Audio Vignettes

Anna Bella Geiger

Carta a um amigo
Ela tem uma cera colada ali, não é isso? É isso mesmo, eu gostei de fazer esse trabalho. E era a época da ditadura, exatamente. É o Chico [Buarque], é Carta a um Amigo, exatamente. Então, eu peguei, na verdade, dois pedaços de chapa de latão, braço, recortei em forma da parte de baixo do envelope e da tampa do envelope e coloquei elas juntas e peguei um papel, que não é o que se costuma pegar em gravura, a gente põe um papel, mas eu peguei um papel que não se faz mais, é um papel prateado, que não é folha prateada, de tipo papel roxedo, é uma folha que eu prensei na minha máquina de imprimir gravura. Foi isso só. Então, era um teste, porque essa folha podia não resistir a essa altura das chapas. Das duas montadas. Mas resistiu, eu cheguei a fazer duas ou três cópias. E aí, uma carta que você envia tem que ter aquele selo de cera para não abrir, que antigamente era o selo da carta. Então, está lá uma carta e, claro que, eu não sei se o título já nasceu antes de eu fazer a carta, entendendo? A carta é uma amiga, eu vou fazer essa carta. Não envio, mas ela está aí. Então, é isso. E eu expus, talvez uma vez.

Letter to a Friend
It has the wax seal there, right? That’s right, I enjoyed doing this work. And it was during the dictatorship, exactly. It’s Chico [Buarque], it’s his song Letter to a Friend, exactly. So, I actually took two brass sheets and cut them into the shape of an envelope and the top flap and then put them together. I took some paper, which isn’t the kind you usually use in engraving, but a type of paper that’s no longer made, it’s silver paper, not silver foil but a sheet of paper that I pressed on my engraving machine. That was it. It was a test, because this sheet might not have withstood the weight of the two plates. But it withstood it, and I ended up making two or three copies. And then, a letter you send has to have that wax seal to prevent it from being opened, which in the past was the way letters were sealed. And then that was the letter. I don’t know if I had come up with the title before I made the letter, you know? The letter is there, I’m not going to send it, but it’s there. So, that’s it. And I exhibited it only maybe once.

Claudia del Rio

A Edward D. Wood Jr.
A Edward D. Wood Jr. es una obra que trata sobre el trabajo, sobre cómo se hace el trabajo, sobre quienes realizan los trabajos, sobre la fabricación del jabón, sobre los nombres de los jabones para lavar ropa y lavar ropa a mano ha sido una actividad absolutamente manual, antigua, realizada por mujeres. Se lavaba en el río, frotando con las piedras o con lo que se tenía a mano. Entonces recolecté jabones de lavar de algunos países, luego los fotografié sobre fondos neutros, algunas veces telas, para después ser intervenidos con otras imágenes de la cultura visual de revistas de diferentes décadas. ¿Por qué el nombre de la obra? Bueno, en los 90 vi toda la filmografía de Ed Wood en una especie de cine club de la ciudad. Fui con, en ese momento, mis hijos eran pequeños y los sometí a ver Ed Wood. Yo estaba fascinada por el lenguaje que usaba, los recursos que usaba, como un anti-Hollywood y mucho más parecido a una cultura latinoamericana de sin recursos puede haber recursos y donde lo manual, lo artesanal, tiene un lugar muy grande.Como si estas prototecnologías a veces inauguran la imaginación o hacen una apertura a la imaginación. Bueno, es medio, suena medio duro, ¿no?

To Edward D. Wood Jr. is a work about labor, about how work is done, about those who carry out the work, about the manufacturing of soap, about the names of soaps specifically for washing clothes by hand, a manual activity that dates back to ancient times and that is undertaken by women. People did their washing in the river, rubbing with stones or whatever was at hand. So I collected laundry soaps from various countries, then photographed them against neutral backgrounds, sometimes using fabric, and then I intervened on the photos with other images taken from magazines from different decades. Why the name of the work? Well, in the 1990s I saw all of Ed Wood’s films at a kind of film club in the city. I went with my children, who were young at the time, and I subjected them to Ed Wood’s movies. I was fascinated by the language he used and the resources he employed. I saw him as anti-Hollywood and much more closely related to Latin American culture where even without resources things get done and where the manual and the artisanal play an important role. As if these prototechnologies sometimes inaugurate the imagination or open up the imagination. Well, it sounds kind of harsh, right?

