know found the needed information in the unapproachable quantity of content there is in the net. Know how to be online with the new publication through the world.
In another way, we can use the internet tools to publish our own works and to make nets with other people around the same study topic.
If we are interested in the documentation area we have to know to manage a lot of computational programs a museum net, like SurDoc here in Chile. So, the internet it's our best friend nowadays.
We have to up to date our dark and old museums. And that work is not only for the technology implementation, it's also related with the audience and the education. Update the museums includes update the way the people feels inside the museums. If we can change that feeling and make more empathic and attractive the old museums, we can to bring new audience interested in the museums topics. The museum couldn't be only a place with things hanged in the walls, the museum has to be a place where to learn new things and discover worlds. A place with libraries, a place connected with the world and other similar institutions, a place that gives information, not keep information.
Here there are two different, but linked, areas: one, the technology, the other, the social. In both is necessary a change in our museums, specially the religious and colonial museum. That is the darker and boring ones, when it has wonderful collections of art and history. To refresh them it's needed an investment of money and ideas.
If we see for a minute the European examples we can find a lot of inspirations. But, we need to Chilean ideas for a Chilean audience. In technology, of course we have to use the same tool, but always is important the Chilean ingredient.

For more information go to http://www.arq.upv.es/cultura/?p=828

Weak mind, strong madness

The sects have been in the humanity history always. Since the Akhenaton schism or the biblical golden calf, the groups against the rules has wanted to break the religions foundations and to do something better.
The messiah image, one person, the chosen one, the unique, is the principal reason of the religions and the sects. The sects take that image and use it to structure their ideals. That messiah is embodying in a person who knows the true and brings the salvation.
Apocalypse is always closer for the sects. And only the chosen ones, the sect’s members, can be saved.
The strong characters of the principal religions are modified to the sects ideals, by the brains of it, and are mixed with another topics like ancient magic, racism, divine justice because injustice, etc. But there are two parts of the sects: the creator or creators, the brains, and the members, the wools. Who create a sects it's always a person very smart, with a supreme intelligence, and big psychiatric problems. The followers, instead, are very shy people, psychologically weak, who need to believe in someone or something stronger than they.
The Nazism is considered a kind of sect. And if you watch the documentary of Leni Riefenstahl you can see the mysticism of the Nazism, like a big sect. The extermination of a danger is the principal point of sects like that.
There are other smaller sects like Charles Manson's Family. With a similar speech about apocalypse and racism and murders, that sect had today hundred of followers who continued to inspiring in the Manson's words.
It's a very complicated phenomenon to understand when you have your mind well.

What about Chilean and more...

What makes us chilean? Only to born in a specific country?
Well, to discuss about our identity is a big problem and a big common place in this days because the near bicentenary celebration. A lot of books have been published, where to investigate the possible forms of chilean identity is the principal concern.
We can list a big number of common features trying to explain how the chileans are chileans, but nowadays its result a boring work. When you have had the opportunity to travel through Chile you can see chilean are very different between them, in each part of that long country.
I think that we know as chilean identity is more than everything, a construction. Could it be inspired by real and historical roots, but when it comes a plural identity is because something is force it to be a construction.
The chilean identity cans talks in ignored behaviours, through the complicated ways of to be. The chilean identity is not the identity of all chilean people, otherwise, exist diverse shared habits, ideas, histories, places, past, etc. Those things make us similar.
We have to rescue those different shared things, our ways to see and to comprehend it, to can talk about our common patrimony.
The things that we have inherited and the things that we have created and we create every day.
That idea could be applied to every countries, more than ever today when the globalization phenomenon is inside our houses. Latin America is not a big country, is a big place with different people, who are living different events. Events that every day change us.

