 Well, thank you very much for being here and welcome to tonight to this event and on public monuments contemporary art and social protest in Chile. The book that it's been just launched with lunch now. This is for me a very exciting moment that is connected to what is happening in the world now and in very particular with what is happening in Chile but also it's a important moment to reflect on monuments and what it implies what they imply and how their sides of of political dispute solidarity alternative experimentation and how important that is. My name is Andres Hake and I'm the Dean of the of the of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture planning preservation. I will be moderating tonight's event standing in for Professor Jorge Otero Pilos, who will be joining us remotely due to COVID and it's very sad but I'm so excited that we can use technology to to make sure that that Jorge is here with with us tonight. It is an honor to welcome you in our distinguished panelists to Columbia University tonight's event is co-sponsored by the historic preservation program at Columbia G sub directed by Jorge Otero Pilos. The Institute of Latin American Studies and the Columbia Global Center in Santiago de Chile. We are here to celebrate the US release of the book, sobre monumentos, the book that I have here with me, and that probably many of you have seen already. With five of the books contributors, which I will introduce shortly by all here the first row. We are here to the book captures a collective effort to rethink the social role of historic monuments to contemporary art in the context of the so called social explosion. The starting in October 2019, the social explosion was a spontaneous response to the Chilean government's decision to raise the cost of public transportation. It was initially led by university students. It went through to become an all in composing movement for social justice and equity. That cut across social economic lines, federated indigenous groups, feminist LGBTQ plus groups, climate activists, senior citizens and many other sectors of the population. The violent police repression ensued that left many bounded. The street fronts were destroyed. Historic buildings burned and monuments toppled. One of tonight's panelists Emilio Emilio de la thirda was serving as the sub secretary for cultural heritage for Chile's ministry of culture, arts and heritage. The third is an architect and partner of war architects. I actually met him as the Dean of the School of Architecture at the Catholica the director of the School of Architecture at the Catholica. He served as Secretary of the Council of Nation National Monuments of Chile from 2011 to 2014. And as I said, Dean of the School of Architecture at the Potifitia University Catholica, where he continues serving as professor. It fell on his shoulders to develop policies for how to approach the delicate subject of protecting heritage in the midst of the social explosion. He showed the need to entirely rethink how Chile approached heritage. He convinced a group of national and international experts at the intersection of contemporary art and preservation, including the other panelists here tonight. To imagine new futures for Chile's monuments, more in line with the forward thinking movement of experimental preservation. In January 2020, in the midst of the social explosion, he invited Professor Jorge Otero Pilos to Santiago to participate in this rethinking. Professor Otero Pilos. It's an artist architect and preservationist known for his practical and theoretical contributions to experimental preservation. He directs the historic preservation program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. His artworks have been exhibited at international biennials including Venice, an art in the collections of major museums internationally. Otero Pilos is the recipient of the 2021-22 American Academy in Rome's Royal Lincenstein's residency in the visual arts. He edited volume, historic preservation theory and anthropology readings from the 18th century to the 21st century that was published in October of this year. He serves on New York City's Public Design Commission's Conservation Advisory Group. He also convened Luis Montes, who is also here with us tonight, a sculptor and restorer who was charged with the difficult task of restoring the statue of General Bacchedano. The statue stood in the center of Santiago's Plaza Dignidad, which was the epicenter of the demonstrations during the social explosion. Montes is academic director of the Faculty of the Arts and professor of visual arts at the University of Chile. Among his many exhibitions, it is worth highlighting his solo show at the Museum Nacional de Bellas Artes 2019 and 2020, which consigns with the social explosion. The group of experts also included Michelle Bogart, who is also here with us. Who is professor emerita of art history and Stony Brook University at Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on public art in New York City and sees the author of many articles and books on the subject, including the Politics of Urban Beauty, New York and its art commissions, 2006 and a sculpture in Gotham, art and urban renewal in New York. From 1999 to 2003, she was by president of New York's Public Design Commission. She currently serves on the commission of conservation advisory group, which oversees the care of the city's monument. And lastly, Emilio also convened Cecilia Vicuña, an amazing, amazing artist that we all know and admire and poet known as one of the founders of conceptual art in Chile and many, many other things. Her concept of the Poetics of Precarity proposes a relational space between subjects and objects to performances and actions. This year alone, she was awarded the Golden Lion at the 59 international exhibition at the Venice Biennale, had the solo zone at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that I'm sure many of you have seen, and received the commission of the Tate Modern Sturbine Hall, which is one of probably the most exciting things that have happened to art in the last decade. The work is in the collection of Tate, MoMA, Santiago's Museum, Mocio Nacional de Bellas Artes, and many others, and I'm very honored to have worked with Cecilia and an amazing installation of a quipu in the San Javier Yenial and a sound piece that we did together for those. She was very, very generous to do with a project that is called Wet Togetherness that was so, so impressive and I encourage everyone to find it. This will make brief opening statements. Then we will turn to the panel discussion. We will start with, let me assure it. We will start with Emilio, Emilio III, that will be followed by Michel Bobar. Then we will have Luis Montes intervening, and then Cecilia Vicuña, and then Jorge Otero will intervene remotely, and then we will all be here and I will be honored to moderate the discussion and Q&A with all of you. So please, Emilio. Well, thank you very much, Andrés. Thank you, everybody, for being here today. It's a great honor to be here with all the authors you mentioned. I want to send a special kind of thanks to Jorge, that it's with COVID today and he's not with us and he is the organizer of all of this. To the Historic Preservation Program, to the Institute of Latin American Studies, and also the Columbia Global Center for making this possible, and to Sarah Grace, of course, for the organization and support. Thanks also to Cecilia, Michel, and Luis for being part of the book about monuments, primarily launched during last summer in Chile and for all your presence today in the panel. As we have seen in many contexts around the world during the last decade, 2019 was also in Chile a period of intense social protests, the greatest since the recovery of democracy more than 30 years ago. And after five governments of political and institutional stability, economic growth, poverty, alleviation, access to higher education, among other improvements in the standards of living of the population. This was at least what raised indicators and reports shows when we analyze this period of our recent history. I don't know. Here to change this one. Okay, here. During these years and according to this process, the idea of a massive social outburst that shows an underground dissatisfaction incubated over time was something unthinkable. The state of situation changes drastically after October of 19. In 1920 2019 things, the massive protests and the violent destruction of public goods that was one of the faces of these events was at the same time at the paradox and an urgent call to stop the march. We needed to understand this emergence trying to distinguish between the difference kind of forces and motivations that were acting on the public space. At the same time, as a society, we started to discuss the ways to find a renovated social agreement, capable to include all these forms of material political and intangible disagreements and demands. The particularities of Chilean protests was that they stressed and challenged the symbols represented on public monuments on the main cities and emblematic places of the country. As remnants of structures of domination of the past and all expired order that new times were called to overcome. Maquedano Square in Santiago and the equestrian monument that gives its name to this emblematic place of the city was the seismic epicenter of the whole movement. This was beyond the scope of the image of the singular local hero of the Pacific War of the end of the 19th century, whose sculptor was installed in the place in 1928 becoming