Karin Lambrecht

Correspondence between Karin Lambrecht and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt
When I began Mail Art, I was maybe 18 years old, 19 I think, and I was studying art in Porto Alegre at the university. And at this time, in the end of the late 1970s, [the] end of the 70s, Brazil was suffering from the dictatorship. So Mail Art was something so true, the thoughts of these people arriving directly in my mailbox. When each envelope arrived, it was like having a voice, a real person. It was so real because [they were] made for each other. We made these messages, we thought about the artist that is in another country. And some of this Mail Art exchanging was about, not about friendship, not that this person was my friend, but it was something personal, like with Ruth [Wolf-Rehfeldt], for example. It was almost asked from your partner in another part of the world to do something with the work of another. You send something very tiny, very personal, and it depends how it affected another person. I was very affected when I received a letter from some of my correspondents. So Ruth was one of them. And then I had another in Poland, I like him very much, Paweł Petasz, I remember. He also, he did very personal what he was sending to me, and everything [was] tiny. But what is amazing to think is that the post office accepted all these strange envelopes and they arrived. Because today, it’s a lot of loss. You cannot send anything like this, I don’t know if it would arrive. The postman, when he brought some of these materials, because I was waiting sometimes for the postman, and he was very happy to give it to me. And then another part of Mail Art was very political. For example, searching for artists, the one I remember the name is, I think, [Jorge] Caraballo. I’m not very sure about his name. He was disappeared. So it was something that everybody could do to put pressure on the governments in these South American countries. With Ruth it happens that I was living in the dictatorship, a military dictatorship in Brazil, far right. And she was living in East Germany, what can be considered a left dictatorship, but a dictatorship. Both [of us] were living in dictatorships. And I visited Ruth and her husband, also an artist, Robert, and they have a child, but it was a young man, so at my age. Because my grandparents from my father’s side, they, after the war, when the sectors were created in Germany, [their] house was in the Soviet part. And so sometimes I think I had this bizarre experience with dictatorships. And I think this is what Ruth felt when I visited them. And it was sad, you know, I must say that was sad because I was from a dictatorship, but I could, you know, cross the wall. They don’t, you know, it was so sad to say bye to them. And they must stay at home and I could go to the West part, so easy. And then at this time, I gave my art up because then I began to study in Berlin in the West side, painting with a German painter in the Hochschule der Künst. Now it’s university, Universität der Künst. And then for me, this was so vivid, you know, I was really, it’s what I want, you know, to be with people, people that like music, people that are free, people that like art, people that like to read.

Magali Lara

Objetos Domésticos, Estampilla de Artista
Ahí sí conseguí una imprenta y me hizo mil, todavía tengo, creo. Y entonces, mil es muchísimo. Sí, luego hice otros, pero no están suajados. Uno que dice, “Salto al vacío”. Hice la plantilla e hice cada timbre como dibujito. Tenía que ver con toda una serie que estaba yo haciendo, pero esto estaba pensado para hacer timbres, timbres de imágenes que nunca se tuviera acudido a hacer, timbres, ¿no? Ya sabes, yo trabajo por series. Lo de los cigarros está basado, claro, son cómicos, tiene que ver con la cosa fálica, pero también con esa serie del [fotógrafo] Irving Penn de los cigarros, esos que son estos restos que son, bueno, a él siempre me gustó mucho porque tiene una manera de traer estos objetos y verlos de otro lado. Todo el tipo tiene que ver con emociones.

Domestic Objects Artist Stamps
I got a printer to make a thousand for me; I still have them, I think. And so, a thousand is a lot. Yes, later I made others, but they’re not perforated. The one that says, “I leap into the void,” I made the template and made each stamp as a little drawing. It had to do with a whole series I was working on, but this was meant to be stamps, stamps of images that would never become [official] stamps. You know, I work in series and the cigarette thing is based on, well it is comical, it has to do with the phallic thing, but also with that series by [photographer] Irving Penn of cigarette butts or remnants that I was always interested in because I have this way of bringing these objects and seeing them from another perspective. It always has to do with emotions.

