Thursday 5 November 2009

SO WHAT


I don't really get the idea. (See the teacher's blog) Was it about our internal problems? Or maybe about the challenges we're supposed to face soon? OK: nevermind. I'd like something more free to write about, but... well, what can I do. May I write about the weather? Or something related to food?
It's warm out there today. Isn't it? (Yesterday it was so fresh at this very time).


The point is this: I'm not well informed about the actuality of my 'career' (oh no, not that word again! In Spanish it means the same as 'race'. Is anybody getting to the finishing line already?). Call me irresponsible. Maybe I am.


Well ... I'll try.

Let's suppose I know a lot about the actuality of my discipline (but I'm not disciplined! What a paradox!). Then, I can say that the challenges we face regarding technology are the following:

-We don't have a good technological infraestructure.

-We're not really into technology.

-Then, it doesn't really matter (in fact, it does, but there are more pressing subjects to worry about).
(You can read it as a silogism, or as you like it).

And what about our challenges about social matters?
It seems like we're not into social matters, at least not most [of the] time. What a shame! Art ALWAYS concerns about social or political matters, but nowadays apparently it's not. Personally, I have to solve some problems of mine first. I don't know. I don't think I'm going to change anything, unfortunately.

The same goes for E-D-U-C-A-T-I-O-N. Our own education isn't going as it should: it's expensive (considering that IT SHOULD be FREE) and we don't have enough resources; then... How could we help to improve the whole country's education? We better fill our vacuums by ourselves first. Then maybe we could do something better.

I just can't go on right now. I'm feeling Ill. I'm wasted. My brain's not working fine today. Maybe I'm going a little mad. I need a beer and a rest. Yes, because I didn't sleep at night.
And I'm very sorry if I couldn't keep the expectations.
I hope I see you soon. Cheers!
P.S.
After all I'm just supposed to be an Art theorist. Sure.

Thursday 29 October 2009

SSS


Sects.

Why people find them so appealing?

I think we're in a very technical era, but human's mystical side can't be silenced that easy.

People use to need something to believe in (I'm looking for/ something to believe in, sang Joey Ramone). Many people use to feel empty in this strange but ridiculously monotonous world; I can't blame them. They're just everyday people, and day after day the world seems to be boring (not all the time, of course).

Then, people think in something different to do, something to give meaning to their lives. Not just to work and go to the supermarket and the shopping center and, pum, buy buy buy. Then some of them meet in "strange" associations. Some of them need to follow a leader (I can't stand it, but it's the truth).


In some way, all sects are religious. They're based on faith, with or without a god (but god can be a politician or a football soccer player). They're not necessarily offensive, sometimes they're just like a child game.


Anyway, the subject of sects is not that simple. Sects have been there since the beginning of the times. Sects don't follow the rules of an "official" or institutional organization. That makes them, sometimes, more interesting. Sects must have a limited number of persons; just like some local fans club. Anyway, it tells us about that something's not working in our society (what a discovery!). Ergo, it's not that sects are a threat to society, it's that society has intrinsic threats to its members.


Unfortunately -I think- most people who joined a sect has nothing new to say. They just need something to cling to.


By the way, Szandor LaVey rules!

(just kidding)


And no, I don't know anyone who joined a sect so far.

Thursday 8 October 2009


My faculty (Faculty of Arts, Las Encinas, Universidad de Chile) is not as good, nor as beautiful as it should be. I'm sorry but it's the truth. The best thing is that we have a nice green place here, but I don't know if it will last long.

Now I'm writing from one of the computers of the Faculty, and it doesn't even work good. Internet is as slow as a snail here. Maybe THEY can start with the improving of this system. Of course, I think they should make a better building: the one which is already look horrible, really depressing. The library is very poor too, and it shouldn't be that way. It's small, dull, the computers really suck and most interesting or necessary books aren't there (actually, they're more "useful" books in the Faculty of Philosophy.

Well, many of this is the result of the decline of education because of the dictatorship's policies (after all, it is supposed to be a PUBLIC university, but actually it isn't, you know, we have to pay a lot for this).

