The Art in Ruins Festival is an encounter that seeks to rescue, value and honor memory through situated artistic interpretation. Inspired by the industrial ruins of the Biobío region, this first version fuses diverse artistic disciplines, including theater, dance, burlaps, performance, music and crafts, while also exhibiting national and international industrial heritage experiences and projects.
In an attempt to re-signify the past, local artists and artisans come together in this festival to explore the traces left by the abandoned industrial structures and the memories that reside within them. Each performance is a journey back in time to the heart of culture, a reminder of our roots and a tribute to those who contributed significantly to the making of this region.
The Art in Ruins Festival invites us to reflect on the importance of preserving our memory and culture, while exploring new forms of artistic expression that connect the past with the present and the future. It is an enriching experience that reminds us that beauty and the future can also emerge from ruins.
Curators: María José Bretti
Urban burlap
Mural Hall, Bíobio Regional Government Headquarters.
The urban burlap “Memories of the Lotina Woman” is the result of a collaborative project of 52 women from Lota that narrates local history from the female perspective, challenging historical narratives centered on the male miner. The project explores the Mapuche origin of “Louta,” the transition from peasant activity to coal mining and the diverse roles of Lotina women. It also addresses issues such as poverty, sexism and gender violence, highlighting the social ascent of women.
Conceived and led since 2019 by Magdalena Novoa and the Lota Citizens Committee for Heritage, Culture and Tourism, with the support of the University of Texas at Austin and the Aldea Foundation, this collaborative methodology is currently being replicated in other communities in the Lota coal mining basin with the support of the University of Illinois and the Aldea and Whiting foundations. The exhibition is a tribute to Noelia Espinoza Aguilera and Melissa Espinoza Aguilera, who were instructors and facilitators of the project.
Cecilia Gutiérrez, César Arriagada & Rodrigo Álvarez
Musical intervention in Hotel Aurelio, Concepción.
To welcome our national and international guests, we offer them a concert that compiles themes that fuse Jazz with popular music and, in addition, presents original music inspired by the natural environments of the city of Concepción. Cecilia Gutiérrez on vocals and composition, César Arriagada on guitar and Rodrigo Álvarez on bass.
People of the Dark Dawn (extract)
Colectivo Calaucalis
Dance performance at the Regional Government Headquarters
Remix of the original work performed in 1999 by the Calaucán Dance Company, which has its axis in Lota, its people and its history, revealing even more today its intuitive notion of heritage. The remix’s spirit is faithful to the first version in a sort of emotive archaeology, while at the same time giving
an account of the contemporary echoes that today link creators, technical staff and performers in the search for communication with their public, in moments transposed to the world of art, as magic and representation.
This work links the past and the present, seeking to give shape to a cultural continuity through an art that mixes movement, beauty and entertainment.
Where’s the station’s ticket office?
Teatro Laberinto
Theatrical intervention at the Regional Government of Bíobio headquarters.
Performance created for the IV International and Interdisciplinary Cultural Heritage Congress. An inhabitant of the city of Concepción in 1900, lost in time, searches for the ticket office of the city’s former train station in the building that today houses the Biobío Regional Government.
Directed by: Francisca Díaz
Rescue of the memory of a miner (extract)
Agrupación Amigos del Folclor
Theatrical intervention in Chiflón del Diablo, Lota.
Directed by: Eduardo Parada. Music: Luis and Grisnery Sepúlveda
The play tells the story of the lifestyle of the coal boom era, the community life in the shared washhouses and furnaces and the closure of the Lota coal mines on 16 April 1997. It is starred and performed by the group “Amigos del Folclor” (Friends of Folklore) whose cast is made up of former miners, daughters and sons of miners motivated to make known the history of Lota.
Agrupación "Manos de Lota"
Lota Theatre, Lota
Art exhibition
The association “Manos de Lota” (Hands of Lota) has been working for more than 25 years on the need to rescue traditional craft professions from the Lota community. It unites miners and miners’ wives, children and grandchildren who have joined together with the aim of promoting Lota’s cultural heritage through handicrafts.
Lota, what we were, what we are.
Story of six mining experiences transformed into songs through an immersive musical show, where the spectator is immersed in mining culture through images of the time, the author’s story and his songs.
Tomorrow morning (excerpt)
Colectivo Incorpórea, Dance performance.
Regional Government Biobío’s Headquarters
This work revisits the dance company’s own choreographic history, highlighting its links with politics, the streets and memory from sensitive and everyday narratives, and brings them to the present in dialogue with new bodies, contexts and needs.
“In our own collective encounter we are faced with the inhabiting of memory, universes that appear as old photographs, worn out but still alive in the present. Our generation drives transitions and constantly challenges the established, but it does not cease to look back in search of the milestones of memory that deeply pierce us and motivate us to continue rewriting and resituating history.
A collective body that motivates us to create new ways of living.”
"Prometeo nacional" (Extract)
Dance performance, Compañía de Teatro La Obra
Regional Government Biobio’s Headquarters.
Directed by: Gisel Sparza
Work inspired by the case of Sebastián Acevedo Becerra, who saw two of his children kidnapped by the CNI, a fact that led him to make the decision to commit suicide in front of the cathedral of Concepción on November 11th, 1983.
The work poses the challenge of addressing what happened, essentially from the perspective of Sebastián Acevedo, as the father. The piece dialogues with the specific event, but also with the personal story of Sebastián and with the history of Chile itself.
The text was created from interviews with Sebastián’s relatives, in particular María Candelaria y Erica Acevedo Sáez (his daughters) and Elena Sáez, his wife. In addition, personal documents and photographs provided by the family were reviewed.
Play: The Madwoman of the trains.
Performance intervention by Camilo Morales, Maiza Czischke & Bárbara Calderón
Biotrain to San Rosendo
Theatrical and musical intervention created for the IV International and Interdisciplinary Congress on Cultural Heritage that mixes music, performance and poetry on the train, addressing the history around the railway line Concepción – San Rosendo (Ramal and Laja track) in relation to the development of human settlements that coexist with this line and the presence of the Biobío river as a historical.
Décimas by Bárbara Calderón.
Artesanos de Tomé
Art Exhibition at the Ex Textile Factory Bellavista Oveja Tomé
Santiago Espinoza, Evelyn Fuentealba, Quintin Mardones, Américo Caamaño, Lisa Godoy and Esteban Sánchez, renowned local artisans from Tomé, exhibit their work in this artistic exhibition.
Apócrifo ATARI (extract)
Performance in Bellavista Oveja Tomé, former textile factory
Directed by: Natalia Jorquera
A performance set in the universe of science fiction. Performers enter the ATARI universe and incarnate themselves through their avatars, exploring what it means to be incarnated in a high-tech world that seeks to challenge the dualisms mind/body, culture/nature, man/woman, reality/appearance.