since then a landmark of the whole country. During days, weeks and months we saw how founding fathers colonial features, industrial personalities as in some way every symbol that smells to power was intervened, beaten, painted, vandalized, replaced it and eventually retired from public space. New values and identities were pushing to their recognition in a massive way of color music performance, but also confrontation and appropriation of the common goods of the city. Because the situation Chilean protests had this contradictory mixture of hope and rage of celebration and destruction. Maybe because of this ambiguity, especially at the beginning, violence was was not condemned as an unacceptable political tooling democracy. The so called social outbreak cracked the state of situation criticizing the last decades and demanding urgent changes in living condition. This was the origin of the dramatic political agreement accorded by the Chilean parliament on October 25 to start the process to peace and a new constitution trying to find a political way to change the generalized crisis. In this context, as the public authority of cultural heritage of the country and working hand by hand with a great number of professionals NGOs, ministries, institution, public services among others, we try to protect cultural assets and historic patrimony from destruction and at the same time to reflect and understand the scope motivations and perspectives of what was happening. The retirement of General Vakedano amplified in real time by all the mass media and the process of restoration taken by the Atelier of Luis Montes reflected this in a condensate way. We were forced to act drastically and fast after one year and a half of interventions. Not as a way to high protest, but as a way to protect people's integrity and the permanence of the monument itself. Perhaps we were monitoring the stability of the monument after every event. During a manifestation in March 2021, two of the bronze legs of the horse were almost sliced, putting in life risk a lot of people that were in the place and threatening the art and historical piece itself. The cinematographic and complex retirement of Vakedano with the empty plinth that stayed in the square was interpreted as one of the main symbols of social outbreak. Some people considers it reflects the defeat of the rule of law and history. Other groups appreciate the protection of the attacked monument. Some considers it a good new because this could be the first step for a new urban design of the whole area. Others associated it as the major movement of iconoclasm in Chilean recent history and others celebrated as a political triumph. As an open symbol, many of these lectures were possible and also complementary. In parallel to the work of protecting the historic and emblematic monument whose imminent fall could endure or kill several protesters, we started a rigorous work of restoration of which Luis will tell more details. Considering that through the single monument literally past the energy of the protest, we decided to use the experimental preservation approach proposed by Jorge Otero Bailos and others to rescue the palimpsest of paintings and elements that covered the piece, becoming an unexpected complex archive and one of the most symbolic material remnants of this historic period. In this artificial and synthetic skin, we reflected the rage, the joy, the demands, the shame, the attempt to normalize the will of order, the fire, the dust, the tear gas, the colors as the rainbow, the green, the white, the red and the black. All the pain that tries to clumsily imitate the patina of the bronze as a way to restore the dignity of the monument is in the middle of this uproar, this kind of social thunder running in parallel to the efforts to protect and understand the phenomena that booked about monuments was conceived. We thought that some of these chapters and the merit to be registered as a real time memory. We thought also that we needed to force perspective of something that was pure inmanence, including voices from other disciplines approaches and context to enrich and open the debate, helping us to work out from our own interpretative frames. The book, edited by the Catholic University Edition and the Center of Cultural Heritage of the same university with the National Council of Monuments of Chile, is in this sense a chronicle of a moment and a specific context. But at the same time, a wider reflection about art heritage, social changes, public space and cultural goods, with the aim to go beyond the inner limitations of the specific case. In some of these was a sheet is thanks to the merits of artists, scholars, thinkers and professionals that accepted our invitation and host lucid lectures helped us to understand and give sense to all these events. In addition to the authors of today's panel, this publication includes texts of Fernando Perez, director of National Museum of Arts and the current national price of architecture. Olay San Fuentes is a scholar and chair of the conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies that will take place in Santiago, some days before today, during the last week, and works of Pilar Quinteros and Dres Durán, notable and young Chilean artists that enrich the debate with very pertinent contributions. A part of them, it's especially significant that the rest of the authors of this project are here today with the happy and unexpected coincidence that three of them live here in New York. Having them here gathered with Luis, I don't think it's necessary for me to summarize the scope of their contributions to this humble book and to their disciplinary field of knowledge in a wider manner. I just want to say that all of the authors that are here today have a provocative and a long term reflection about monuments, history, communities, art, preservation, material memory, legislation and the political scope of these charged concepts. Because of all of the above mentioned, I want to give the floor to them and start this conversation on public monuments and thank you very much. I don't know. Forgive me, I just, I'm not sure how the slides are supposed to go here. Go right. Okay. How do I start it. I haven't done computer. Good evening, everybody, and thank you so much for coming and and thank, thank you all who put this program together I'm really honored to to be here. I'm here is something as something of an outlier as a historian of urban civic art and the built environment, but primarily in New York City, and from, but ranging from the late 19th century into the present day. Some of the case studies I've explored over time were intended to be celebrations. So I have a few examples here on the left. Others commemorative and elegiac fireman's memorial on the right various more recent ones involved overt social critique, phenomenological explorations or self reflexivity, and more. My research on contemporary public art has focused primarily on that which was either municipally sponsored or facilitated through public private partnerships between the city and nonprofits. And so these would be examples of those. I say all this to point out that I'm no expert on contemporary art and social protest in Chile. I come to these discussions as one who's taken issue with some of the effects of social protest upon the older monuments populating urban landscapes be it in Santiago, Valparaiso, Chicago or New York City, namely their denunciation and in some cases removal. I understand completely the reasons for such actions, but believe they are misguided. And which is not to say that I disagree with what has been done. For example in Santiago with a bucket on since that time. So I, I'm not coming at this from. Let's say a conservative republican perspective. My perspective is my own. And my reasons are grounded in the kind of detailed analysis I've undertaken for the last 30 odd years. The removals of older monuments have been premised on the single minded idea that monuments are celebrations of their subjects and remain so, and that their continued presence validates those subjects. I regard monuments as culminations or embodiments of processes involving a range of individual visual actions, actors, organizations groups with differing motivations and entailing different conditions and circumstances and stories that are as much about municipal history and different people as anything else. Sorry, let's see when we go back. No, okay, go forward. Virginia's Virginia Arias is monument to Manuel Bakadano, for example, in Santiago's Plaza Italia, or that's what it was called I don't know what it's called that now. This work has been vilified and removed and you'll learn much more about all that and you already have. And the removal as I understand it was is ostensibly temporarily but that doesn't appear to be the case any longer. And it's been removed for Bakadano's role in suppressing the rebellion of the indigenous much Pucci chiefs and occupation of out of Kenya, but a full exploration of the monuments conception and development within the context of urban and political politics and focusing on specific individuals circa 1928, for example can offer important nuanced insights into the workings of the municipality and the activities and power players of Santiago and the Chilean nation. Similarly, detailed investigations of the three Columbus monuments in Chicago, and the two out of five in New York City revealed that the circumstances underlying the genesis of each of them. Beyond the obvious desire to celebrate Columbus as harbinger of civilization versus barbarism