You will see a sea of stones. About Raúl Zurita

Seminars and Lectures

Paisaje de cielo azul con nubes formando letras — *You will see a sea of stones*

Held on 03 may 2012

In 1979 the poet Raúl Zurita (1950) founded, along with artists Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo, the sociologist Fernando Balcells and the writer Diamela Eltit, the Colectivo de Acciones de Arte - CADA (Art Actions Collective). The actions of this collective fall within the realm of artistic activism that took hold in Latin America in the 1960s and 70s as a political reaction to the dictatorial regimes. Six years after the military coup led by Pinochet, CADA performed actions of artistic and political resistance against the dictatorship, thus giving shape to an artistic gesture that was politically-engaged, collective and public. The actions carried out by CADA determined the poetic and political character of conceptualism in Latin America. As of 2012, the CADA archive is part of the Museo Reina Sofía Collection.

This event looks at the career of Raúl Zurita in a debate and then a poetry reading, both of which will take place in the Collection room dedicated to artistic activism in Latin America. With an oeuvre in which the frontiers between text, body and landscape become blurred, from the radical experience of self-inflicted harm (the photo of his burned cheek on the cover of the bookPurgatorio), to skywriting in smoke letters over New York City in 1982 and making his verse "ni pena ni miedo" a permanent part of Atacama desert in 1993, Zurita's poetry opens itself to multiple layers of meaning, including literary, political and social meaning, and reconsiders the relationship between art and life.

This activity is also a presentation of the book Zurita (Editorial Delirio, 2012). Divided into three parts which have as a backdrop the afternoon of September 10th, 1973, the night that followed and the dawn of September 11th, the day of the military coup in Chile, the book's 750 pages create a fresco in which multiple voices, dreams and images converge, where poetry becomes a novel and a novel becomes history.

Participants

Sonia Betancort. She has a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Literature and is an educator and cultural manager.

Fernando Castro Flórez. He is a professor of Art History at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and is the curator of Ni pena ni miedo. Artistas chilenos contemporáneos (MEIAC, 2012)

Fabio de la Flor. Editor-in-chief of the publishing company Editorial Delirio, he also directs the Seminario de la Universidad de Salamanca (SDLM), the PAN Festival and is a member of the burying committee of the Museum-Mausoleum of Morille.

Raúl Zurita. Poet. Winner of Chile's National Literature Prize (2000) and of the José Lezama Lima de Cuba award (2009). His books include: Purgatorio (1979), Anteparaíso (1982), Canto a su amor desaparecido (1985), El amor de Chile (1987), Canto de los ríos que se aman (1993) El día más blanco (2000), Poemas militantes (2010), Las ciudades de agua (2006) and Cuadernos de guerra (2012).