Walking around Santiago city

If you are a tourist and you are here, in Santiago, I'm going to tell you where you can go to know the past and the present of this city, walking quietly through the downtown, knowing the most typical and historical areas.
Founded in 1541, Santiago has a hill that was very important in that period. The Santa Lucía hill, named by the mapuche people as Huelén hill, was a strategic point in the Conquest War. In the end of XIX century, the superintendent Benjamín Vicuña, designed a beautiful public walking that you can tour through it stairs.
If you want to know the old splendour of the upper classes in the end of XIX century and begin of XX, you can visit the Republica neirborhood, starting by the Dieciocho street. There, you will see a lot of big houses of neoclassical style that shows the European taste of the epoch.
Now, if you want to know the cultural current movement, and you want to drink quietly a cup of coffee in the free air, you can go to walk through the Bellas Artes neirborhood and the Lastarria neirborhood. There, you'll find a lot of coffee houses and small and vanguard stores where buy design stuffs. Obviously, you have to visit the Fine Arts Museum to watch Chilean and foreign arts.
Then, you can go to the main square and know how the Chilean people really are. Like the rest of Hispanic colonial cities, Santiago has a main square surrounded by the Cathedral and administrative buildings, all of them from colonial period. There you can visit the National Historical Museum, the singular shop galleries Portal Fernández Concha and Bulnes.
Finally, you don't have to forget to visit the most important museums and galleries of colonial and modern art. Colonial and religious arts: San Francisco museum, La Merced museum and, a couple of minutes out of the centre by the subway, the Recoleta Dominica. Chilean art: the MAPA, Centro Cultural La Moneda, for examples.
Well, here you have a lot of good ideas to spend your time in Santiago. I hope you enjoy it!

Express yourself, whatever you are...

When I watched the film "The cabinet of Dr Caligari" I felt in love with the Expressionism. I think, more than the paintings, the films was the most accurated piece of art in the expressionism movement. Beautiful and terrible.

From Germany, in the begins of XX century, the picture expressionism was carry out by to groups: Blaue Reiter (Blue rider/horseman) and Die Brücke (The bridge). Artists like Franz Marc or Edvard Munch worked with strong and impulsive colors, exaggerated and broken lines, trying to express, very literal, the anguish and desperation, against the french Impressionism, that only shows the appearence of the things.

The films presents that visual ideas, without color, but with movement and sound (piano music, of course, because was muted films). The most important film directors was Robert Weine and F. W Murnau. Weine directed "The cabinet of Dr Caligari", a strange and beautiful film about a sonambulist and muderer man. Filmed only in studios, was the oportunity to show all the visual aesthetics of expressionism in the sets.

One of the other famous expressionism films is Murnau's "Nosferatu". Boarding the vampire's myth, the film is a big piece of expressionism art. The dark and depressed feeling is reflected in the sets, in the make up, in the clothing, like a long scream of anguish and blood.

I can see hundred of times that films and every time I can feel it power again.

Transantiago and me... a story of love and hate

Before the Transantiago, our new transpot system, my life was hard. I live on the outskirts of town, in a place named Nos (San Bernardo), near of Buin. So, I have to travel a couple of hours, or and hour and half, to get everywhere. Since I have memory I have to do it, and with the yellow busses it wasn't different.

Wherever, at first time of Transtgo. I had to take a feeder to San Bdo. center and then, take another main bus. It was an oddity to try to get home late in the evenings, because doesn't exist feeder busses! A lot of times, I almost cry in the stop, waiting for more than an hour.

Fortunately, exist another kind of busses to get to my home, buses that get out of the Gran Santiago and pass near of my home, like El Rulo bus, Santa Inés bus, or my favourite, the Buin Maipo, the bus that I take in the mornings.

However, I miss the big yellow bus Nos Independencia where I learned to go in busses when I was a little girl...

Well, now, I have to recognize the things have improved. I can take a bus from Macul subway directly to my home! Of course still being very slow and tiring.

This story couldn’t be very important, but when you multiply it for thousand and thousand, you can understand the mess that the city was when someone thinks to change the transport system from a day to another.

Higher level: for everyone!

The requirements level of the chilean education -elementary and high school- are very unequal between municipal schools and private or private subsidized school. The children don't have the same oportunities to get knowledge and that keep the social gap.

There is a lot of faults in the programs, a lot of wrong topics, a lot of laziness from the teachers to do better classes.

But, in the private schools, that doesn't happens. There, the children lear to speak english since kindergarden and have teachers who do better classes. That happens because they have more money.

But it couldn't be! The money couldn't make better schools and better students! The chilean education have to have WILL: I mean, will and open minds to find a way to make a better education from the core of the problem.

A higher education level in the municipals schools start from to fix the educational programs and demands better teachers.

Of course is needed a big investment from the goverment, but the news ideas are needed to, to refresh the old ideas about educations. Now, there's a lot of people who are thinking about it and doing greats plans through their organizations, but the politicians have to listen them.