symbol of religious triumph and manifest destiny and assertion of Italian American pride and presence presence in the face of prejudice. All of these monuments were completely different. In these cases, monuments shed light on family dynamics and estate politics the Samuel Tilden monument on Riverside Drive. The Lafayette monument in Brooklyn. Since these circumstances can be nuanced, very human, and more insightful than the sweeping and sometimes superficial claims about the venality of the hero depicted examination of works like the Bakadano, or Columbus monuments in Valparaiso or Chicago or anywhere else from perspectives that don't take racial class or gender injustices as the sole point of departure for investigation or judgment can offer alternative complimentary findings that enhance our understanding of the urban built environment and urban history and the evolution of cities more broadly they enable us to appreciate these works in ways that are constructive and life enhancing. Thank you. Muy buenas tardes. Mi nombre es Luis Montes Rojas. Y lo primero que voy a hacer es disculparme porque hoy Emilio gentilmente me va a ayudar a traducir esta ponencia. Yes, he's Luis Montes Rojas. Jorge Otero Paglos was supposed to translate Luis. So it's very funny. I'm not the best translator, but we will try. Bueno, muchas gracias a la universidad por la invitación al de Cano, a Jorge Otero y al equipo que ha permitido este evento. Thank you very much to Jorge, to the Dean, Andrés and all the staff that is making possible this event. Cuando me toca hablar de este tema, posiblemente se me producen muchos problemas porque mi papel no es único. When I was asked to talk about this topic, I felt very troubled because my paper, the paper of Luis in this kind of discussion is not unique. Soy escultor, soy académico, universidad e investigador y al mismo tiempo oficio de restaurador. Y por lo tanto me toca estar en muchos papeles respecto de la actuación sobre un monumento. Luis is a scholar, researcher and a restaurer of monuments, so he's capable to see the phenomena in a very diverse way. Y por lo tanto ya que el evento dice relación respecto del patrimonio y el arte contemporáneo, voy a partir por el arte contemporáneo. I will start by the contemporary art because this event is trying to talk about monuments and its relation to the art. Mi trabajo relaciona la escultura con una vinculación histórica, entendiendo que esta disciplina tiene un vínculo indisoluble con la noción de monumento. Y su trabajo relaciona la escultura y la historia, porque se siente que estos dos temas están en una forma muy intrínseca. Esta obra que tenemos atrás parece un coro de mujeres gritando y da la casualidad que en una restauración producida por un gran... El daño de una escultura producida por un gran terremoto en Chile en el año 2010 permitió visualizar el rostro de la escultura que estaba en un pedestal a 10 metros de altura. This is a work of Luis that was exposed at the National Museum of Art that was located in the city in an upper location. And the earthquake of 2010 allows us to see this face in a very closer way. En la investigación de este monumento descubrimos que su origen no estaba en Chile sino en Perú. In the research to restore the monument they discovered that the origin of this monument was in Peru and not in Chile. El ejército chileno lo toma de una bodega y lo lleva hacia la ciudad de Talca. The militars of Chile take the monument and put it in Talca in Chile. Para nuestra sorpresa el monumento no había sido destituido, el monumento original seguía en Perú. The original monument was still in Perú. No tanto lo que teníamos que saber era por qué un monumento había sido desechado, por qué esta escultura no estaba puesta sobre el pedestal. So we needed to know why this sculpture was in this place and not in the original place that it was think to be in the public space. Finalmente, la gran diferencia entre la escultura que queda en Perú y la que se va a Chile era el rostro de la mujer. Finally, the mainly difference between the original sculpture and the one that was in Chile was the face of the woman. Y ese rostro fue el que tomamos, tomé como referencia para producir esta instalación en el museo. This face was taken by Luis to make this installation in the exhibition in the museum. El gran muro era repletado por las máscaras tomadas del monumento que se ubica ahora en Chile. Lo importante para mí es pensar que históricamente la mujer nunca había sido considerada sujeto de la historia. Sino objeto para la historia. One thing that was important for Luis was that the woman was not considered the subject of history but the object of history. La utilización de la imagen de la mujer servía para poner materialmente en escultura a través de la escultura la referencia a la libertad, a las bellas artes, a la justicia y en este caso a la victoria. The presence of women was a tool to express another kind of values like liberty, victory among others. Por lo tanto, este se empieza a configurar como una especie de anti-monumento. So for him this is something like an anti-monument. Porque creo que habla justamente del rechazo de una escultura por un gesto extremadamente violento que no se le permitía a la mujer. He believes this work talks about the rejection of an expression that was not allowed for a woman. Esta obra entonces se llama Histérie, el nombre es tomado obviamente del francés, y esa referencia a la hysteria como la enfermedad mental atribuida a las mujeres en una muy compleja relación. The name of the work is history in reference to the mental disease of the hysterical woman. Obviamente para mí es una muestra de la complejidad del tema respecto de los monumentos y especialmente de la mirada contemporánea sobre aquellos valores que se materializan en la escultura. For him this work is a way to show the complexity of monuments and the way they are appearing in public space. En general, la iconoclasia tiene que vivir con la escultura, no necesariamente con la pintura, mientras los monumentos caen en la ciudad, las pinturas siguen cómodamente colgadas en los museos. The iconoclasm is about the sculptor more than a painting, while the sculptors are falling down, the paintings are still comfortable in the museum. Gracias. La escultura propone una relación particular, porque hay una diferencia brutal entre una pintura y una escultura. La escultura propone un cuerpo. El cuerpo reemplaza al héroe y por lo tanto lo que tenemos ahí no es necesariamente un objeto, no es solo un objeto. Y aquí tomamos una idea que propone Jorge Otero Pailos cuando va a Santiago de Chile en 2020 y que fue la idea del patrimonio en diálogo. We took the idea for Jorge Otero Pailos when he was in Chile about the heritage in dialogue. Because we were invited to the National Council of Monuments to defend the permanence of this monument in its location. Maquedano was in this sense the first manifestant, was part of the protest and was transformed by the protestors. Los daños que estaba recibiendo la escultura no eran de carácter permanente, o sea, el monument podía seguir estando ahí. The damages of Maquedano were not permanent, so the monument could be still in its place. Lo que ocurre en Chile no necesariamente es igual a lo que ha ocurrido ni en Estados Unidos, ni en España, ni en Argentina, ni en Belgica. What happens in Chile is different from what we have seen in other contexts like Spain, Belgium, among others. Y por qué digo esto? Porque no solo las esculturas o los monumentos con carácter militar o de conquistadores fueron atacados. And this because not just the military monuments or conquer monuments were attacked. En esta fotografía ven el busto de José Martí, poeta y inspirador de la revolución cubana, que estaba ubicado cerca del monumento de Maquedano y igualmente fue grafiteado. Entonces lo que pasa en Chile más bien tiene que ver con una ola de manifestación contra la noción de autoridad materializada en el monumento. En todo monumento. In every monument. Perdón, eso fue, it's my mistake. Por lo tanto, elizamiento de Maquedano, sacar a Maquedano de ese lugar, no puede ser pensado como un acto iconoclasta. So the retirement of Maquedano is not an act of iconoclasm. No más bien una acción del Estado donde ejerce el derecho a preservar su propia historia. But an action in which the state is trying to preserve its own history. Por lo tanto, la acción de restauración y aquí en Garza vincula con lo presentado por Emilio en su ponencia, tampoco vino a borrar toda la historia que estaba sobre el monumento. So the restoration action was not an effort to erase the history accumulated over the monument. En cinco sectores de la superficie del monumento fueron resguardadas áreas de conservación donde hoy todavía puedes ver la pintura que fue acumulada durante las manifestaciones. In five songs of the monument we preserve the painting that was accumulated over during the manifestations. Por eso me parece que el trabajo sobre este tipo de situaciones son extremadamente complejas, porque consideran la noción de patrimonio, la relación con la historia, la relación con la política, la identidad y un punto que me gustaría nunca perder la relación de estos objetos con el propio arte y la noción de autor. So the work over this kind of species is very complex, because you have to deal with the idea of heritage of patrimony, history, politics, identity, art, among others, I will say. Finalmente, hoy estamos a la espera de la decisión del gobierno respecto de qué sucederá con el monumento de Váquedano. Finally we are waiting for the final decision about the destiny of