For this Ars Electronica 2021, we have decided on autonomy as our main concept, as we believe it can be the vehicle to move us towards a more harmonious way of life that will protect our environment. We understand autonomy as the capacity to make informed, uncoerced decisions. It requires our active participation and a deep reflection. Organizations and individuals being able to make the right choices will be crucial for our species.
Rational autonomy entails making your own decisions, but it cannot be done in isolation.
Cooperative rational interactions are required to develop and exercise our ability to live in a world in harmony with others. From a slightly different approach, autonomy is normally defined from a human resources perspective, where the need to receive supplies makes us dependent on a provider. This dynamic has been quite normal for us in recent years, but what if our suppliers are not to be trusted anymore?
They are no longer reliable in their task to care for the environment and society. As the economic system fails, we have to deconstruct ourselves in a search for survival. It is time to look around with different eyes, to rediscover our search for freedom. Perhaps it is just a matter of changing our suppliers. That’s the power of autonomy. Other forms of life are around us and constitute our food: plants, animals, bacteria and fungi are indeed very good suppliers, but only an informed and uncoerced decision can make the change.
La Fabulosa República de la Montaña
The Republic of the Mountain manifested itself thanks to the social cataclysm of Chile in October 2019. The tectonic plates of the eternal transition released the energy accumulated for more than 500 years, since the invader stepped on this territory, distorting the dance of the bees, the course of rivers, the existence of wetlands. Since he began to destroy the sacred fields, to extract everything that could be sold; saltpeter, copper and gold, pollute the salt flats to extract lithium, to cover fertile land with mining tailings.
The Republic of the Mountain is constituted as a utopian micronation, decentralized and intangible, which activates an ephemeral appearance from the foothills of the Andes towards the limits of our perception. The Republic of the Mountain lies in the middle of the city and at the bottom of the sea. The presence of the mountain becomes a provocation to explore, to travel its unknown, unexplored territory, denied by the continuous distraction of the media. In the Fabulous Republic of the Mountain, it is possible to put into practice the transformation of our form of collective action, something that the wise Mapuche people know as „Kume Mogen“, or Good Living, inviting to live a form of balanced relationship between people and their environment, where the collective vertigo stops spinning as it was the end of a macabre dance.
In the Republic of the Mountain the well-being of all living beings lies in our ability as humans to sink a colonialist, alienating and destructive attitude, where the accumulation of capital configures a kind of collective insanity. Decrease, slow down, breathe. The Republic of the Mountain resides in our collective unconscious, and the way to access its territory is through meditation, the intonation of a common tune, in which we find our own memory, actions and experiences. In the Republic of the Mountain the ascent occurs inwards, the journey towards an absolute introspection, where the transformation manifests itself from the recognition of our liquid, mutant and mutable being, from the observation of the distance and perspective of the internal territory, where the conformation of a geography constituted by the intangibility of our memory.
The Republic of the Mountain is electromagnetic, noospheric, a body without organs where its inhabitants move as energy bodies without limits, merging with each other, in an eternal vibration, where energy and dark matter are the main source that structures its topology. In The Republic of the Mountain the vibrations of our existence bounce between the ravines of its volume, filter towards its center and turn us into itself.
In the mountain republic
We declare Mother Earth the great protector of all its inhabitants.
We seek the common good of all species.
We abandon our greed disguised as freedom.
We accept ourselves as a part and not as a whole.
We explore the harmonic contemplation of our environment.
We detect each cycle that surrounds us, large or small.
And we connect it to our own life cycle.
to flourish and collaborate.
We invite you to be a citizen of the Republic, to meditate on your way of living and how you can transform with the power of your informed and conscious decisions.
Video
La Fabulosa República de la Montaña, The Chilean Corporation of Video and Electronic Arts (CChV) + CL, Credit: Tyrone Grandon
La Fabulosa República de la Montaña, The Chilean Corporation of Video and Electronic Arts (CChV) + CL, Credit: Fabian Andrade
La Fabulosa República de la Montaña, The Chilean Corporation of Video and Electronic Arts (CChV) + CL, Credit: Fabian Andrade
La Fabulosa República de la Montaña, The Chilean Corporation of Video and Electronic Arts (CChV) + CL, Credit: Tyrone Grandon
Credits
Fabián Andrade – Direction
Enrique Rivera – Art Curator
Josefina Lagos – Production
Maria Felices – Workshops
Ignacio Cuevas | White Sample – Artist
Comparsa ChinChinTirapié – Performance
Gustavo Sánchez – Veronica Araya- Camera
Gónzalo Ramírez – Hardware
The participation of artists and gardens in Chile is the result of a collaboration between Ars Electronica and the Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio and the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores | Gobierno de Chile.
