faces, eyes, memory

Corner somewhere off of Corrientes, one of the longest avenues.  Colored tiles, easy to walk over and miss.  Gives name of person, date of their kidnapping, of their disappearance.  I think of disappearances as these strange moments in which someone is dragged into world of horrors, but from our side, the side from which they have been dragged, they are ghosts in their absence and presence, ghostly before they were ghosts in their ability to be so easily taken from the visibility of the cotidian.  It's out of a horror movie, but it's more mystical than that.  It is about the power of people to bring others out of the world of the visual.  Bodies becoming part of the invisible wind, the wind of certain type of progress, like the wind the Angel of History resists as it propels him into the future.   Pretentious sounding, I know, but what a strange thought, to be picked out of reality, out of sight, but to be absent in your present.  Ghosts are here, they are a strong political force, they are used, they are signified by the white kerchiefs of the Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Las Abuelas, Hijos, in speeches in monuments, in monuments as small and flat and hard to miss as a collection of tiles to commemorate the space between empirical and mythicized reality.  I was at the MERCOSUR anthropology conference.  Went to a round table about visual anthropology, it's rise after the last government dictatorship.  The eyes emerging after an age of disappearance, of darkness, a renaissance after a dark age, knowledge after fear.  There was a project on these tile memorializations, and then you see that which is memorialized twice, once through the "monument" and then through the visual anthropology project which films the reactions of people that walk over these tiled creations.  The researcher is part of the memorialization, both of the artist's project, and of what the artist is memorializing/representing through his/her art.  

This is a city filled with pictures of people you may not know, but are being told you should.  There are a thousand memorials everyday, here, and you see one image one morning, and the next day someone has already placed one on top that contests that which it hides.  You become familiar with those you do not know, but are made to through pictures.  To be a good politician is to be able to manipulate and use images well, and I feel that it is at an intense level here.  I have a keychain that I bought because of it's absurdity (always a fan of the absurd).  It's El Che, and I know it is meant to be him, but it actually looks nothing like him, it actually represents the etching of a chimpanzee.  And how has such an impassioned symbol of freedom, of violence, become a picture on a key chain that is next to other key chains with Argentine flags to be sold, often times to tourists, because this controversial figure is a commodity, it is emblematic of "Argentina", but it doesn't even look like him, and it has become this harmless everyday item.  Eva Perón looks different so many times in one day.  So many images of her have been doctored, she is an image, a representation of the figure, no longer an individual but a thing, just as Guevara.  She is everywhere.  She is so white, so fresh, so young, so elegant, so natural, she is nothing, she is everything, she is wonderful, she is awful.  I see her being sold at news stands in Centro and once news stand has her looking three different ways.  Memorialization is such a strange thing, and something you encounter everywhere in Buenos Aires.  Often times people thing of time in reference to big past, horrific events:  Military governments, economic crises, the Malvinas.  Timelines of one's own story revolve around a historical event.  "El Secreto de Sus Ojos" has been nominated for an Oscar, it is an incredible film, and it haunts me since watching it.  It is love story, oriented around a specific past and horrific event, that is also connected to the history of Argentina in the last (less than) four decades.  I believe that this film does great things with illustrating the process of remembering, but also puts it in a specifically Argentine context and, I believe, uses an very specific way of viewing the past and present that is very much alive here. Of course these are images, or signs, that are re-configured to win elections, or to elicit a response in the here and now.  These moments, these people, or at least pictures of and stories about them, are haunting, they are everywhere in the now.  "El Secreto de Sus Ojos" emphasizes eyes, the intensity and truth they have to them, how to look into somebody's eyes is not to simply notice a physical aspect, but is something much more profound.  But eyes are also to see, to experience the world through vision, to experience it through images.  I walk down a street and have so many eyes looking at me, many from the past, many to remember something horrific, or just to make you remember, because Memory is key to everything.  And I am looking right back at them from a Buenos Aires street in 2009.  We must remember, we must, we can't help but do it, or, like me, you aren't familiar with these images, so you do basic research or ask someone, and you learn and it is relevant to you in the moment.  You here so often from some people that it is better to forget, that to talk about the past is too painful.  I saw that in the anthro documentary when bystanders were asked about their reaction to the subtle street installation.  I have often felt that I am in a place far too much obsessed with the past, thought that it was sometimes celebrated as a mythical non-existent past, when it was idealized, or as a manipulation of emotions by political parties to instill fear and anger about the disappeared.  But it is not just talking about then, it is very much now.  If an image has power now, it is also of now, it is using a past story or figure and instilling it with present relevance.  I wouldn't be so intrigued/obsessed with being in this city, talking to its inhabitants, walking down its streets, if it weren't so magical, such a different way of experiencing time and space, so haunted.   On one street maybe you see the same person once, maybe you just see a political message, no picture, maybe adds, but the pictures are incredible.  Now, after the passing of a government sponsored media bill, there are pictures of the presidential couple doctored to like they are in a reality show about their extravagant lives.  There is wit or sadness or anger and an image that is obviously doctored, or an Evita that is the picture, because, to be honest, I have no idea which one really is "her" (whatever that means).