Váquedano, where the peace will be finally. Hoy espera en el patio del museo histórico militar la definición de su localización. Today the monument waits in the courtyard of the museum of military history, its final location. En el intertanto, el arte contemporáneo debe seguir pensando este tipo de cuestiones. In between contemporary art will still be thinking about this kind of questions. Esta obra se llama ornamento y lo que hace es modelar en pequeñas estatuillas a los militares que sufrieron mutilaciones en la guerra del pacífico a finales del siglo XIX, entre guerras entre Chile, Perú y Bolivia. This work is named ornament and shows the models taken by these pictures of mutilated soldiers during the pacific war at the end of the 19th century. Estas fotografías son fotografías de archivo, son fotografías que se ocupaban para poder pagarle el subsidio del Estado por el cuerpo dañado por el miembro perdido. These photographs are from a public archive. Y a partir de estas modelé las pequeñas esculturas que tienen el tamaño preciso para poder estar dentro de las casas. Lo que me interesaba era que ya que los cuerpos mutilados no pueden estar en el espacio público, entonces podían ser ornamentos en el interior de una casa. It was interested in the capacity of these mutilated bodies to be an ornament inside a house. Y casi en una operación militar los camuflamos y los metimos en la casa de un antiquario. As a military strategy, they put it in the house of a collector of antiquities. So now the sculptures are part of this domestic landscape. If we were not able to give them honor in the public space, they have this position and this way to think about them through contemporary art. Muchas gracias. Arbol de vida, tree of life. I think I did that work, maybe 81, 82. And I decided to bring up this image because when Luis Emilio invited me to write for this book, I thought it must be a mistake. Why should I have to write about monuments when my life has consisted in gathering basuritas, little debris, and making these words, words I said, no works, that if you breathe too strongly next to them they fall apart. And as you can see this work has lots of repairs because it really breaks by itself. Nevertheless, it has survived. So has this one. If you are students of architecture, you know that these little palitos, these little sticks that you use to make models are usually thrown out when they're broken. Those are the kinds of things that I pick up. And I weave them together with sewing thread. If you have ever handled sewing thread, you know that it also falls apart by itself. And I was trying to find images for you. And I don't have a lot of patience with the computer and suddenly this image popped up. And I put it in here. But what I was so struck by the wonderment of Luis Montes, having brought up this and also Luis Emilio, the image of Baguiano being lifted by a thread. I thought what a fantastic way in which when a group of speakers are gathered together, often I see that something connects our minds, because we're thinking of a common place where we're going to be seeing each other and talking to each other. So something that is not us picks the images. And this is what happened with this work. This is a little stone. The actual piece is about this big. And it is a Micah stone that existed in the northeast of the US. As you know, there's a lot of Micah in this part of the world. And to me, those are endlessly fascinating because they shine like a night star, like a night sky. And also, this piece couldn't be more fragile. And so, in order to speak a little about what is it that I wrote for Mr. Emilio, because I tried to dissuade him from having me write about this, because I really didn't think I would have anything to say about it. And somehow, I don't know what you did with Emilio, but here I am. And so, I'm not going to really read you what I wrote, but I'm just going to hover over it. So I thought I asked him, actually, why me and the monument when most people would think of me as the living anti-monument. Because of my basuritas and my focus on everything that disappears, dissolves, and is never heard of again. And he said precisely because of that. So that opened me to think of what is it that one could think about the document, the document, look what I said document instead of monument, because in truth the monument is document and likewise. So I came to think of the word monument itself. And if I remember correctly, I started to focus on that particular word. So it says, the word monument is the witness to a relationship. It comes from the Latin Monumentum, from Monere to Council, Warn, Admonish, like in Spanish, Admonistal, Warn. The question is of what it wishes to warn us. Of course, I'm aware that nobody thinks of the monument as a warning today. But in the ancient past, it may have meant that, of course, when we deal with etymology, we are dealing with the imagination or the hypothesis of what a meaning could have been. Why the word was constructed like a little monument itself, a linguistic monument, how come it has survived more than 2000 years. And the meaning keeps changing. If you look at the dictionaries, they could say something like this. The structure erected as a memorial, venerated for a certain reason, an admirable achievement. From the Latin, Monere, Monet, to warn, make known, advise, recall, and even earlier, proto-Indo-European men to think the linguistic zero of the Greek menos, spirit and mentor, and call nemosine, goddess of memory, mother of the nine muses, and of its country, amnesia, and other variants, monitor, monster, premonition. To predict a good prophecy, says Virgil, orrenda monere, la orripilante, la espantosa, el horror, lo que no queremos saber. And of course, maybe the energy behind the attack of the monuments, because practically in every revolution or change of system, just as Luis was saying so beautifully, that the monument is actually a body. So people either attack it, or they make it one of their own. I love that idea that Bacchedano was manifesting, of course. And when I was studying this issue, I encountered a story from Mesopotamia. Perhaps I am just improvising now a few thousand years ago, when an archaeologist, I believe he was an American archaeologist, digging, and discovers a monument that had been attacked, very much like Bacchedano, but very different from Bacchedano, because the monument had had its eyes extracted and removed. So that the monument could not see anymore, and therefore could not be respected, regarded as important because its vision could not be valid anymore. So another aspect of this meditation was to make me think of the fact that the change of a scale, and it's very interesting that you did the same thing, Luis. In pre-Columbian America, there was a concept of a scale that is very particular of American America, which is that, for example, you find these all the way from North America to the deep South America, which is that sometimes a little sculpture of a temple or a little textile could be done this big, maybe an inch tall, and then the same piece could be expanded to be very, very large. And this I associate the way of seeing the landscape that is also characteristic of Latin America, of ancient America, which is, and you see it, for example, in the Southwest in the US, you see it in Mexico and in the Andes in Nazca. And also the Kipu is one of these ideas where the people would see their bodies and their city, their town, in a sort of a scale that is a cosmic scale, where they would design these straight roads that connected not just to a place thousands of miles away, but also to the stars and the constellations where water is born, for example. So I began thinking, why is it that this concept of the scale is not applied anymore to the scale of imagination. And I reversed the thought to think that the word monument has become also the notion of what is monumental. So in my meditation, I was thinking, what is monumental about our time, beyond the social protest, which is universal now all over the planet, because what is monumental is our destructiveness. What is monumental now is the notion that we are destroying our home, and yet we don't want to think about it. So what kind of monumentality is our indifference, our insensitivity, our loss of humanness, our loss of humanity, isn't that what is really monumental. And so the destruction, which as you have demonstrated, was a soft destruction, because it wasn't really a destruction, it was more a performance than, I love the idea that in Chile, for example, people could not distinguish Martín, they probably didn't know that Martín was a poet that fought for the liberation of Cuba and that actually died in the defense of the independence of Cuba. And so it doesn't matter where people knew or not knew, because I think your point is true, that it is the authority that is being attacked, but why is the authority being attacked? Because the authorship, it's been forgotten, and this is my personal view, that two people in this room know that the word author comes from an ancient Latin expression. The word author, and it is the birth of that is coming from the observation of the flight of birds, and so the word augmentar, augment, augment comes from that same vision, and so that's the word augurio. So what has been forgotten is a way of observing the real, of serving what is around us, and the author is really the one that enhances, deepens what is being seen for others to see and appreciate. So the authorship of the monuments is what is really being questioned, not just the