Finally, it's all about will.

Waiting for the future

“When I was just a little child,
I ask my mother what will I be
Will I’ll pretty, will I’ll be rich?
That’s what she said to me…”

If I think, in five years more I’ll be in the thirties, so that’s the problem begins.
When I think in the future I’m very sure about what I want to be or to do. I have my life’s plan. What of those things will be really happens, well, I hope most of them. But that naturally fear for the unknown future doesn’t forbid to dream.
In five years more I hope to be studying my post grade here in Chile, to have a good work related with the career, for example, making historical investigations for a museum or another institution.
I will like to have my own apartment with my boyfriend Andres, but nothing for the rest of our lives, because we want to study our doctorate in another country and to live there.
I’ll want to have published my third poetry book and my first academic book.
No children, no cars, no marry.
A big library. My own library, of course. Smalls problems. Perfect English language dominion. Flowers and dogs.
Sounds good.

Pieces of what?

Ok. I've already listened the conferece of Sir Ken Robinson about creativity in the school's education and I could understand just pieces of the topics, one on other words, and with this information and my common sense I understood the following things:

• He was a funny man (don't know why, but people laughs)


• He told something about a girl who draw a God.


• When his son was 4, they moved from Stanford to Los Angeles.


• He think creativity development is not important in the public education.


• He noted maths and lenguages are the most important topic at school's education.


• He think the dance, for example, could be important to because we have bodies to use them.


• The sistem privileges the head up to the rest of the body. Means the most important thing it's the mental develop.


• There are problems with that in relation with the university's education.


• He think the women can do more things at same time than men.


• There're people have to move to think, like a dancer, people that can't be still to think.

In my opinion, the education sistem, there and here, compress us to memorize and repeat knowledge, norms of behavior, how to study, how to work, how to write, etc. but don't let us the free expression to our natural ways. The education sistem cut our posibilities of to develop our creativity, just because we have to be quiet and sit in the classroom.

In my case, my mother figth throug that robotized education and gave me the instruments to develop all my creativity and don't let it turn down in the school. It is tremendously useful in my life.

Manierism in the Art History

This semester I’ve took only subjects that I like, fortunely.

The term that gave to me more knowledge (interesting and fun knowledge) has been “El concepto del Manierismo en la pintura europea del siglo XVI” (Mannerism concept on century XVI Europe painting) by Constanza Acuña.

I’ve learned about a strange and complicated period of the art history that came to America with the first colons, although you can see more the Baroque style in those centuries.

The Mannerism is a style between Renaissance and Baroque in the European arts. It borne in Italy and it expanded trough France, how “Fountainebleu School”, and Germany with painters like Albert Dürer (or Durero). In Italy, the epicentre, the style grew with artists like Giulio Romano, Cellini, and Parmigianino.

Now, I have to do the final work for this subject. I have to find a painting here, in Santiago-Chile, that I can situate in the Mannerism style and write an investigation. I hope to get a good mark!

I will post it in my spanish blog then.

The big of the biggest

To tell you about the best in my field it's such a big problem, because I don't know very well what my field is.

Well, if I suppose it's about Art History, it still be a big problem to try to find the best, between artists, writers, critics, historians, theorics, trough hundred of years.

And now, if I only situated the range of time and the range of geographical space (or cultural, if you want) between the topics I like, I can talk about many people how the best.

Wow.

So, one of the best could be the "inventors" of Iconology-Iconography Erwin Panofsky and, of course, Aby Warburg. As a completed man, encyclopedian man, H. Gombrich, maybe the most popular. His book "History of Art" relayed the thinkers spheres and belongs to the common public. And from today, Serge Gruzinski is a very interesting theoric-historian.

Relating artists, I have my eyes and my heart in lot of people, from a lot of periods. I can't choose now!

My best sister

I’m really a solitary person. I have good partners in the university, in the job, in the poetry world but I don’t have a best friend like the word means. Since I have memory I have been like that. I prefer to spend my time doing things alone, like reading, writing, kniting, thinking. I have a really good relationship with my family, mother and brothers, and with my boyfriend, so my social life is whith them. Maybe, in a special way, my best friend has been my sister Bárbara (althoug she’s six years under me) because we share our musical likes, art likes, etc. But now she lives in Buenos Aires and I miss her a lot!
The past year cames to Chile one of my favorite groups, Interpol, and she were in Argentina so I went alone to the concert and it was really sad because I screamed with my self...
Together we went to concerts, disco, expositions or only to walk and talk about life. Sometimes we watched musical videos on the web, or dog’s photos to laugh, because we love dogs. Both we have dogs, females, Miel and Limón (Miel is mine and Limón is her) and now I have to care both.
Now I really have less free time than other years so I spend my time in work or studiying. But I still miss her.

