CRAC is a non-profit, independent center for the arts and contemporary thought. Its location in Valparaí­so is consistent with our aims, in that our projects are closely related to the city's history and its current political-cultural circumstances. Using CRAC for artists' residencies and as a platform for discussion and reflection, we tackle issues that stem from intervening in the public space of a Latin American city. We point out the different relations that this implies: hearings, citizens' manifestations, institutional productions and the private spaces that oversee daily life.

CRAC's projects seek to have a bearing on various levels of culture and propose a dialogue on ways of relating to public space, while also establishing new forms of access for interpreters, mediators or receivers of cultural projects. The aim of the residencies is for contemporary art to delve into different issues affecting a city and its inhabitants, particularly those involving Valparaí­so and its cultural, heritage and political characteristics.

The notions of experience, affectivity and self-management have formed part of the work program we are following through contemporary-art practices, emphasizing a flow of artists through their residency in the city. Despite our short period of existence, we have established a working framework that links political and poetic conditions, and a number of artists have started reflecting on the factors and possibilities that communities and citizens permit and produce through dialogue. The specific focus in this city is on the social fabric, the memory reflected in material culture, the ways of appropriating and occupying the landscape, but above all on ways of thinking about creating other options, given the speed at which real estate projects and showy cultural proposals develop.

We believe that each site where an experience takes place produces something that affects a community's sense of collectivity. This involves a deep-seated sense of belonging " being affected by what is going on "and that is when collective experience leads to innumerable possibilities and situations. We understand that contemporary art can announce, translate, point out and incorporate certain political-civic issues, without representing an easily digestible urban imaginary. It collaborates with other collective ways of viewing and living in our common space. And this situation, like a consistency of affects, can help to build a territory where we can negotiate our identities on the basis of dreams.

Paulina Varas Alarcón is a researcher, curator, and co-director of CRAC Valparaiso, a residency center for contemporary artists.

Note:

* This text forms part of three previously published texts: VARAS, Paulina: "Aproximaciones a una poética polí­tica", Triatlón, VI Bienal de Arte catalogue, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile; Cierto Tipo de Poética Polí­tica, a booklet published for the exhibition of the same name, held from March 28 to May 4, 2008 at the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes, Valparaí­so;and "La distribución de la experiencia", Memoria CRAC (2007-08) , CRAC Valparaí­so, 2009.

Quotes:

(1) DUPLUS, "La práctica artí­stica más allá del dispositivo de exhibición", GARCIA NAVARRO, Santiago (comp.), El pez, la bicicleta y la máquina de escribir. Un libro sobre el encuentro de espacios y grupos de arte independientes de América Latina y el Caribe, Fundación PROA/DUPLUS, Buenos Aires, 2005, page 114.
(2) The previous versions of the International Forum of Cultures were held in Barcelona in 2004 and in Monterrey in 2007.
(3) Several current reports go to show that the coup d í‰tat in Chile originated tactically in Valparaí­so, and that a few days before the September 11, 1973 coup a number of US warships moored in the bay to support the coup from our maritime territory.
(4) NORDENFLYCHT, José de "El culto postmoderno a los monumentos: Patrimonio local en contexto global", Patrimonio Local. Ensayos sobre arte, arquitectura y lugar , Editorial Puntángeles, Valparaí­so, 2004, page 84.
(5) The h-10 visual arts gallery was directed by the artists Pedro Sepúlveda and Vanesa Vásquez and was in operation in Valparaí­so from January 2003 to January 2009. This gallery-show window, measuring about one cubic meter, was for a long time a space for resisting the official cultural policies that promote the event-show business culture to attract audiences to cultural programs. h-10 was a gallery without inaugurations that operated on a shoestring, but nevertheless managed to show the work of more than one hundred Chilean and foreign artists, thus becoming a point of reference in Valparaí­so for local visual-arts production. For further information: http://galeriah10.org
(6) FOSTER, Hal "Remodificaciones: Hacia una noción de lo polí­tico en el arte contemporáneo", BLANCO, Paloma [et. al.], Modos de hacer. Arte crí­tico, esfera pública y acción directa. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001, p. 100.