student movement

I think this is a historic moment for the students movement because is the first time from democracy return (if a say 21 years!) in this movement was a organized way proclaim for a FREE EDUCATION and not for a any eventually law, as a case of “Penguin Movement” and the “LOCE” law´s changes in 2006. We are proclaiming (myself included) constitutional changes. Because we are the bad experience of the changes of the LOCE Law, which students don’t approve and the government play a dirty game, passing the same law disguised under another name (LGE).

Well, 80.000 people walking down the “Alameda” in a strike demonstration for the Public Education, speaks us of strong movement. Because, while the massive announcement could be effect of HidroAysen´s mass media topic. There has been a real organization and cooperation between students (of the High School and the University) and teachers.

The principal demands are:

For the High School Education:

-          the municipal schools to be state again

-          All year school pass

For the University Education:

-          Free and public access

-          Removal of the university selection test

-          Changes in feeds and materials grants

For the teachers:

-          The historic debt

-          Recovery of free education.

The education has to be a right and not a privilege of few. Otherwise we deepen existing inequalities. We must fight for our children's future. Fight by not be slaves to the market.

They want automatons. Only critical thinking frees us from the subordination to the ideas of others (those in power). Only through education can achieve better working conditions, namely more free time to spend with us. Finally, that is all, to have more time to love and more time to do nothing. But the point is, that opportunity for everyone!  

Duchamp is the best

I think Duchamp is the best artist of all times. In the history of art there is a before and after Duchamp. Because he is the first to point out that art is anything that the artist "points" as artistic. He inaugurates a new relationship between art and life: It makes getting out of their natural context to place an object in one new. That is the essence of their Readymades.

Duchamp was born in 1887, in France. His early works are cubist and futurist. This period stands out his "Nude Descending a Staircase", 1914. Work was exhibited in the U.S., where it caused uproar in the American art scene, then a very conservative. But his works are truly revolutionary is it’s readymade, the first, "Bicycle Wheel on Stool" dates from 1918. While the most controversial was "Fountain", 1917

Duchamp did not make up images, he make up ideas. For that he is the father of the conceptual art. And also, he participated in art movements like Cubism (“Section of gold”), Dadá, in his first period and then he take part of the Surrealism Movement, when he lives in New York, between 1942 at his dead in 1968.

In Dada period he made the happening “Tonsure” of 1919 and many performance like “Rrose Sélavy” (1921, 24-25), “Belle Haleine” (1921) and “Relache” performance made in 1924 in which acts of Adam, with actress Bronja Perlmutter as Eve.

While, in his second period in New York he was a pioneer in other art styles like a kinetic art, with art pieces like “Rotoreliefs” and “Rotative Demi-Sphere and installation, with his staging “Etant donnés” (1946-66), his master piece.

Concluding, I think, in Duchamp and Picasso can find the raw material of all contemporary art. But I don’t speak about Picasso because I prefer transgressor style of Duchamp.

Bad news, NO SURPRISE

In Response to Beatriz I think the new law about the genetically modified seeds is just terrible. And I´m appreciated you (Beatriz) shared with as this awful new.

But I´ will talk about other new: the hunger strike of the four Mapuche´s communal land owners. They are 80 days in hunger strike!!! I saw today in CNN Chile TV news they continued in strike although their sentences were reduced by the Supreme Court. But the TV and paper news like a “La Tercera” y “El Mercurio” don’t tell the complete story. Fortunately, alternative Medias like a “Le Monde Diplomatic” bring more information…

  José Huenuche Reimán, Jonathan Huillical, Ramón LLanquileo Pilquimán y Héctor Llaitul are accused to terrorist attack against to a public prosecutor, Mario Elgueta, in October 2008. They declared in press release acting in self defense against violent police´s mass searches. They accuse the police to safeguard the interests of forestry companies (including Endesa) who operating around 3.6 million hectares versus 500 000 which occupies the Mapuche nation. As all know that controversy lands was sold in the Pinochet´s military dictatorship to the companies, although the problem is older. But, what is really troubling here is that the dictatorship laws continue to apply in democracy that is the case of the 18.314 law which allows the police and justice freely pursue those deemed terrorists. That law was to refer for the Bachelet´s Government and her Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma.

 This fact makes a mockery of democracy, if you still believe in it.
Personally, I no longer surprise me anything.