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ALFREDO JAAR: I strongly believe [br]in the power of a single idea.

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So the most difficult thing [br]for me is to arrive at the…

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at the essence of what you want to say.

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And when you reach that…

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that essential idea, it’s…

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it’s extraordinary.

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I could say that everything I know about art

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I learn it when studying architecture.

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I approach art as an architect.

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And as an architect I give myself [br]a program so this program will…

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will take into account a space.

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Studying that space I...I…

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I try to reach what we call [br]the essence of the space.

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And then I combine that essence,

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that finding with the essence [br]of what I’m trying to say.

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Every single element has [br]been thought of in design.

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Nothing is arbitrary, absolutely nothing.

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The work has been fabricated by engineers or by…

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by people who have the right skills for [br]the right installations I’m working with.

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I’m at a point where the most [br]fascinating process for me is just

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to think, to think, to think and to think.

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And uhm, and then to let someone [br]else execute the project.

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I have been incapable in my career to ever,

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ever create a single work of art that [br]is just coming from my imagination.

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My imagination starts working based on research,

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based on a real life event, most of the time [br]a tragedy that I’m just starting to analyze,

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to reflect on it and to...to [br]accumulate information.

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But the original impulse is…

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is this real life event to [br]which I’m trying to respond to.

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So in the case of Rwanda,

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I started following the [br]tragedy from the beginning.

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I was outraged, how we were told, [br]this is happening, this is happening.

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Yesterday 35,000 bodies were recovered,

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they were floating on the [br]Kagera River, 35,000 bodies.

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And it was just a five-line story on page 7.

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So.... So I was following this story [br]and I reached a limit and I thought,

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well I have to go, I have to go.

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I have.... There is something [br]I would like to say about this.

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And then so I just went.

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And it was the most horrific [br]experience in my life.

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I was getting into huge dilemmas, how…

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how do you present this, respecting the [br]dignity of the people you are focusing on?

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So that’s why THE RWANDA PROJECT lasted six [br]years and it’s my longest project to date.

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I end up doing 21 different pieces within [br]those six years and they all failed.

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That’s why I kept going,

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looking for the perfect way to communicate [br]to my audience that experience.

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And of course there is no way.

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There is this huge gap between reality [br]and its possible representations.

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And that gap is impossible to close.

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So as artists we have to try different [br]strategies of representation.

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And THE SILENCE OF NDUWAYEZU

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is just one more attempt to represent [br]a very difficult and tragic situation.

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When we say a million dead, it’s meaningless.

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So the...the strategy was to…

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to reduce the scale to a single human [br]being with a name, with a story.

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And that helps the audience [br]to identify with that person.

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And this process of identification [br]is...is fundamental to create empathy,

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to create solidarity, to create [br]intellectual involvement.

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The text at the entrance tells you a story.

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I visited a refugee camp [br]and Nduwayezu was seated on…

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on the stairs of a door...a school that [br]they had recreated inside the refugee camp.

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Nduwayezu actually saw with his own eyes his [br]mother and his father killed with machetes.

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His reaction was to remain silent for [br]approximately four weeks, he couldn’t speak.

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For me, the heart of an exhibition [br]is really the spirit of the artist.

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The spirit of what he’s trying to communicate.

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I want people to...to walk in that [br]space and to feel that they have

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entered into a model of thinking [br]and of looking at the world.

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Coming back to...to Chile, [br]coming back as an artist is…

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is an incredibly moving experience.

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It was incredibly moving for me to [br]share my work for the first time

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with all of my friends and family.

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It was almost like starting from scratch,

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because they were experiencing [br]it for the first time.

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It’s a very, very emotional [br]situation, incredibly emotional.

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At...at the age of five, my father decides to [br]move to this French island called Martinique.

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And we lived there for ten marvelous years.

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And then at the age of [br]fifteen, my father announces,

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okay, we’re going back.

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And we moved back to Chile which [br]was during Allende’s period.

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And so we arrived in a...in [br]a country incredibly divided.

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I’m so obsessed with…

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with communicating a very specific [br]amount of information to the audience.

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And uh, one very important [br]element is the economy of means.

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Muxima is divided in ten cantos.

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And each canto in itself [br]is...is structured as a haiku,

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which is a short Japanese poem.

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What, what fascinated me about haikus is the…

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the capacity for fifteen, seventeen [br]words to communicate an entire world.

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My way of thinking is pretty Cartesian [br]and it’s coming from my French education.

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I’m...I’m very logical.

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To make sense for me is…

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is a very essential aspect of the work.

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I was incredibly shy when I was a kid,

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so my father took me to a psychiatrist

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and the psychiatrist gave him two or three choices[br]to help me to overcome this shyness.

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So he brought me home a little box of magic.

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And, and I got into this [br]world and I became a magician.

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And to be a magician helped [br]me to confront the audience.

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And to do something when they knew that I was [br]trying to hide something, but they don’t see it.

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What they see is the magic.

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Before moving into filmmaking I was [br]an actor and I did a lot of theater.

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I wrote plays and I directed plays.

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And so when you combine the world of magic,

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the world of theater and so [br]those two things plus my…

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my background as an architect, [br]everything is there.

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And, and that mise-en-scène that you [br]see is really a result of those things.

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I had forgotten about this stuff. (LAUGHS)

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I think it’s important to incorporate a [br]beauty in the work because it’s part of life.

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But that doesn’t mean we [br]should just stay with beauty.

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And we should not be afraid sometimes [br]to confront beauty and horror

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and LET ONE HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM [br]probably does that in a very direct way.

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And it’s based on a Chinese poem that Mao used to…

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to throw a campaign asking intellectuals to

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participate in the life of [br]the revolution in the ‘50s.

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“Let one hundred flowers bloom, let one [br]hundred schools of thought contend.”

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After one year, because intellectuals [br]were suspicious of Mao’s intentions,

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they finally gave in and [br]they started speaking out.

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And of course they gave great new ideas,

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but they were contrary to [br]the ideals of the revolution.

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And then their voices were suppressed.

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So here this piece is standing as a metaphor for [br]the struggle of intellectuals all over the world.

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Here we have a hundred flowers being [br]submitted to contradictory forces.

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On one hand they are being [br]fed with water and light

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and on the other hand they are being killed [br]by strong industrials winds and strong cold.

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These flowers will be dying continuously.

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We will keep replacing them.

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And what connects this particular work [br]that was shown in Rome for the first time

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with the Santiago situation is that instead of a [br]video that we had in Rome with Gramsci’s grave,

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here we are opening a window into the Alameda.

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We are less than a hundred [br]meters away from the La Moneda,

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from the presidential palace where our [br]socialist president, Salvador Allende,

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was killed during the military [br]coup by General Pinochet.

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This piece is really making a link with [br]the immediate history of our country.

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By opening a little window into this gallery [br]that happened to be on the Alameda uh,

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a world of connection is created.

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And...and that I think is extraordinary, [br]the power of art to do those things,

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to create connections, to make [br]bridges and that fascinates me.