How do we relate to the territory we inhabit? What is the role of art and culture in a world in crisis? Between August 2019 and January 2020, the 14th Santiago Biennial of Media Arts was dedicated to observe and to imagine the “fourth world”, a ‘place’ that invites us to reflect on the relationship between humans and the ecosystem.
The title and curatorship of this edition was inspired by the sculpture The fourth world by the Chilean artist Carlos Ortúzar (1935-1985), installed in 1972 in the courtyard of the building for the UNCTAD III (current Villavicencio Building), where art, science, and society converged with power. The sculpture disappeared in 1993, when the Military Coup occurred in Chile, and 46 years later, in the context of the 14th Santiago Biennial, it was restored on the same site, thanks to the work of JEMO, factory in charge of it’s original manufacture.
This catalog collects the history of the restitution of this sculpture, and the experience of the 18 exhibitions of the Biennial, held in different cultural centers of Santiago de Chile, such as the National Museum of Fin Arts (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), the Contemporary Art Museum (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo), the Visual Arts Museum (Museo de Artes Visuales), the Heritage Library Recoleta Dominica (Biblioteca Patrimonial Recoleta Domínic), the Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna Museum (Museo Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna), and the Museum of Solidarity Salvador Allende (Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende).
The book also includes a chapter dedicated the School of Intuition (Escuela de la Intuición), the biennial's non-formal education program, based on workshops, mediation devices to the museum visits, and talks with artists, scientists, exponents of popular culture, and national and international researchers.
Another chapter of the catalog deals with Magnetics Fields (Campos Magnéticos), the public program of the biennial, based on talks, performances, concerts and other activities such as the “Cinema forum of the fourth world”, a series of documentaries and conversations based on the curatorship of the biennial.
With more than 500 pages, and with the participation of more than sixty artists and thinkers from all over the world, the book brings together a set of texts that invite us to reflect upon and expand the field of interactions between arts, sciences and nature.
We invite you to know about this project, and help us print it through your donation.
About The Santiago Biennial of Media Arts
The Santiago Biennial of Medial Arts is a meeting dedicated to the intersection of art, science and technology. It was founded in 1993 by the Chilean Corporation of Video and Electronic Arts (Corporación Chilena de Videos y Artes Electrónicas (CChV) and constitutes a showcase for national and international productions in the audiovisual and new media arts.
The latest versions of the Biennial revolved around the relationship between art and autonomy (“Autonomía”, 11BAM), the transformations of language in the 21st century (“Hablar en Lenguas”, 12BAM), and socio-natural disasters and their relationship with culture (“Temblor”, 13BAM).
It’s fourteenth edition was dedicated to observe, to think and to imagine the “fourth world”, a place that allows us to reflect upon the relationship between humans and the ecosystem.
Chile