authority, but what is even behind the authority or the word authoritarian is the fact that we now, I believe, and this is for me the energy of the social process around the world, is that people wish to reclaim the empowerment of being authors themselves of their own rights and their own thoughts, and that is where I leave my talk in the question of what is it that is being attacked and what is going to climb up. Oh, sorry. Thank you for letting me know that I'm muted so thank you all. It's, I'm really gutted not to be there I'm very sorry I can't be there. I want to start by thanking Dean hockey for his support of this event for stepping in and and for his longtime support of preservation I also want to thank my co panelists and of course Sarah grace for putting all of this together. I want to share with you an experience of how I've used art as a method not only to preserve monuments but also to expand their meanings. But of course this is not just a one way street. My arts contact with monuments has also entangled it in unexpected social processes, changing it fundamentally and rather than resist these social processes I've chosen to embrace them. I want to work and to allow them to push my own ideas about what art and preservation can be. So here we are. This is Westminster Hall in London in the houses of parliament. It's been years of work leading up to this moment where we cleaned the wall on the right in collaboration with parliamentary estates as part of an art angel public art commission that used latex to lift all of the dust on the on the wall on the right and presented just four blocks away from the wall as a large public artwork. It was meant to be a very slow summer it was the public art piece for the summer so people could come into Westminster Hall which had been closed to the public it was originally a public space but this was a way of reopening it back up to to the public. So little did we know that that date June 23 was also the date of the Brexit vote, and where it was not really on anyone's radar, you know it was supposed to be a non event but of course it was a world changing event. And the next day, police presence began to be beefed up. This is the entrance to Westminster Hall. Journalists began to arrive you can see in the background over here the artwork hanging in Westminster Hall. And as we were putting the final touches on the piece journalists began to gather around around the work, waiting for the politicians to arrive because this is the entrance where all the politicians have to come in this is the entrance to Parliament it's the entrance to the House of Lords and the House of Commons. And these journalists were there to make sense of these very recent events and they were trying to make sense of the immediate the now. The background of all of that was this piece this piece, the ethics of dust which was showing 1000 years of dust. And as these journalists began to write about the the events. They actually began to talk about the artwork and to put the events of Brexit into historical perspective, in a way by lifting the dust off of the walls they they began to look at the building that they had taken for granted and then began to question, you know, what is this place and began to write into their articles about politics, thoughts about the, the, the, the place in which they were at. Now it had been a very tumultuous lead up to this vote. Here you have the ethics of dust on the right. And on the left was a temporary memorial to Joe Cox, who was a politician, a member of parliament who was killed by a right wing extremist who disagreed with her position to that the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union. So in the following days as we walk down to Westminster Hall and here you have big Ben which is attached to Westminster Hall. Just thousands of people began to gather on the way down to Westminster Hall. And this is the kind of setting that we are living in. So as people walk down to Westminster Hall, here they are in front of Penn Downing Street. Penn Downing Street and the campaign of Slaves of Art was challenged. Here are the kind of people fighting on the way down. So this is when we finally arrived to Westminster Hall. Westminster Hall is over here. They, this is, this is all the people that, that, you know, would gather around. And then, you know, you couldn't really get into Westminster Hall because there was police presence. There are all these different journalists gathering around Westminster Hall. But actually, you know, our piece was meant to let the public into Westminster Hall. So people were able to get a free ticket to go see the artwork. In fact, people started wising up and they started getting these free tickets to go see the artwork. In fact, to be able to get into Westminster Hall and confront politicians inside. And this was the experience that was in the back of my mind as I traveled to Chile and started to think about what was going on in Chile. And think about the way that monuments are these, these really these shared objects that are part of social processes. And that through contemporary art, when we begin to intervene in these monuments, we're also beginning to intervene in these social processes. The Westminster Hall, which you can see here on this is this door on the right is Westminster Hall. It's this door over here, 1000 year old building that burnt down and around it. All the buildings around it burned down in 1834, but Westminster Hall people poured out from London to try to preserve it because it was seen as such an important place. It was important because really significant political events happened there, like the trial of Charles I and 1649, which was the first time that a ruler had been tried and convicted by Parliament. Charles I tried to proclaim himself dictator essentially, and to revoke the Magna Carta and suspend Parliament and become an absolute monarch like Louis XIV. But Parliament sees them and judge them in the inside Westminster Hall and condemn them to death. And so that was the first time that a ruler was held to be accountable to the law, just like everybody else. And now in our modern democracies, we have this enacted every four years, we take our presidents and, you know, we move them out and have a new president in. Now what I was very interested in is this the materiality of Westminster Hall and I was very interested in thinking of the materiality as extending, not only to the social world but also to the environmental world, and to think of the dust in Westminster Hall as an architectural material. And so here you have a view from 1952, the Great Smog of London, which was deposited on the walls of Westminster Hall, all this, all of this dust. This was the first time that a correlation was made between environmental pollution and mortality rates. They were very, they were able to closely map them. And also the year in which King George VI died and of course here he is lying in state and on the left you can see the stained wall, and all those stains on the left over here are the stains that we were able to lift off and made into that work, the ethics of dust. Now the more recent funeral procession you can see that the wall is all clean. Never mind these little stages for journalists these these were made to look like stone but they're actually plywood. There's a difference in the clean over there and this is this is that that dust that was lifted off of the wall. Now, for me what was important is to show this dust as part of the history of the place was to also show a collective history to show what we make together as part of how we shape the environment and shape the world. This partly, you know, having to do with what Cecilia just mentioned of course that our relationship to the world is highly, you know, problematic. But I wanted to include it here because what we have in this space is really just a history of of the great people the great events that happen there in these plaques. And so I wanted to include this larger, this larger history right next to it, and to bring light quite literally bring light into to that history by casting light onto the screen. Now, because of all that happened there because this was the background to the to the to the social protest. There was a lot of interest in this piece from different museums and so a conversation started about, well really what should be the destination of this piece of this dust that comes out of Westminster Hall but where should it go. And so after a lot of discussion the decision was made that it shouldn't go to just one place. And so we decided together to cut it into seven pieces. And they were sent to national museums in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, City of London, so all of the nations of the United Kingdom. And this idea of distributing the monument, the distributing the fragment of the monument was to me a really thing new I you know I had always thought that if you cut up a monument, if you cut up a historic monument if you take fragments from them. If you cut up an artwork, you're basically destroying it, but here by cutting the work and distributing it to different monuments it actually to different museums, it actually acquired meaning and help to expand the meaning and the sets of social relations that this building could have. And here you have a piece of the of the work and you can see how this piece this part correlates to that part. And this is how I was that piece was shown at the Whitworth Museum in Manchester, when they had this whole exhibition on politics and parliamentary democracy. And a