G A M / part 1

Buildings tell stories. And stories collect in buildings. They keep on collecting as long as the building stands. New stories arrive, sometimes shouting from the façade. And the older stories settle into corners, they never disappear.

This could be said of any building, but it was something I felt very keenly a couple of months ago, when I visited the newly inaugaurated Centro Culturel Gabriela Mistral (GAM) in Santiago de Chile. In Santiago in 2007, we had walked past the hulking mass of the Edificio Diego Portales on the Alameda, a long boulevard that cuts through the length of the city. The vast building, that seemed to stretch across about three blocks, had been partly gutted by fire in 2006. The worst of the charred ruined mess had been cleared, but the empty bulk that remained had the appearance of a cut-away axonometric drawing, whereby part of the façade and walls are removed so one can peer in. The volume of a huge amphitheatre was discernible.  The ruined building was at once forlorn and overbearing.

I quickly learned that the Edificio Diego Portales signified a great deal to the Chilien people. Aeriel bombardment during the coup d'etat on September 11 1973 had partially destroyed La Moneda, the original seat of the government, so as they seized power the military Junta moved into the Edificio (which in fact consisted of two buildings - a long horizontal block on the boulevard, and a tower behind). The tower became home to the Minsitry of Defence, and the lower building became the seat of what one Chilien friend referred to as a 'fake congress'. The unelected administration did not govern democratically, but recreated the physical structures of a democratic government - debating chambers and assemblies, an illusion to lull the population. Pinochet gave many of his most famous speeches in the amphitheatre that was now partially visible from the street. But the people weren’t fooled, the two buildings came to represent the military dictatorship and all its ills to many Chiliens.

This 'fake congress' was also the place where the votes were publicly counted when the regime held referendums. In the 1980 referendum (following the UN's public criticism of the dictatorship) Pinochet won an eight year term. But in 1988's historic referendum, 55% of the population voted to end Pinochet's rule, and the slow transfer to democracy began. In 1989 Patricio Aylwin was elected as president, taking office in 1990. The votes were counted in the amphitheatre of the Edificio Diego Portales. The building that represented the brutality of the regime also began to be associated with its slow undoing.

The architecture of the building seemed to me perfectly suited to a military dictatorship. A closed dark shape, cutting through the fabric of the old city and disconnecting neighbourhoods, its vast concrete and steel superstructure expressing pure brute force. But its history has another layer that I was quite surprised to discover. The building was originally built by Salvador Allende's government, completed in 1972, one year before the coup d'etat. It was built at breakneck speed (in 275 days), by an army of volunteers, in order to be completed in time to host the third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Allende then established the building as the seat of the Ministry of Education, and also the Centro Culturel Gabriela Mistral (the Chilien poet Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945). The social role of the building was fundamental to Allende : 'We want this building to be devoted to... Chilien women and children, and we want this place to be the base of the National Institution of Culture. We don't want culture to be ... elite, but accessible to all, to the agricultural workers, factory workers.' But this egalitarian vision turned out to be fleeting - a little more than a year later Allende's government was ousted by the Junta. The Centro Cultural Metropolitano Gabriela Mistral was renamed Edificio Diego Portales, after the 19^th century businessman and politician. The feminist poet ousted by a conservative statesman.

As the dictatorship was gradually dismantled during the 1990s and democracy established, the role of the building changed. The new government built a new Congress in Valparaiso, and the Edificio Diego Portales was used for conferences and conventions. The Ministry of Defence remained in the tower.

Back in 2007, when I first encountered the building, big questions were being asked about its future. The fire damage was so extensive that major building works were unavoidable. The way was laid for a radical transformation and the blackened remains contained a potent glimmer of what might be. Pinochet had died a few months after the fire. The dictator was dead and the palace he had appropriated for himself was ready to be reclaimed and have its original spirit restored.

The newly elected cente left president, Michele Bachelet, launched a competition asking for propositions to transform the ruins into a national cultural centre, and in December 2007, the architect Cristian Fernandez was announced as the winner. I will talk about his transformation of the building in G A M / part 2.