I'm not a very proactive man, I really don't know how to improve all this in a viable way, but I can claim or complain, at least. Not all the things are that bad, of course, but they should be better considering that it's about the "main" university of this country. I don't know if it's actually like that. And I don't know how are other institutions in the rest of Latin America. It's a shame, but it's true. I really want this Faculty to work better, and the same goes for all education in Chile.

But the birds still sing nicely out there. And I'm going to drink some beer.

Thursday 1 October 2009

C-H-I-L-E-A-N


Identity is a complex thing. There are different factors involved in it. But, in conclusion, it's basically a matter of Politics and Economy; the configuration of society, from its beginnings, needed to make networks to produce (to satisfy any kind of necessities) and to protect themselves, and later, to keep heritage. And that is, basically, the way it goes. The birth of the identity issue.

In a larger scale, I'm sure that nations (nation-states) don't involve a kind of substance or essence that makes them . We must know that there's not necessarily a common History (what is it?) between a Nation, nor an Heroic past nor anything like that.

The same goes for the case of Chile "my" country. "We" are not all the same; most of us are "of mixed race" (between native and Spanish), but anyway, we're not Spanish, and most mapuche people don't consider themselves as Chileans (and I agree with them: this Country has stolen their culture and lands). We're kind of orphans, maybe that's our identity all along the territory.

Anyway, I think of a specific term: the "Chile profundo" (deep Chile), which refers to the centre of the territory, between the south of Santiago and the Region VII; it's mostly agricultural,

If I have to choose something like a Chilean identity, I'd like to be this: being in an old bar, drinking chilean wine and eating empanadas, or pork sandwiches, or cazuela, listening to 'canto a lo poeta' (typical music of Central Chile); or being in the shore of the sea in a windy cold night, because Chile isn't a tropical country. Or maybe we just have to know Violeta Parra's life and work.
And don't we hate our neighbours.

Thursday 24 September 2009

Santiago City (some things to do in)



Santiago of Chile is a stressing city, but not if you know how to treat it (and if you have enough time). Any foreigner who come to Santiago must know some things, obviously; but I don't like official holiday's packs nor guided tours: the best way to know a city is, I think, touring with a friend or some friendly people who knows it well.





So I think that the places and things a foreigner must visit and do in Santiago aren't necessarily those that appear in touristic guides. I'll write some points about some interesting places and activities in the city, just according to myself.


A nice green area in the center. Cerro Santa Lucía (Saint Lucy Hill) is one of the main places in the City. An historical one. There are trees, grass, fountains, and sculptures. You be careful: sometimes there are thieves.

Rest in peace. I like cementeries. What can I do? Well, you must know the main one in the city (Cementerio General), or you'll never know Santiago. It's very old and large, like a little city. You must know the historical part, with its wonderful graves and mausoleum.

Churchs. I'm atheist, but I like old churchs more than museums. It's culture in context. So you gotta visit the city's Cathedral (at Plaza de Armas), the San Francisco church (the oldest one in the city), the San Agustín Temple, the basilicas of La Merced, Los Sacramentinos and El Salvador, among others.


Where to eat/drink/lunch/ have a dinner. I don't know what kind of meal do you like, so I just can talk about my own taste. I don't like luxury restaurants. So if you want to know the local food and drinks you can go to some typical restaurant or tavern, such as El Hoyo, Monte Rosa or La Tinaja, where you can ask for a "terremoto" (earthquake, a drink made of cheap wine, pineapple ice cream and some liqueur) or a pork sandwich. If you like loin sandwiches, you go to Fuente Alemana in Alameda, it's amazing. For chinese food, Los Chinos Pobres in Plaza Brasil.

Some Fun. I don't know. If you like chic gigs I'm afraid I can't help you. But anyway, I like Bellavista, a kind of bohemian district with a lot of pubs, bars and restaurant. You can also go to Lastarria.

Thursday 27 August 2009

This Public Transport


I don't think I have to describe the Transantiago system. If you don't know what is it about, you can find it on the Net.