couple years after the Brexit vote when this was still going on so now these fragments are able to enter into a longer dialogue in different places and carry out this social process, this in relationship to the original building so for me this was really important to think about a different way to describe these monuments and so I began to think about the notion of distributed monuments, and to think about the way in which a fragment of a monument can can move and be distributed and still be connected to the original and still be able to both expand its meaning and and mesh it in new and contemporary dialogues and social processes about the future. So I'll stop there and I thank you very much my apologies for not being able to join you in person. Thank you very much. I would like to open it to the audience so those that have questions please start raising your hands and I'll be paying attention. But before maybe I'd like to do a couple of questions to all of you thank you for your brilliant and really timely and necessary interventions. And the first, I'd like to acknowledge two important things that have been crossing the different presentations today. The first has to do with the with what the monument is and what a monument does right and what is the notion of monument that that we can think of now and what is the one that is useful to understand the complexities that have been in Chile in in in recent times and very specifically in the case of the back of the square and the document and and monument and I think that there's something that that is being through the different presentations that the monument has ever was seen as permanent and in a kind of device that provides hegemony that's not the case here. It's not something that is useful for for us understand what happens here, but I've been hearing that the month that the monument something that is multiple unstable distributed that could be found out of the basuritas and that it's really there where where we can see the monument as collectively produced as something that is politically useful and that becomes really a space of dispute. I think this is something that is being crossing the different presentations and I know person Michelle talks of the multi dimensionality of the of the monument that I think we, we should somehow focus on and this is something that we can discuss. And the second I think it's back and I know I think it's floating here as something that it's, it's been also very much present in the presentations and when I when we see this. I'm also referring to the fragility of this thing hanging right and floating and and sort of this thing this heavy thing of bronze is meant to be there forever and it's we've heard that was losing its legs and that it was basically we see it fragile and basuritas become much more stable and sort of consensual that this this this. We've seen back again as monument in three different ways. One is that it's the back and I know as removed the pedestal without the back and I know the other is the back and I know painted and when people with people on top of it and, and all these multiple and collective effort to dispute what it means. And then back and I know multiplied in these layers and ripped off and distributed like Jorge would say. I wonder what is that that we can discuss about these different versions this multiplicity or or sort of coexistence of many different versions and I think that all of you refer to this way of this multiplicity or this multi scholars. The reference to scale that the failure that, but in different capacities, all of you refer to this tension and this way of challenging the unicity and the authority of the monument by multiplying it and acknowledging it's a collective dimension and each of you were referring to different capacities, Luis, some content in your different hearts as contemporaries as a person that is engaged in preservation and so something that is institutionally engaged with that. And his capacity also as, I would say public server and, and also intellectual thinking about the feeling in your amazing trajectory, challenging and confronting monumentality and authority, Michelle as an intellectual and scholar reflecting on monuments is also your engagement in the city of New York with it and Jorge in the development of this notion of experimental preservation and distributed monuments that you brilliantly presented today. I propose these two kind of balls or notes to start the conversation that I think that both of them are these two notes somehow have your interventions have gravitated around them, maybe we can start. Yeah, the beginning of the question. It starts with the question, what is the monument right. Monuments are all the monument is a grammar. It's a way to write on public space. In the grammar, it's clear and categorical monument is there to stay to become permanent. The main goal of monuments is to become permanent and therefore the materials used to build the monument are permanent and therefore the materials used to build the monument are permanent. The main goal of monuments is to become permanent and therefore the materials used to build money for monuments are those that can become permanent. So what we find here in the first place is an intention, an intention for to perpetuate something. So, but that is confronted that intention of permanence is approach to be destabilized in two different ways. One is the destitution of permanence by citizens of New York. So, but that is confronted that intention of permanence is approach to be destabilized in two different ways. One is the destitution of permanence by citizenship and the other is the destitution of citizenship by the state. And to me personally it seems to me more interesting the destitution by the state itself because that implies a reflection and a consciousness regarding the own history that the state has come to write. And the conscience of how history is materialized to monuments. What we find here, it's a transformation of social character that is already solidified and that the state is made of its own or it's made its own. Therefore, the intention first was never to withdraw it. In that sense, I am referring to that idea of Jorge Oteropailos, the idea of ​​patrimony in dialogue to allow the expression on the same monument and therefore the patrimony. I want to refer to a moment that we saw of the Bacchadano sculpture or monument where the monument became a site of public demonstration and what was important then it was not to remove the monument because that could be not to remove the monument so that the public demonstration can be allowed. I love this phrasing that you're using like it would turn it around. So you said el monument se convirtió en la manifestación, la manifestación se convirtió en el monument. So I will translate so that the monument became the rally, the manifestation of the people and the other way around. So I think that idea is extraordinary. Why? Because it's actually true. I am sure that's how the people experienced it. Being there in that plaza with a million people feeling like you felt that justice is necessary. It's an extraordinary and forgettable feeling, a monumental feeling. And that reflects the way the word and the concept behaves. It behaves through lips, through transformations and metamorphosis. Because the monument being something so-called solid, something that is physical, that has a body, as Luis was saying, becomes a monumental thing and people use it in speech. They say, ah, it's a monumental. And they refer to maybe somebody send you a look. And that was monumental for you because you thought this person didn't like you, for example. And it's so beautiful the way that this incredible flexibility exists within this solidity, solidity. So this beautiful paradox is what makes us human. And for me, that is what is monumental. That flexibility and ability to change the meaning. About the question, what is the monument that Andres was making? I remember I want to quote, I hope, in a good manner to Michel, that allows us to ask about who decides, not just what is the patrimony or what is a monument, but who decides what is this monument. This translation of the question puts us in the conditions about the definition of this monument. It's origin, the people, the structures of power, not in a dramatic way, but that are behind the decision about what could be in public space. I remember some years ago, 10 years ago in the National Council of Monuments, we were discussing about the, you know, the disconnection between society, communities, and public monuments. We discussed very much about cities, about neighborhoods, about how to preserve, about instruments of urban planning, archaeology and so on, relationship between archaeology and indigenous peoples and scientifics and so, but public monuments were something that seems to be not important for, for nobody, you know, they were there and were in some way almost nothing, part of the landscape. And eight years later, we were in this social outbreak in which monuments were in the center of the discussion. This is very important, I think, because monuments, they were important again, but in a different way, you know, I think this is very radical in what we are living about monuments. And the other question is about this multiplicity, this ambiguity of monuments that you were mentioning, I agree very much. I'm not very happy in some way about the way the discussion we are having in Chile is moving in this thing about monuments, because monuments are now a tool to fortress some political positions in