A volcano that really looks like a volcano

Volcan Villarica seen from Pucon, Chile, 05.01.2011

The Moon (Three)

Close to San Pedro de Atacama is a valley called la Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). It is an utterly barren and dramatic formation of rocks and sand dunes, that glow red at sunset, against a backdrop of snow sprinkled volcanoes. It is spectacular, but was the least moonlike of all the places I visited in the desert. Everyone who goes to San Pedro visits the valley at sunset. The supposed moon is dotted with white minibuses and camera laden tourists from every corner of the world. You walk up the giant dune to the best look out point for the sunset, one of a great stream of others, and then jostle to find a ledge upon which to perch to watch the promised show, which you must then try to photograph as an empty desolate and dramatic scene, tiny you in a vast and alien landscape.

The Moon (Two)

Three weeks ago I was in the far north of Chile. Five days in and around Iquique, a coastal city (industrial port and beach resort) about 1800km north of Santiago, and then five days in San Pedro de Atacama, a small oasis town on the altiplano of the Atacama desert at 2400m above sea level.
The landscape of the north is out of this world, and is thus frequently likened to that of the moon. Flying over it or driving through it, however you witness it it is hard to accept how vast it is. It is like trying to imagine infinity. And in this vastness there is nearly no life.
There is mechanical fuel powered life, the huge trucks and the air-conditioned coaches that plough up and down the Panamericana (the north south road that runs the length of Chile, but more on that later), but they are always on their way somewhere else.
There are occasional signs of other industrial lifeforms, railway tracks and roads connecting mines in the mountains to the coastal ports; electricity pylons.
There is a fair bit of road side detritus, archaeological evidence of recent human presence - coke cans, fanta bottles and plastic bags that will be beautifully preserved in the gasping dryness of the desert.
There are geoglyphs. More traditional archaeological traces of human culture. El Gigante de Atacama is over a 100m tall, a strange rectilinear creature with a four pronged head, he simultaneously manages to appear very ancient and extremely futuristic. Near San Pedro there were llamas barely bigger than hands carved into the rocks, probably marking livestock transport routes.
There are occasional abandoned villages, abandoned after an earthquake, or as a local mining activity ceases to function. There are many reasons to abandon settlements in this environment.
There are occasional microclimates such as the Pampa del Tamarugal, where scrublike hardy vegetation manages to survive on mysterious waters drawn from deep deep underground.
There are very occasional oases. With bougainvillea, lemon trees and fig trees.
It is not really a sandy desert, there are very few smooth and seductive sand dunes. It is a rocky, stony and dusty desert. It is mostly a greyish brown colour, though when the sun is low in the sky it becomes orange, red and pink.
It is a wonderful and terrifying cinema.

The Sun

Like the moon, the sun in the southern hemisphere moves from right to left across the sky rather than left to right. Of course it still rises in the east and sets in the west. It is a strange phenomenon to get used to because the shade moves in the opposite direction too. On about our third or fourth day in Chile we spent the afternoon at a house with a swimming pool. It was very hot and I settled down on a sun lounger shaded by large parasol. The shade didn't last long though and soon the sun was beating down on my ankles, my knees, my left arm. I felt utterly confused for a second, why was the sun was moving backwards?! Once settled again on the sun lounger, on the other edge of the shady patch, assuring an hour or two more out of the fierce glare of the Chilean sun, I started thinking about the interesting relationship between the sun and the earth... and drifted off to sleep...

