Visualize the Illkun is an interactive screen installation for the interpretive visualization of the anger in the province of Malleco, Chile. The main objective of this visual essay is the creation of a media project that seeks to reflect and put into discussion the concept of screen –apparatus– when relating it with memories of dissent. Thus, it takes as a case study the book Las Razones del Illkun/Rabia (The reasons of the Illkun), trying to visualize through images-diagram and an interactive device, the subjectivities arising from feelings of dispossession in the Mapuche conflict in the Malleco region. In this way, the diagram-images and the apparatus designed; as an analogous, technological, and creative effort on the concept of screen; seek to mediate spaces and territories of memory that conflict the notion of history in Chile.

The process of study and creative development of this project was divided into four stages: first, a study of the concept of the screen, which was analyzed to understand the technical and conceptual characteristics that relate it to a memory apparatus. This stage was guided by the following research questions: What is the screen object and what are its relations with the information? How does the information that the screen takes to make it a device of memory?

Secondly, it was defined the theme of representation and the type of data to systematize, this is based, as I said earlier, in the book Las Razones del Illkun (2010). This document allows me to analyze a file related to a specific territory, and space, in order to experiment through it with a notion of conflicting memory, as is the problematic Mapuche in the Ninth Region of Chile. Third, I sought a way of representing anger by the abuses described in the aforementioned book through a subjectivist paradigm through the interpretation of the written archive. This decision is based on an interpretative view of a complex subject and totally opposed to a scientific naturalist paradigm; non-objective information goes from being delivered to uncertainties that are captured and interpreted, first by myself as the creator of a system of visual codes and then, by the individual facing the interface. The last stage of this project culminated with the design of a prototype of an interactive interface that materializes all the study and analysis made during the development of the project.

“Illkun/Anger” a bit of context

Illkun means “anger” in the Mapudungun language. As in many other Latin American countries, the Spanish colonization caused innumerable deaths and injustices as the colonizers wanted to implant the European model in the new lands. However, the Mapuche are a group that could not be subjected to the Inca empire, and neither to the Spanish invasion. Despite their tenacity and strength to defend the Mapu (Land), they have had to resist various invasions that threaten their worldview, beliefs, and that in practice have brought them to poverty and a very low quality of life. In recent years, the Chilean State has attempted to criminalize the claim made by the Mapuche people regarding the lands usurped and given to German, Swiss and Italian settlers in the so-called “Selective Immigration Law” of 1845. Until this day, the dispute over land between German and Mapuche settlers is cruel and bloody: attacks, use of special forces by Chilean State, dead or imprisoned Mapuche leaders, mean this part of Chilean history is still not solved.

References

Benjamin, W (2012) Sobre el concepto de historia, en A. Useros y C. Rendueles (editores), Escritos políticos (pp. 167-180). Madrid, España: Abada Editores. (Trabajo original publicado en 1936)

Correa, M. & Mella, E. (2010) Las Razones del Illkun/Enojo. Santiago, Chile: LOM ediciones.

Drucker, J. (2011). Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 5(1).

Flusser, V. (2002). Filosofía del Diseño: Pantallas, paraguas y tiendas de campaña (pp. 62-66). Madrid, España: Editorial Síntesis.

Parikka, J (2012) What is Media Archaeology? Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press

For further information, please check the following link with full PDF thesis document [SPANISH]: 
http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/130040