One thing is clear: I hate it.


It started to work, I think, about three years ago. Then, THEY said it would be something like "the transportation of the future": faster, cleaner, nicer, more comfortable. They said it would reduce the noise and air pollution. I don't know if it did. Anyway, the previous system (yellow buses) was awful, I think, even when there are people who miss it now. Well, I don't. It was horrific. But Transantiago isn't much better.

In the previous system, depending on the hour and on the route, the minibuses could be completely full or almost empty. In the first case, you couldn't always get in the vehicle, then you could arrive late to your destiny (and, what is the worst, in some cases, people fell out the bus and they got wound or simply died). All this was supposed to change with Transantiago. But actually, it didn't. It didn't then and it didn't yet now. I have to get in a bus (I can hardly do it) full of people almost every morning, all of them sad or angry. It happens even on the large buses ("caterpillars"). It's depressing. What can I say?

Well, the worst mistake with Transantiago, and of this I am sure, is that the organizers, and the goverment, didn't plan it rightly, with time: and they applied it to soon, because they wanted the people to be impressed with it before they left. Then, shit happened. I think they have to improve many things, including the freqcuency of the trips, but the drivers don't use to cooperate. Because most of them ar not interested in a better system, they don't need it. Anyway, I don't know what else those ineffective engineers, performers and shitty companies can do.


I'll say it again: I hate it.

Monday 22 June 2009

The Last One?


Now I'm sick at home. Yes, I have the flu. But now I'm a little better, I think, At least, I'm not feverish now. I was drinking a cup of coffee just a few minutes ago, and I'm still listening to Miles Davis. I couldn't go to the class today, obviously.


This is (probably?) my last post in this blog, because of the teacher's request and the end of the semester.


I enjoyed writing in it - except for some topics that I didn't like at all. But all the rest was fine. I think it was an interesting initiative to propose the creation of the blog (congratulations to the one who suggested it!). I really liked it. It's just that I don't like to be obliged to write about an specific topic that I'm not interested in.


In addition, I think it really helped me to improve my English, at least my written English, that is very important for me. The practice of writing about something is a very beneficial exercise, it helps to think better, to write better, to share or capture ideas, to learn a language better. I like to write but I'm too lazy to do it on my own with some frecquency, so I think this blog was a good opportunity to practise my writing, but not so good to expose or develop my imagination (most topics were really limited, I think). But, anyway, I don't know what I could write about if they (the topics) were completely free.


I'd like to write in this very blog the next semester.

In spite of everything, I don't want it to die.
Goodbye.
I hope I see you soon.

Monday 15 June 2009

No Future

What would I like to be doing five years from now? Ok, ok, but... Five years from now! Isn't that too much time? In fact, it's enough time to become another guy, or maybe to be dead.
I think -actually- that I will be studying yet. Or maybe beginning a brilliant career as an art historian (just kidding). Well, after all, I think it wouldn't be bad to be a kind of humanist, or a researcher or something like that. Personally, I hope I'm having a good time without working so hard.

I was (also) asked to write about my ideal future. How can I imagine an ideal future, if in a few years from now we'll be in a wicker world? Ok, I hope it isn't becoming that bad, of course, but I can't imagine a beautiful and happy future. But, anyway, I'll try to write something. Of course, thinking it's not about reality.

. . .

My ideal future

In five years from now I'd like to be living in an old house, by my own, with enough money but without a job, so I'd have a lot of free time. The money must come for the rents of a couple of properties. So I'd be able to drink some fine liquors, and beer, and wine, of course. I'd meet some friends and we'd make some little gigs together, with good music and some drink. I'd paint in oils sometimes, and I'd read and listen to music as much as I can.
Isn't that an ideal future?

Monday 8 June 2009

Favorite subject...

I've been asked to describe my current favourite subject in my 'career'. I don't know why, but it sounds a kind of deja vu for me. I think I wrote something about it before.