the Andes to the Pacific

part ONE : the mountains : about 10km from the border with argentina : about 2000m above sea level : termas del flaco : tinguiririca valley : almost too hot to bear suplhuric smelly and magic all healing water : mud : the valley where the plane with the uruguayan rugby team crashed in the 70's inspiring the film 'alive' : tiny intensely coloured flowers : dust : a wildly swinging and swaying bridge over an icy very fast flowing river : waterfalls and boulders : dinosaur footprints in the rock : a mine : statues of the virgen mary in impossibly desolate locations : impeccably well dressed huasos (chilean cowboys) : scratchy prickly plants : rainbow coloured rocks : stars and satellites : flocks of noisy yellow and blue parrots : condors that remained invisble







part TWO : the central valley : santa cruz : a small town amidst a sea of vineyards fruit trees vegetable fields : bustling and wealthy but also rural and simple : single storey abode buildings : the classic central plaza full of palm trees and monkey puzzles : a museum with a glittering display of mapuche jewelry and just about everything else you could imagine : breakfast of almond cake and a juicy juicy peach sitting in the plaza : the usual lunch of avocado tomato and cheese sandwich in the incredibly friendly panificadora : horses and carts clip clopping down the main street : a constant parade of flat wide brimmed 'huaso' hats




part THREE : the ocean : pichilemu : a seaside surfing town : a chilean newquay : a wide curving bay of dark grey sand : a rocky headland : white frothy waves and a steely grey sea : thick sea fog rolling in off the ocean : outer space monster seaweed : sad llamas with hats being paraded up and down the beach for people to have their photo taken with : empanada capital : a vague air of faded grandeur : a hilltop promenade of palm trees and topiary that has seen better days : an old abandoned casino covered in scaffolding and being done up : arcades : gokarts : a rickety funfair : a delicious dinner of grilled fish and tomato and onion salad with a huge glass of freshly whizzzed papaya juice served by an extremely kind and very old woman with a wicked sense of humour and a glint in her eye

La Isla Helvecia

The island is surrounded by a beach - mostly made of dark grey volcanic rock pebbles, though the far eastern point is brilliant white sand and perfect for swimming. There are pink crab shells everywhere. On the sheltered northern shore some of the grey rocks have been colonised by extremely yellow lichen. It takes about 20 minutes to walk the complete circle around the island.
On the northern face, visible as you approach in the little wooden Chalupa boat (passing dolphins and sea lions) from Calbuco, is a large house, clad in flaking white painted weatherboards, with pale blue window frames. The house was once quite grand, built by Swiss immigrants probably at the turn of the century. In the hall is an imposing oil painting of a smartly dressed gentleman. Today the house is falling apart. The hot water and electricity have long ceased, though there is running cold water from a rainwater collecter, a gas hob and lots of candles. There are several missing windows, woodworm everywhere, and healthy happy families of spiders. A wiry Chilian with a red beard and blue eyes (as Celtic looking as they come) came over with us, he is the son of the woman who bought the house in the 50's, and now lets it out to occasional visitors. The house has everything required to frighten the life out of you, and would be the perfect place to shoot a horror film, but somehow we felt quite safe and sound there - maybe it was comfort in numbers, we were six, and had a lot of red wine and whisky to get through. More than anything, the house had an air of containing a thousand stories, but they were fading, each broken window and rotten beam was a story disappeared.
The interior of the island consists of grassy meadows (kept tidy by the residents - 2 llamas, 3 sheep and 3 donkeys - almost straight from Noah's ark), a dense thicket of vegetation, and a grand old forest of Chilian Oaks and native Arrayan trees. The Oaks have grey trunks and the Arrayans orange. There is an open air stage at the far end of the forest.
To the east is an unbroken line of snowy peaks, stretching far into the south and the Patagonian wilderness. At sunset they glow pink, and a little later reflect the moonlight. The view to the south and west is across the water to higgledy-piggledy Calbuco, small neighbouring islands and Chiloé.
We explored, we swam, we feasted, we slept.

Volcan Llaima

The road trip in the south.
First night near Temuco, in the foothills of the Volcano Llaima. The first real active volcano I have seen, it was beautiful - a perfect conical shape, its upper part covered in snow, and best of all, emitting the occasional puff of smoke! The next day we walked closer to it, through temperate rainforest, coming to a brilliant vantage point across a plateau of intensely green bamboo. We admired it more, and were also a little wary, the puffs of smoke were a warning not to get too close...
Later on that day I read that it was one of the three most active volcanoes in the world.
Yesterday evening at about 6 o'clock Llaima erupted, and continues to do so.