Mónica Mayer

Polvo de Gallina Negra y Arte Correo
Seguramente nos juntamos en la casa, nos poníamos en el escritorio, nos reíamos mucho, platicábamos de qué andaba la cosa. Todo lo que es a mano es de Maris [Bustamante]. Entonces si había que hacer un dibujo o había que escribir, porque mi letra nunca se ha entendido, ¿no? Y ya le íbamos agregando los textos y le íbamos agregando. A veces hay algunas en las que tú has tu lado y yo hago mi lado. Cada una ya lo juntábamos después. Hay una en la que se levanta la foto y abajo hay otro texto que debe ser a mi lado. Pero sí, nos sentábamos y platicábamos y le íbamos construyendo ahí. Con esta libertad casi del boceto, de estar ahí juntas haciéndolo. Y luego ya se fotocopiaba. Yo supongo que nosotros teníamos fotocopiadora ya para entonces. Y fotocopiábamos todo en la casa. No, eran cosas que íbamos pensando en ese momento y que iban saliendo. No era algo de que hiciéramos investigación para ver qué metíamos. Era algo muy, muy, muy espontáneo. Creo que se nota, ¿no? No es un estilo espontáneo. Era espontáneo. Iba saliendo en ese momento. Seguramente también yo lo escribía en ese momento. Lo imprimía y pegábamos otras cosas. Y es muy sencillo. Y muy en lo que acordábamos el tema de cada una de las cartas. Y de qué se iba a tratar. Y yo creo que por eso algunas son más dispersas y otras son muy concretas. Esta no me acuerdo de por qué era, la verdad es que no me acuerdo. Hay una cierta congruencia entre el tema que se está tratando en cada una de las cartas. Está más escondido lo de la vida y la muerte. Tienen distintas formas. Y en este yo creo que es cuando vamos a acabar realmente. Queremos acabar con el arquetipo de la madre. Es posible. Y darnos cuenta que no era posible. Quizá dentro de cinco mil años y ya no vamos a estar nosotras. Y serán unos pequeños cambios. Yo no sé cuándo sale Star Wars. No sé si por ahí tenga la lista de a quién la mandábamos. Porque lo más práctico era… tenías la lista escrita máquina, la fotocopiabas, la cortabas, se lo pegabas al timbre. Y sí me acuerdo que eran trescientas. Entonces mandábamos trescientas. Y era, te digo, un horror, a mano! Todo se tenía que producir a mano en la casa. Entonces fotocópialas, la mandas.

Polvo de Gallina Negra and Mail Art
We would get together at home, sit at the desk, laugh a lot, and talk about what was going on. Everything that is handwritten is by Maris [Bustamante]. So if we had to draw something or write something, because my handwriting has never been legible, right? And we would add the texts and keep adding to it. Sometimes there are some where we said, “You do your side and I’ll do my side”. We would put them together afterwards. There is one where the photo is lifted up and underneath there is another text that must have been on my side. But yes, we would sit down and talk and build it there. With this freedom, almost like a sketch, of being there together doing it. And then it was photocopied. I guess we had a photocopier by then. And we photocopied everything at home. No, they were things we were thinking about at the time and that were coming up. It wasn’t something we researched to see what we were going to put in. It was very, very, very spontaneous. I think you can tell, right? It’s not a spontaneous style. It was spontaneous. It was coming out at that moment. I probably wrote it at the time too. I printed it out and we stuck other things on it. And it’s very simple. And very much in line with what we agreed on for each of the letters. And what it was going to be about. And I think that’s why some are more scattered and others are very specific. I don’t remember why it was, I honestly don’t remember. There is a certain consistency between the themes addressed in each of the letters. The issue of life and death is more hidden. They take different forms. And I think this is when we’re really going to end it. We want to do away with the archetype of the mother. It’s possible. And realize that it wasn’t possible. Maybe in five thousand years, and we won’t be here anymore. And there will be some small changes. I don’t know when Star Wars came out. I don’t know if I have the list of who we sent it to. Because the most practical thing was… you had the list typed up, you photocopied it, you cut it up, you stuck on the stamp. And I do remember that there were three hundred. So we sent three hundred. And it was, I tell you, a nightmare, by hand! Everything had to be done by hand at home. So you photocopy them, you send them.

