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QUIJEREMA & LA PENA CULTURAL CENTER INVITE YOU TO THIS SPECIAL
PROGRAM<br><br>
Archeology of Memory; Villa Grimaldi & the Autobiography of an
Ex-Chess<br>
Player.<br><br>
A multimedia presentation by musician & writer Quique Cruz (aka
Claudio<br>
Durán), who will perform, show an art installation and read from his
book<br>
The Autobiography of an Ex-Chess Player, about his teenage experiences
in<br>
Pinochet¹s concentration camps.<br><br>
September 24<br>
Opening 6:30 to 7:30<br><br>
Performance 8pm $10-$15 sliding scale<br><br>
La Pena Cultural Center<br>
3105 Shattuck Av. Berkeley, CA<br>
510 849-2572<br>
<a href="http://www.lapena.org/" eudora="autourl">www.lapena.org<br><br>
<br>
</a>AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-CHESS PLAYER<br>
&<br>
VILLA GRIMALDI: ARCHEOLOGY OF MEMORY<br><br>
An Art Exhibit and multimedia Program<br><br>
Art exhibit will be at the walls of La Pena Cultural Center from
September<br>
to the end of October 2004.<br><br>
For some year, Quique Cruz (aka Claudio E. Duran) has been exploring
the<br>
idea of an aesthetic coup that Chile suffered under the dictatorship
of<br>
Pinochet. Mr. Cruz will read from his book "The
Autobiography of and<br>
Ex-Chess Player", a narrative of his experiences as seventeen year
old in<br>
the concentration camps of Pinochet.<br><br>
Together with photographs, slides, paintings, poems, documentary film,
and<br>
graphic arts he will also show his new up coming work that looks at the
idea<br>
of aesthetic and terror, and how a group of his friends -poets,
painters,<br>
musicians- have kept producing art after being detained in one of the
most<br>
infamous torture centers of the regime: Villa Grimaldi.<br><br>
Come and Celebrate with this local Artist the release and publication of
his<br>
book and up-coming musical and literary publication.<br><br>
Music by: Quijerema, guest musicos: Alejandro Sabre (piano)
Rafael<br>
Manriquez (guitarra and charango) and David Barrows (tenor sax)
Klaudia<br>
Promessi (soprano sax),<br><br>
<br>
THE GENESIS:<br><br>
Villa Grimaldi: Archeology of Memory in Three Cantos is a multimedia
exhibit<br>
that gathers the art work and the experiences of seven artists who
were<br>
detained in one of the most infamous torture centers during the
Military<br>
dictatorship of Pinochet: Villa Grimaldi. The work is a creation of
Claudio<br>
Enrique Duran Pardo/aka Quique Cruz, it is triptych that
includes a book,<br>
a documentary film and a musical suite. Together with a
photographer, a<br>
graphic artist, filmmakers and musicians, Claudio wants to explore
the fate<br>
of art during the Pinochet regime and its aftermath.<br><br>
Claudio has been working on the idea that Chileans underwent an
aesthetic<br>
coup, bringing special violence to artists. This repression to the
artist<br>
is symbolically understood in the spectacle of terror that the
military<br>
created by killing the country's most important singer, poet and
playwright:<br>
Victor Jara.<br><br>
For the past four years, Quique has been interviewing, photographing
and<br>
filming a group of artists--poets, painters, writers, dancers,
playwrights,<br>
musicians-- who have created a narrative in which they explore the<br>
contradictions of terror and aesthetics, the notion of pain and beauty
and<br>
how to convert darkness into light.<br><br>
The scenario:<br><br>
In 1975, by a direct order from Pinochet, the military created the
secret<br>
service, the DINA (National Intelligence Apparatus). They chose as
their<br>
operating headquarters a placed called Villa Grimaldi, located on the
lower<br>
slopes of the Andean Mountain range. It had been a beautiful Villa,
with a<br>
history of wealth and with close ties to powerful Chilean elites.
