Re-membranzas / RE-MEMBERING

15 minutes - miniDV

This audiovisual and ethnographic work is based upon different scenarios that revolve around the experiences of three initiatives by groups of women and their memories of violence: the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (Pcn-Process of black communities), La comunidad de paz de San José de Apartadó (The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado) and the Organización de Mujeres Wayuu Munsurat (Organization of Wayuu Women, Munsurat). The video is based upon an articulation of time / image; by this I refer to an interest in analyzing and working around the question of how audiovisual practices are opening spaces to reflect upon other temporalities, and the concept of memory. This approach though, is one that follows Walter Benjamin's notion of ruin as something that should not be understood as decadent or relegated to the past, but on the contrary, as the memory, as interposition and coexistence of different times / temporalities. At the same time, this project is considered as a practice and cultural production of memory through the audiovisual register.

In my work I am looking for means by which to get close to the ways in which violence is experienced as part of daily life. But not simply in the spaces of death and destruction, but in the ways that people suffer, perceive, persist and resist those violences. How they remember their loss and how they mourn, but also how they absorb, overcome and make it part of their everyday; how they use this for their own benefit by either evading it or coexisting with it. This is what I call scenarios of memories of violence.

"Busco acercarme a la forma en que la violencia es experimentada en la vida cotidiana, pero no solo a nivel de los espacios de la muerte y la destrucción sino a los modos en que las personas padecen, perciben, persisten y resisten esas violencias, recuerdan sus perdidas y les hacen duelo, pero también las absorben, la sobrellevan y la articulan a su cotidianidad, la usan para su beneficio, la evaden o simplemente coexisten con ella. A esto es lo que yo llamo escenarios de memorias de la violencia."

For a further reflection of this project see: http://www.icanh.gov.co/?idcategoria=7118