Mónica Mayer

Lo Normal
Todo el diseño de postal, y es una exposición de mujeres artistas que lo que decidimos es hablar sobre lo normal. No recuerdo a todas las que estuvieron, pero estuvo Magalí Lara, creo que estuvo Robina Morales, bueno ahí está, les puedo conseguir la lista de las artistas que participamos. Y yo creo que es una obra de arte correo fallida, porque estaba para que el público agarrara sus tarjetas y pusiera cuál era la cara que más tenía que ver con lo que sentían de lo que estaba dicho ahí. Entonces en la galería las personas la agarraban y las pegaban con lo que sentían, entonces yo creo que es un poco como El Tendedero y un poco como queriendo ser arte correo, pero nunca se enviaron. De hecho nunca se enviaron. Entonces las personas que las tienen son las personas que, por ejemplo en el archivo de Ana Victoria Jiménez, pues porque fue a la exposición y se llevó una copia de cada una, estaban ahí para que el público las tomara. Entonces hay varias personas que se llevaron su copia de diez tarjetas, pero nunca las envié por correo. Entonces son como los principios y empezar a pensar y sorprendentemente es una pieza que así todas juntas funciona muy bien.

The Normal
The entire postcard design, and it was an exhibition of women artists, where we decided to talk about what is normal. I don’t remember everyone who was there, but Magalí Lara was there, I think Robina Morales was there, I can get you the list of the participating artists. And I think it’s a failed mail art work, because it was meant for the public to grab their cards and identify which face most closely matched what they felt about what was being said there. So in the gallery, people would grab them and mark them with what they felt. So I think it’s a bit like The Clothesline, and a bit like it wanted to be mail art, but they [the postcards] were never sent. So the people who have them are the people who [were there]. For example, they are in Ana Victoria Jiménez’s archive, because she went to the exhibition and took a copy of each one, they were there for the public to take. So there are several people who took their copy of the ten cards, but I never mailed them. So it’s like the beginnings and starting to think about the ideas and surprisingly it’s a piece that all together works very well.

Virginia Errázuriz

Cancelados
Estaban hechos con material muy precario, que eran las condiciones que nosotros teníamos en ese momento, porque yo trabajaba, habíamos fundado un taller, que se llamaba taller de artes visuales, porque habíamos sido expulsados de la universidad. Entonces, estos grabados son, por un lado, experimentales en cuanto a usar la fotocopia, llamémosla como la fotocopia análoga de ese momento, la xerografía. ¿Cómo grababa? Porque en vez de los grabados tradicionales usan la fotocopia, y elementos con que se hacían esos grabados eran elementos absolutamente precarios. Y los sobres eran con la idea de ser enviados. Y el cancelado es un timbre que se usaba en las ventas, o en las boletas de venta, o en las facturas de compra de algo, cuando tú terminas una, cuando tú terminas la operación de compra, se le pone este timbre que dice cancelado y una fecha. Entonces, yo usé esa relación entre los cancelados de que uno compra y los cancelados que eran los detenidos desaparecidos. El otro punto que es importante es que muchas, por lo menos uno de los grabados que dice Fernando Ortiz, y que tiene una foto más grande de ellos, que no es una foto más colectiva, era un amigo nuestro, o sea, son gente que uno de alguna manera conocía, eran profesores universitarios o dirigentes sindicales. Entonces, estos grabados, hay algunos que son una especie de collage mayores, más grandes, mayores en tamaño, te fijas, llevaban algunos objetos con los cuales ellos habían desaparecido. En estos que son los de correo, te fijas, hay algunos que son colectivos de varios, más uno específico que el de Fernando. Entonces, me parece que ese punto es interesante recalcar. Yo creo que hay dos puntos, uno que es, se trabajó sobre ese tema en el momento mismo, no a posteriori, porque después se trabajó sobre detenidos desaparecidos una vez que hubieron las comisiones de verdad y justicia. Entonces, la relación de trabajar en el momento mismo y sobre personas conocidas, me parece que es interesante rescatar, te fijas. Y en verdad los grabados no tenían título, se puso cancelado después por el timbrete y se armó una serie con otros, esta serie de los que se mandaban y otra serie de los que eran collage de una superficie mayor y que tenían, por ejemplo, en el caso de Fernando, un saco porque fue la manera que lo tomaron preso. La idea del sobre era que eso sirviera como dar a conocer y por eso estaba hecho en el formato de correo. O sea, poder mandarse con toda facilidad y pensando que podría llegar a pérdida, porque nunca se supo qué pasó con los que se mandaron, te fijas. Tiene esa idea de información. Y también la idea de poder archivar. O sea, porque eran personas que en ese momento no se había recuperado nada, o sea, en verdad no se han recuperado nada, pero un poquito al lugar. Posteriormente ya está vivo, lo menos el lugar donde fueron botados o semienterrados, pero en el fondo son pequeñas señas y hay algunos que todavía no usted sabe qué pasa. Entonces eso también, por eso hay uno que tiene objetillos, que es la idea como de archivar hasta que ellos aparezcan.