It was<br>
here that the overall strategy for repression and systematic<br>
elimination--both physical and political--was thought out and refined in
the<br>
most important years of the dictatorship. During the years of
full<br>
operation, from 1975 to 1978, close to three hundred people are thought
to<br>
have disappeared from Grimaldi-as far as we know--and more than
five<br>
thousand people were tortured in Terra Nova, as the "special
personnel" of<br>
the torture center baptized it. Villa Grimaldi was only one of many
centers<br>
in the country.<br><br>
Parque por la Paz: Villa Grimaldi<br><br>
At the end of the dictatorship (1986-90) the military sold the place
to<br>
build up-scale condominiums. The Villa was partially burned down and
then<br>
demolished. As demolition was taking place, people organized and fought
a<br>
legal battle to turn the site into a park of Memory. After a long
struggle,<br>
El Parque por la Paz was built.<br><br>
Two Mexican artists took the debris and created sculptures in the park.
The<br>
photographs in the exhibit are of the fragments embedded in the cement
of<br>
the sculptures.<br><br>
While doing research for the project, Claudio found a box of
fragments<br>
abandoned in a corner of the park. They were mainly pieces of metal
that<br>
survived the fire and demolition, representing the archeological
vestiges<br>
helping us to reassemble the Villa.<br><br>
Photographs of the exhibit come from that enigmatic box that speaks to
us<br>
from the Torture center Villa Grimaldi/Terra Nova<br><br>
<br>
Artist Statement:<br><br>
I began working on this project in the year 2000, mainly out of<br>
insatisfaction. Pinochet, the dictator who had exiled me, was still
free,<br>
and the people who participated in the repression in Chile were not
being<br>
brought to justice in the new democratic Chile. What to do with
pain,<br>
anxiety, anger, desire for justice, solitude, frustration and
shattered<br>
dreams? How to reconcile the self, the body, and the memories of so
much<br>
violence? How to keep doing music and writing in the midst of
laughter and<br>
mockery?<br><br>
In 1987--while at UC Berkeley--I became interested in the literature of
the<br>
Jewish Holocaust, especially the writing of Primo Levy and the
French/Jewish<br>
installation artist Christian Boltanski. They gave me the key to
begin<br>
exploring my own experience as a survivor of political
violence. Thus I<br>
decided to create a work that will speak from the memories of
artists,<br>
because I truly believe that it is through art that memory prevails
in<br>
society: the cave paintings, the singing of ancient songs, the making
of<br>
ceramics and the reciting of old poems . Artists have been living
a<br>
thumbprint on earth a talks to us as the memory of the human
condition.<br><br>
Archeology of Memory is the culmination of my accumulated experiences as
a<br>
musician and writer. I feel that this work will embody and reflect
upon<br>
some of the main questions that I have asked in my career as an
artist.<br>
Can we create beauty out of terror? Is it possible to create a
vernacular<br>
artistic narrative that will prevail in time and serve as a<br>
counter-narrative to official histories? Does art really heal the
self and<br>
expand consciousness to arrive at a greater understanding of
difference?<br><br>
In working on this project, I have felt that there was something
that had<br>
sedimented over all these years, wanting to be dug up. So,
from all of the<br>
layers that were safely guarded in my journey of exile, I am working with
my<br>
friends to create an overall art statement that will insinuate at times
the<br>
unspeakable, the subterranean and the very foundations of my existence
and<br>
that of artist friends who were imprisoned in this place/no place, in
this<br>
time/ no time, in the darkness of Villa Grimaldi.<br><br>
Credits:<br>
Photography: Adam Kufeld<br>
Graphic Design: Guillermo Prado (8point2 Studio)<br><br>
Writing and music: Quique Cruz/aka Claudio Enrique Duran
Pardo<br><br>
Art Direction: Claudio E. Duran<br><br>
Special Thanks to: Autumn Press, Mariola Fernandez, Marcia and
Aquiles<br>
Duran, Lautaro Cline, Guillermo Garcia, Sally and Emiliana Bean,
Marilyn<br>
Mulford, Vicente Franco, Gail Dolgin, James, Matty Nematollahhi ,
Jim<br>
LeBrecht, La Pena, Fundacion Grimaldi, Quijerema.<br><br>
<br>
Sponsored by: National Endowment for the Arts, California Art
Council,<br>
Ministry of Education in Chile (FONDART), Ford Foundation.
LOM Ediciones.<br><br>
<br>
Memory,<br><br>
A space of desire and betrayal,<br><br>
Water and fire,<br><br>
A kiss,<br><br>
A closed door,<br><br>
A suitcase,<br><br>
An abyss,<br><br>
Una necesidad,<br><br>
To keep on walking.<br><br>
<br><br>
Claudio Duran/<br><br>
aka Quique Cruz<br><br>
<br>
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<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
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