some way, you know, Bacchidano protected in the museum, in the military historical museum is a way to fortress my vision about this process, you know, to affirm order, for example. And in the other hand, you see this idea of the monument just about just as an element that reflects the structures of power in some way, you know, and this ambiguity that is between this discussion and you said about how you remove the monument in terbine painted the multiplied layers and so on this this ambiguity that maybe is more fruitful to discuss about what we are living as a social crisis. And I think we are not using monuments as a bridge to discuss these things, but maybe as a way to divide the public discussion. I think that's a wonderful appreciation, Emilio. And I wish people in Chile were to hear this kind of conversation, and this kind of expression, because I agree I mean I am very moved by hearing all of you, Michelle also, because I'm a New Yorker now. And the way you see the monuments as a sort of set of relationships is really fascinating because it's true, you know, and this kind of deep truths that are all around us is what we're dismissing because we're occupied by the machine by the cell phone and this opportunity to think of what a horror, we are unleashing on each other, and on the world on the land is also part of thinking of the monument, because the monument as you said, did you say that it was a breach. I think that is quite true. And so it's an opportunity not to discuss, what is it that these tremendous performativity took place around the monument, why did they become monumental, they became monumental in that moment. What do you think? I mean one thing that it's been very clear is that there is something that is happening to the world now, right, that there's certain intensity in the way structures of power are being challenged around the world. It feels that the fragility of the monuments that were explained here is also expressing the fragility of structures of power and authority that in the past were seen much more capable of being stabilized. I think for instance the way horror generated the 1952 moment, that's the moment where pollution became, for the first time you said connected to mortality rates, and was the moment it was basically the dust, the pollution, the particles in the earth became visible and they became short of a matter of fundamental I would say discussion and admin. And I wonder what's the way that the number of structures of power that are related to modernity, globalization, planetary exploitation, destruction, segregation, racism, we could go on anthropocentrician or we see them cracking, failing everywhere. It's somehow something that we can relate to these other lives and performances around monuments and maybe Jorge you want to expand on that because I think that the thin layer, the way you contextualize the thin layer of dust in Westminster was very much addressing this. Thank you, it's a very insightful way of kind of guiding the discussion to talk about the way in which these monuments are enabling a kind of relationship between constituents and political frameworks and political structures that are fraught. And I think that this is, I want to acknowledge just the, the, how daring it was for the work that Emilio and Luis and others did in Chile because there was so much pressure to take down that monument you know the military was insistent that it be removed. And, and the fact that they resisted and allowed it to remain there for as long as they could really enabled the interaction with the public those protests to go on and those kinds of interactions to go on and so back to your original question Andrés about what can a monument do you know it allowed for the public in the way that Cecilia presented it you know to become present I mean to be to be seen by the state. And to be you know Celia talked about it as monumental you know the social groups that were manifesting themselves there in relationship to that monument. We're all of a sudden able to to ask certain kinds of questions of the state to perform that challenge in a way that they couldn't do verbally, for example, you know that they had they were able to deploy kind of visual presencing around that monument and to challenge those structures. And they would have never been able to articulate that simply verbally you know I wouldn't have been as as powerful and that way. That monument and others I think serve a really important process of of of nonverbal dialogue between the social structures and political structures. And, and to allow for certain kinds of themes to emerge that are not necessarily something that you can capture in words right away, they are more poetic and more, you know, pregnant with lots of different meanings. And so allowing for those different meanings to to be there and not to foreclose on them too quickly is what Emilio and Luis were able to do by by leaving them, leaving the horse, you know, keeping the horse there as long as possible If you challenge that that nonverbal process too quickly, then you immediately foreclose on the possibility of something new emerging because you're just going to put on whatever, you know, previous conceptions that you had of power and of social relations and so on. For the for the new to really emerge you need a process and that process and the monuments are very much part of that process. And that social relation I think it's something that also me Michelle's work really shows is that these are social processes and they take a while. And so when when they are foreclosed that's when authority comes down new like when when the authority comes down it comes down to stop the process because it sees sees itself challenged by the whole thing it finally recognizes Oh wait, wait, things are changing. And that's where I think that subtle moves I'm so amazed by the work that they did with removing that that layer of paint that is actually technically really hard to do. But, you know, the military took that monument into its possession, but the work that Luis and Emilio were able to do saved that layer as part of the story and is now in the National Archives so that social relation that visual nonverbal relation can still go on for a little bit longer. And I think it's important in light of the, in light of the attempts to write a new constitution. These are the images that we keep coming back to. So so and I think that just to, you know, put it back to Cecilia and Michelle. In both of your works you, you've talked about how objects are are really relations. You know, Cecilia you talked about how how artworks are really sets of relations. And so I wanted to hear a little bit more about that. How a ephemeral kind of work like the kipu that you work on and the in these basuritas. You know how do you see those as enabling different kinds of relations that that, let's say, a bucket out of wouldn't be able to to enable. I don't know if I'm the one called to speak but I have to say I'm very moved by this. I had no idea of the work you had done with this be a hollow. I don't even know how to say that in English, but the notion that the skin of the monument was removed so preciously as a way of preserving the memory of the rally. That is going to be remembered. That is going to go deeply into the history of Chile and the history of our own memory, because it's an act of love for what happened for all of it, all the complexity contradiction paradox, all of that is contained in that act of love. That is the true meaning of preservation. I love the concept of the experimental preservation, because when we are doing something, an experiment like artists truly an experiment, we have no idea what the actual preservation will be. You know, because, for example, and when you ask me about the precarios for here I can tell you that when I began doing my vasuritas in the Bishop con con in the year 1966 was I had been admitted to architecture school, and I wanted to create a new kind of architecture. And I wanted for these to be part of the ocean, so that the ocean would acknowledge it and the ocean actually erased it instantly. And for me that relationship with the ocean was the permanent aspect of the precarios. Because the only thing that is permanent and quantum physics demonstrates this is the relationship, and therefore a new concept of being human on this earth has to be to restore the ancient ethical content of the quality of the relationship, the way we relate to each other. This is what I have learned from the precarios for the basuritas have been teaching me, I have very little to do, because the basuritas the debris was actually showing me the way a basurita is a piece of debris that has, for example, been thrown about in the city of Manhattan. Constantly picking up debris from Manhattan streets. They're so beautiful. How did this little piece of wire become a thing of beauty. I put it in a museum. Ah, people go out like that, whether you're stepping on it. It's nothing. But when you put it in a place. So, what is the art, the art is the way we direct our gazes, the way we look at our own gazes and what the gaze is speaking, saying to us. So the subtlety of all these relationships is infinite about the people. What have I learned from the people, the people. Somehow, when I began doing the people. Nobody was speaking about keep. Why did this Chilean teenager found found. Yes, found. I have traveled with my senses as you can see. Why do I have trouble with the sense senses or the tenses I have traveled with both because the tenses are attention. It's a movement. So