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Today, the fourth part of the construction that will honor the victims of the armed conflict in Colombia has been inaugurated. The play, which is one of the three agreed in the Peace Accord will be lifted in large numbers on 7th Street 6B, one block below the General Archives of the Nation. In this plot of 1200 square meters, there are the ruins of an old building that Salcedo will keep inside the new building, designed and built by the architect Carlos Granada and his team.
Against the monument of the artist Doris Salcedo in the race 7 with the street 6B. Photo: Daniel Reina
At work, entitled F ragmentos Salcedo calls it a "counter monument", rejecting the traditional notion of monument, because, as he said today, a monument is precisely "monumental", and its purpose is to celebrate the military achievements of a unified nation: "[El monumento] hierarchizes and presents a triumphalist vision of a nation's warrior past." . Its main function is to subdue or depreciate us as individuals facing a grandiose and totalitarian version of history. The monument was possible in the 19th century, when nations believed they had a totally unified consciousness and culture. In this historic moment of Colombia, we lack symbols that can be transformed into monuments capable of giving society as a whole a unique version of what has happened to us during these long years of conflict. "
Although the structure is not yet complete, today, during the official ceremony, participants were able to appreciate the plaques that Doris Salcedo and his team built with the material resulting from the fusion of the weapons of the FARC. "Salcedo's words and a documentary that was screened at the event revealed, in addition, another detail of the process of building these plates:" J & I invited a group of women victims of badual violence to shape weapons, and for days we hammered this metal to mark the symbolic cessation of the power relationship imposed by arms. "Some of these victims were also present at the official ceremony.
Another interesting new detail is that the mission of Fragments will be to host annually, for a period equivalent to the duration of the armed conflict with the FARC, a proposal of 39, an artist who derives from the relationship between contemporary art and memory. The building that Salcedo presented today will not present one, but multiple views on the same fact.
The site hosted by the artist Doris Salcedo is located one block below the General Archives of the nation. Photo: Daniel Reina
You may be interested in: Farc's Monument to Arms: 10 Criteria for its Development
Below we reproduce, in writing and on video, the Doris Salcedo's speech that fully explains the motivations and details of the construction work
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One of the plates that make up the counter monument "Fragmentos" by Doris Salcedo. Photo: Daniel Reina
When I received the weapons deposited by the old FARC guerrillas to build a monument with them, I thought carefully about this possibility and came to the conclusion that what was rather, it was to construct something that conceptually opposed the very notion of a monument, that is, a counter-monument. I preferred not to build a monument because, as its name indicates, the monument is monumental; Hierarchizes and presents a triumphalist vision of the warrior past of a nation. Its main function is to subjugate or belittle us as individuals in the face of a grandiose and totalitarian version of history.
The monument was possible in the 19th century, when nations believed they had a totally unified consciousness and culture. At this historic moment in Colombia, we lack symbols that can be transformed into monuments capable of giving society as a whole a unique version of what has happened to us during these long years of conflict.
However, a fragmented and heterogeneous society like ours can try to unite their divergent experiences and memories in a common space. Today we find ourselves in this counter monument entitled Fragmentos which will be a museum of contemporary art and memory, whose ground or foundation is literally made up of the arms deposited by the old FARC guerilla. These weapons have been merged and reconfigured as a physical and conceptual medium on which this memorial site is erected. Stop on this floor, anyone is in a fair, balanced and free, from which it is possible to remember and not to forget the legacy of war. This space has for mission to accept antagonistic memories to generate here a great polyphony of discordant voices. Fragments forms a place for difficult and provocative dialogues that will take place; dialogues which, like those of Havana, allow us to dazzle postures and worlds that are foreign to us
Fragment of & # 39; Fragmentos & # 39; from Doris Salcedo. Photo: Daniel Reina
The main task of the art is to accommodate several readings of the same event. And it is precisely here that the memory / art relationship becomes an essential tool for building contact zones or meeting areas in which Colombians can coexist.
Fragments emptiness and absence, because it is precisely through these elements that I can establish the absolutely irremediable character of the war. Art can not compensate with beauty the horror caused by war, and for this reason Fragments does not try to grant an aesthetic form to the loss, damage or violent death.
I invited a group of women victims of badual violence to shape weapons. For days, we hammered this metal to mark the symbolic cessation of the power relationship imposed by weapons. This is the first time that a peace agreement opens such an important space to the experience of victims of badual violence. Enabling their active participation in the development of a work of art in a space that commemorates the end of the armed conflict is part of the symbolic compensation that this society has failed to offer them.
So that the experience of a victim can be understood In all its seriousness, this experience must be expressed, told and shared. For this reason, Fragmentos this place of memory, has for mission to produce and to expose during a period equivalent to the duration of the conflict different works of art which rework the memory of the war . Each year, an artist will be invited to present his point of view and his interpretation of our recent past, so that we will not have a single monument, but several against changing, polyphonic and living monuments.
Fragments claims a memory in a permanent state of transformation. Art is one of the ways of thinking that has the ability to convert memory into an infinitely inconclusive process. The art, like the peace agreement you signed, President Santos, allows us to think of a vision of the future in which the opposites coexist and the incompatibility coexists peacefully.
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