Youtube and the images world

I spend a lot of time surfing by the internet in my free time. Of course I use the email pages, like Yahoo or Gmail, and social pages, like Facebook or Flickr. I don’t used to visit news web pages.
One of my favourite web pages is Youtube. You can find anything in Youtube, I really mean it. But I don’t visit it to find anything, I visit it to watch musical videos and concerts of my favourite bands and to know new bands. I can find it there, for example, the last live concert in Berlin of Franz Ferdinand recording by a spectator, that maybe it haven’t the best resolution but I can know how it’s their actual show almost in real time. Or I can watch The Killers’s presentation on a England tv, american tv, etc.
In Youtube I can find officials an unofficials videos. That’s the more important character. And know, the videos are in HD!
Another thing that I do in this webpage is watch cultural and art videos from people from another countries, and the best, talk to they through the commentaries or messages (when you have an account) and share ideas.
I recommend you to visit slowly Youtube and find a lot of new worlds.

http://www.youtube.com/

Hi-tech?

Hello partners! The second photo is my favourite piece of technology in the whole world, my old fashioned mp3. Whatever, I love it so much because it's my unique company in my daily bus travel. I need the music in my life, like I need to sleep, so my old mp3 gives to me that and it make me feel better when I'm tired or when I'm sad (on a cloudy winters day).
If one morning I forget my mp3 in house, it's a disaster... I thought "What I'll do in my large travel???" It's very sad to be without music in this life...
I can't imagine my life without an mp3. Just this.
I can’t' stand the cell phone music louder!!!! Only reggaeton!!! My goodness!!!
The first picture is the mp3 that I wish to have one day. That beautiful Hello Kitty mp3 it's so cute! Just for a girl like me.
Maybe this isn’t my smart post.

Cultural heritage: the past in the present

When I choosed this career I only thought about fine arts and beauty, but I wasn't sure what I'll find in the school. First, like a lot of people here, I was disappointed because I didn't found any sense to the career, I mean, there isnt't nothing clear to do in the future with this studies. But, after four years freezing I returned with new energy.
I began to understand what usefull it is, the career, to develop works around the Cultural Heritage, one of the things that I most love in the world. This year I've known a lot of amazing people who studied here and now they works in museums and intitutions heritages. It is so fundamental in the cultural develop of a country to protect professionally it heritage, and that I want to help to do.
The documentation area it's very entertaining. To know about international treatments, computational programs to document, etc. are a essentials tools in this area. Also the art history knowledge is needed to recognize the pieces and understand it value.
Every day I'm more enthusiastic with this career and the area I've choosed. I want to investigate and cooperate about chilean cultural heritage.
It is a way to do something real with the career.

In the end of the world

The most amazing place I've know in Chile (wherever, I've never went out of the country) is in the most austral part, Punta Arenas city. I've went there two times, the first time in 2005 and then in 2007, because the Literature Fair, that I was invited to read and present my second book.

Punta Arenas is quiet, mysterious, mystic. The constantly cold wind, I mean very very cold wind, scratch you skin like sandpaper. Sometime it is so strong that you can't walk. But the wind has a special energy that I love and I miss here in Santiago.

The quiet and freeze water from the Estrecho de Magallanes is like a big lake but it's the sea. The sunsets watching the water and the eternal sun of the South Pole are spectacular.

The two times I travelled in spring time, maybe the most sad spring time in the world, because actually it doesn't exist.

This year I'm invited again to go to the Fair in winter, just in Winter Carnival time. I'm not sure if I'll go, because I can't left my work and the university. I would like to go so much. So much.

To do something good with the internet...

Hi partners and teacher! Welcome to my blog. I have blogging by five or six years, so I know how fun it is. I have my own blog and through the years I've harvested a lot of readers around the world. I love to write!
I've published two poetry books and I'm constantly writing critics in many electronic magazines about literature, arts and more.
So this is the english version of my work!