LA

ESCUELA___

La Escuela___ moves forward with the program of its first semester with a formative project to be developed in Chile. This on-site Classroom is led by the Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata in collaboration with students and professors of the School of Architecture and Design of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (e[ad]-PUCV). The project focuses on the idea of the common as a territory of transits allowing us to confront relationships of empathy and misunderstanding. It entails a procession that will take place from June 24 through 27, 2022, departing from La Campana Hill to the port of Valparaíso. This open Classroom will be carried out in the context of the celebrations of the Mapuche new year, the feast of St. Peter, and the 70th anniversary of the e[ad]-PUCV.

LA ESCUELA___'s formative projects are situated collaborative works whose medium is education, presented as online Laboratories and on-site Classrooms. These programs seek to address pressing social, political, and ecological issues in different parts of Latin America through diverse artistic practices. For their development, the platform actively engages universities, institutions, artists, and students with their surrounding realities, to learn and act upon them. This upcoming Classroom is developed in collaboration with Corporación Cultural Amereida, the School of Architecture and Design of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (e[ad]-PUCV), and the Film School of the Universidad de Valparaíso (UV).

Anderson Barbata proposes The Experience of the Common as an invitation to create possibilities to explore shared spaces and dimensions collectively. The project brings students, teachers, and local communities together in an experiential reflection on the common: the air we breathe, the roads we travel, the relationships and responsibilities we assume, the public spaces. The Classroom encompasses three stages: first, approaching the communities, teachers in the fields of dance, architecture, design, cinema, and environmental issues, schools, activists, scientists, fishing communities, and students, to begin exploring the problems that occupy and unite us through conversations, meetings, and gatherings. The second stage implies building large-scale mobile organic sculptures, in collaboration with e[ad]-PUCV professors Marcelo Araya and Andrés Garcés, combining experimental practices of e[ad]-PUCV with collective dynamics designed by Anderson Barbata. The third stage involves a procession that will take the sculptures from the mountains down to the coast, passing through the towns of Olmué, Limache, Viña del Mar, and Valparaíso while collecting messages along the way to be delivered into the sea.

The transdisciplinary works of this New York-CDMX-based artist often take place in public spaces, combining character and narrative development with numerous collaborators, in addition to textile arts, sculpture, dance, masking, music, procession, improvisation, ritual, and protest.

The public actions will unfold in the context of the ancient celebration of We Tripantu — the Mapuche new year — which takes place on the southern winter solstice. On the dawn of the sacred day of June 24, the winter begins to recede as a new cycle of rains, production, and conversation with the Earth begins. The public procession will depart on that day from the Sanctuary of the Niño Dios de las Palmas in the town of Olmué, and will arrive at the port of Valparaíso on June 27, blending into the feast of St. Peter, the patron saint of fishermen, coves, and ports of Chile. This syncretic tradition has been celebrated for more than 120 years at El Membrillo cove, where boats decorated with lights, flowers and music parade the image of the saint through the sea, accompanied by singing and dancing from the people on the shore.