Canceled
[The mail art works in the Cancelados series] were made with very precarious material, which reflected the conditions that we were living in at that time, because I was working – we had founded a workshop that was called the Taller de Artes Visuales (Visual Arts Workshop), because we had been forced out of our jobs at the University [of Chile]. So these prints are, on the one hand, experimental due to my use of photocopy – we called it analogue photocopy at that time, xerography. How did I make the prints? Instead of being traditional prints, they were made as photocopies, and the elements used to make these prints were absolutely precarious. And the envelopes came from the idea of being sent [in the mail]. And “el cancelado” is a stamp that was used in sales, or in sales receipts or the invoices for buying something, when you complete the operation of purchasing something, the salesperson applies this stamp that says “cancelado (paid)” and a date. So I used this relationship between the debts that are paid/canceled through a sale and the “canceled” that were the detained-disappeared. Another important point is that many [of the photographs], at least the print that says “Fernando Ortiz” and has a larger photograph than the other prints, this photograph isn’t meant to represent an anonymous collective, he was our friend, and [the detained-disappeared] were people that to a certain extent were known, they were university professors or union leaders. So these prints, there are some that are a kind of bigger collage, bigger in size, you see? And they incorporated some objects with [the photographs of] those that had been disappeared. In the collages that are the mail artworks, you see, there are some that feature various portraits, plus the specific one about Fernando. I think that this point is interesting to emphasize. I think there are two points, one which is, I was working on this theme [of the detained-disappeared] as it was happening, not a posteriori, because later artists were making work about the detained-disappeared once they had released the commissions on truth and justice. So the relationship of working in the same moment, and about people I knew, it seems that it is interesting to highlight, you see. And the truth is [when I made them] the prints were untitled, I added “cancelado” later with the stamp and built up the series with the other [prints], the series of works that were sent and another series of collages with a larger surface and that had, for example, in the case of Fernando, a [burlap] sack because that was the way they [the Pinochet dictatorship] had taken him prisoner. The idea of the envelope was that this would serve as a way to create awareness, and that’s why it was made in the format of mail art. Or rather, to be able to be mailed with ease and thinking that it could end up being lost, because you never knew what happened with works that got sent, you know. [The collages] have this idea of information. And also the idea of being archived. Because these were people who in that moment, [once being disappeared] nothing of them had been recovered, in reality they haven’t been recovered, […]. Subsequently, one can at least see the places where they were deposited or half-buried, but beneath it all there are small signs [of what happened], and there are some people that we still have no idea what happened to them. So this is why the collages have little objects, with the idea of serving as an archive until they are found.