when I speak of the moment when I discovered the people. I feel I am in the presence of that moment. As I tell you about it. It's not a moment that occurring time in space, only it also is took place in another dimension. It mentioned, I have access to each time I even think of the people or I begin doing a people. So, what is the teaching. What is the transmission. If you think that the people was created 5000 years ago, and during all this time, thousands of people have been working with the people. I'm just one of them. And I participate in this field of infinite knowledge that is condensed in the people. I feel the same when I tell you that the word monument. It's really speaking of what the mind is telling to itself. This is what is monumental. We have the gift of awareness. We have this gift of observing. That's why I mentioned the only way to question authority is to become the author of your own thoughts, the author of your own awareness. So, this is what this meditation that Luis Emilio invited me has given me on hearing all of you really moves me very deeply. I can't really build on that. I, I guess, all I would say is that that everything that everyone is saying is true. And that there is ephemerality to monuments there is a certain disembodiment to the way we think about monuments now. But that, to my mind, there is something big missing in the discourse about monuments that has suddenly, you know, that erupted in the past five years. Whereas, as Emilio said, nobody paid it, you know, nobody paid any any attention to monuments before, which is, you know, where I tried to do my work was to teach people about them, and why they're missing. But that the discussions of recent years don't include any of that. They are, to my mind, they have been totally focused on the present and our feelings about what we believe we see in them. And what we see in them are the subjects, as I said before, so I won't elaborate on that. But if you read my work. If you look into the other histories of these objects. That are those histories are complex they evolve over time so they're not stable. They reflect power relations but those power relations are not stable. So everything about the histories of these works, combined with their aesthetic and I'm not talking about beauty here I'm talking about the materiality of those objects as they intersect with public space landscape architecture architecture all sorts of different things and people and people's actions. So there are layers upon layers of destabilized meanings that are imbued in those works that no one has a clue about because no one is interested in anything other than this current situation, and I'm being, you know, sweeping I'm just responding succinctly to your question. Yeah, we can open it now to a couple of questions you would like but do you want to please. Do we have a mic. Yeah. And if you have other questions phrase your hands and we'll take a couple of them. Thank you so much. In large part of the patient of the destruction of the of the sculptures of the monuments as an attack on authority. And then also Cecilia's questioning of like, is that the authority on authorship. Another whether I should but is there a space for new monuments and I'm saying monuments very much like these physical municipality, municipality driven objects. Where the role of contemporary art sets because, again, we said that maybe as the monument is in storage, the contemporary art keeps a conversation happening. Should we be worried about maybe the art itself becoming a monument that embodies the same issues of authorship of authority that we are questioning right now. Thanks. Me. I'm going to try to explain it. A part of my own experience. Because there's something that I haven't said, but my father is sculptor. I tried to explain it with from my own experience. There's something that I didn't say that it's that my father is a sculptor, and I work with him. We are university professors, and we run the worst off on the fund free fund free. And restoration and restoration sir. And, for what I'm talking about my relationship with the history of the sculpture is how to feel my own house. So my relationship with the history of sculpture is like being at home. The sculptors then reindicated the right to be able to work on what constitutes our reference mark. Sculptures claim a right to work with that that constitutes our referential frame. In that sense, I even noticed this reflection here. It seems to me that there is a very close connection between iconoclastia and contemporary art. Along these lines and I actually wrote it down. There's a direct correlation between iconoclastia, right? Econoclastia and contemporary art. I believe contemporary art enacts forms of iconoclastia constantly. And we became used in contemporary art to crystallize those images. I believe contemporary art has naturalized that aesthetic relationship. And from my perspective, the interest that has that relationship is more political. For me it's not only superficial, it's political. I believe that contemporary art has crystallized that relationship and for me that relationship is of a political nature. That engagement of the monument with its origin in my case means that it has a political dimension and that political dimension cannot be avoided because the monument always express that political engagement. Mucho gracias. Había otra pregunta, verdad? There was another question, right? Maybe with this question. Okay, first of all, thank you so much. I'm not an artist, so sorry if it is a really basic question, but according to you, why people look so much for monuments? Because during the all Chilean uprising, the most interesting part for me when I was there is that when Baquedano Monument was removed, people constructed their own monument of a dog that was in the street, the cop killer was the name of the dog. But people tried to look for a replacement, rather than just destroying it. And when they burned this cop killer, they made a new monument made of flowers. So why people keep looking for monuments? Like why people when my football team wins, like Colo Colo, like people go to celebrate with a monument. And why people try to gather around it? Why people keep trying to create a new monument, a place to be around it? I prefer the University of Chile, but hey, it's two teams of soccer. I prefer the University of Chile, right? It's a soccer team, right? Do you really think that monumentality is being endangered? As you just said, as soon as Baquedano was removed, there were new things to come, right? Yes, the monument of the dog or some attempts to put a woman, the discussion has been on the table. There was a dog or a woman, the discussion has been what is that that will replace Baquedano. From a different perspective, I will propose to ask why monuments are needed. We walk around the city and it's full of monuments. I'd say that the US understood very well the sense of the monumentality, the grammar of monumentality. For me, what is important is not whether monuments are in danger, but what are the structures behind them and what is the way that that... I'm thinking not only about social, but also about the transformation of the consciousness of the state. I repeat, not only the manifestation of social character, but the crystallization of that discussion in a state definition. With this question, we can close the debate. Hi, I was a stroke by your work. I was very surprised by your work, especially because the monument you were referring to was the victory in the Plaza de Mayo in Peru. That was the reason why I was surprised because this monument is in the Plaza de Mayo in Peru, it's called the Victory. My question is when you were doing this monument that is actually inside, it's a monument that it's not on an open space. What were your thoughts about how to connect it with the monument that is actually in an open space? What were your thoughts? You are putting a monument in a closed space, but you are also inspired by a monument that is in an open space. I wanted to know your thoughts about it. Thank you very much. Let's see, the exhibition of that work was inaugurated on October 25, 2019. The exhibition of that work was on October 25. What was the date? 2019. El Estallido Social comienza en Chile el 18 de Octubre de 2019. The social outrage broke on October 18th, 2019. The exhibition was opened on December 15th. So what was happening outdoors was related to what was happening inside the museum. It was very frustrating not to be able to connect what was happening outdoors with what was happening inside the exhibition. That work was the most impressive for the audiences. Especially for women that had a very special connection with that work. In order to be an anti-monument it could not be in the street, it should be inside the museum. It is very simple because it is composed of plaster masks. So the masks were reproduced, the masks needed to fill the space were the ones that were reproduced so that it would become an impressive image. Maybe others want to intervene on this question because I think that is also connected to... Jorge, maybe you want to close the session with intervention. Thank you very much. I am just in awe of everyone's contributions and work. It has been such a pleasure to hear everyone's work and just thank you all for making it all the way from Chile to Colombia and from other parts of New York to share your knowledge and ideas with us. It is really meaningful and it has repercussions and echoes in a lot of the work that we do here on monuments. So thank you. Just deep gratitude.