Anyway, I can say that my fav subject now is called "Vanguardia, escritura y ciudad" (I'm not sure that's the right order, but it would be something like "Avant-garde, writing and metropolis"). It is basically Theory of avant-garde art movements through the XXth century, and their relationship with several disciplines of thought and textual production, the progressive placement of the artistic activity into the big cities (as considered after the theory developed by Charles Baudelaire, the metropolis as the definitive wagnerian "total artwork" -Gesamtkunstwerk, in German).
Maybe the main matter in this subject is the complex relationship between Aesthetics (Arts), Technique, Politics and Society. The teacher is professor Carlos Ossa.

I like it because of the conceptual strenght that must be -necessarily- employed on it, in a complex discourse that must involve several subjects such as Sociology, Capitalism, advertising analysis, Theory of merchandising, Theory of images, etcetera.

And well, I learnt a lot this semester: some things about Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, avant-garde in general, Cinema and of course, some interesting points related to Politics.

Monday 1 June 2009

The Greatest?











My English teacher asked me (actually, she asked us all in the class) to write about "who's the best on my field". Ok, but... My field? I suppose it has something to do with Arts, since I study Theory of Art (apart from that, I don't have a job nor anything like that). But, What kind of person in particular? An art historian, critic, or theorist? A philosopher? A man of letters? A musician? From the request for posting some images of his or her works, I deduced that the post must be about an artist in the most common sense of the term: a plastic artist, like a painter, a sculptor, a photographer, or a draftsman, and perhaps a moviemaker.

Well, in any case, it's hard to choose only one who may be called "the best" in his/her field, even in a subjective opinion. Personally, I have a lot of favourite artists, not necessarily between the best or most prominent artist of all times (in Western civilization, of course). Some of them are: Hans Bellmer, Max Ernst, Picabia, Joel Peter Witkin, Georg Grosz, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Holbein the Younger, Grünewald, Dürer, Giotto, Ingres, Watteau, Bernini, Arcimboldo, Vermeer, Hyeronimus Bosch, James Ensor, Magritte, Hopper, Turner, William Blake, Bramantino, Botticelli, Caravaggio, El Greco, Goya, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Manet, Cézanne, Picasso, Tolouse-Lautrec, Raoul Dufy, Derain, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Basquiat... Norman Rockwell? Why not? (as you can see, most of them are painters).

Now, the canonical artists considered between the greatest of all times, are usually the same as always. I mean, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Tiziano, Caravaggio, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso... and, among them, some radical transgressors of the Idea of Art, now acclaimed: Malevich, Duchamp, Pollock, Warhol... But: who can I choose as 'the best' without repeating the same names? Hard question. Because all of them are, according to the tradition and the conventions (but also according to solid parameters), great and essential, or at least, very important artists. Ok, I'll choose one significant to me.

And my choice was: El Greco.

Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco was a Greek born artist from the XVIth and XVIIth centuries (Baroque period), who lived most of his life in Spain, where he made his best known artworks. He was one of the most original painters who ever lived, and nowadays his style is still easily recognizable: tall, long figures (some experts believed that it was because of vision problems, and some others even thought that the artist consumed marijuana), delightful and expressive colors, mystical force... He painted some masterworks of all times, such as "El entierro del Conde de Orgaz" (The burial of the Count of Orgaz), "Visión de Toledo" (View of Toledo), and "La visión del Apocalipsis".

I like El Greco because of his unique style, because of his use of colors and lights and shadows, and his creative force, full of mysticism and magnificence. His paintings are very dark, in some way, they have a kind of hidden force that makes them mysterious and charming.

I think that he could be named "the best" because of many reasons. Maybe the main one is that he was an irrefutable and absolutely genial precursor of very later art styles, centuries after he died, and in an unique, unmistakable, original way. His formal and stylistic originality, I think, has almost unprecedented (just a few previous artists can be compared with it: Hyeronimus Bosch, Pieter Brughel the Elder, Michelangelo, Arcimboldo, between them). El Greco prefigured some modern and avant-garde art movements such as Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Modernism and Symbolism. His paintings are full of expression, religious sentiment, and force, almost violence. This is why El Greco can be considered, in my opinion, simply "the Best".

Friday 15 May 2009

Favourite Website?



There are a fistful of websites I can consider as favourites of mine, or something like that. If I have to choose one of them... Mm... it may be another blog, "Il Canto Sospeso" (the name's because of the work by Italian composer Luigi Nono, about the battles between partisans and fascists). I've found it by searching music composed by Igor Stravinsky, one of my favourite classical composers, in google... then it links me to this blog, and, what a surprise: I found the complete Stravinsky Edition (in Sony), a box-set over 15 compact discs, with the works of the composer, conducted by himself, to download for free!. I downloaded it immediatly.
After downloading the complete box-set, I realized that it contained a lot of works of contemporary classical music (which is an important 'item' in my extensive musical taste). All those discs are very hard to find, and most of the links are still able to download, if you're interested.
I visit this blog as soon as I can, and I use to left my PC working, downloading some disc while I do some other things. Well, as I told you before I'm a big music lover, so this blog is a wonderful site for me, specially since I don't have enough money to buy discs.


P. S.
The link is: http://ilcantosospeso.blogspot.com/

Monday 27 April 2009

On Theory of Arts




I told you before that I'm studying Theory of Art.

Why am I doing this?

Well I'm

not completely sure, but one first reason is: I have some free time by studying this, and that's an important point.

Second: I like Arts, I like to read and, a good point: this 'career' can be a good starting point to give you some knowledges concerning to other fields (Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, Politics, Archaeology, etc) of knowledge.

Well, I don't really know what will I do in the future. I don't even know if I'll continue studying in this field, or if I'll study another career, or if I'll leave university. I don't want starting work immediately after concluding this degree, and of this I'm sure.

What else can I say?

Art theorists or historians don't necessarily contributes directly to society (maybe they are, in some ways, dispensable in a basic one), but they inevitably work inside the system, by saying what is "a real artwork" and what isn't; by legitimizing some practices and valuing pieces of art; or by contributing to state cultural politics. Art theorist can also think about social and political problems starting from art-related thoughts.

An art theorist must know well, at least, some specific period in Art History. He/she must know the History of the different theories of art too, and must be conscious of the current problems concerning to Aesthetics, being capable to take part in present discussions.
I'm not sure about what is my favourite subject in this degree currently. Maybe one concerning on vanguards and problems related to it.

Monday 20 April 2009

A nice holiday






I'll tell you about the city of Valdivia, which I visited twice in my life. Then it was placed in the 10th region of Chile, known as "Región de los Lagos" (Region of Lakes), but nowadays it's placed in a recently created region: the 15th, called "Región de los Ríos" (Region of Rivers), because Valdivia's population wanted to have their own regional district, and the name's because there are many big rivers. Valdivia itself is a city built around the river Calle-Calle, a very beautiful one.


I went there with my father the two times, and the last one (about six years ago) just before a great trip to Chiloe. Then we did many things: first, we spend a lot of time trying to find a place to stay in. Later, we ate in different places, drank Valdivian beer, walked around the river, bought some things, visited some interesting buildings and, of course, talked a lot about almost everything. By example: we talked about the 1960 earthquake, one of the most severe ever registered, and its consecquences to the city: almost every old building has been destroyed. Anyway, Valdivia is one of the most beautiful places I ever visited. The landscape the river brings is wonderful. I recommend you to go there someday.

Monday 13 April 2009

Let me please introduce myself

Hi everybody. I'm Ignacio and I was born in 1987 in Santiago, Chile. I study Theory of Art (like the great Art Blakey's disc) at Universidad de Chile. I like arts very much, specially painting: but, anyway, music is that I like best. I really love music and I have an extensive musical taste. I like to read too: novels, poetry, tales, essays, History, Philosophy, etc. And maybe there's no many things more to tell about myself, but I hope I'll write some interesting things here. I hope I'll improve my poor English, too.

Greetings.
-Ignacio C.