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13.15 – 13.45: The right to radical media: the case of student movement in Chile 2006-2011
Alejandra Perez Nunez
In 2011 the massive and growing student protests in Chile, multitudinous and grassroot, significantly fuelled by social networks and digital media have begun to claim attention worldwide. In Chile, as in many of the recent protests, the focus on individuals who become symbolic flash points for the movements they inspire. Here, a university leader, Camila Vallejo, an eloquent and attractive young woman who exudes self-confidence and style” has been labelled the ‘face’ of the protest by the Guardian in the UK. The purpose of this presentation is to analyze what is behind such a visage-making process in relation to social movements and give a context for the following speculation – that a process of visagéification conducted by mass media is part of a strategy of codification that makes social movements fragile against hegemony. This visagéification process is instrumental and serves to the detriment of radical political forces that are questioning the foundations of chilean culture. In this context I propose to appraise what kind of media would be coherent with such radicality.
Alejandra Perez Nunez a.k.a. elpueblodechina is a sound artist, critical writer and performer working with and developing FLOSS tools and electronics. With a degree in Psychology and Aesthetics from Universidad Catolica de Chile and a M.A in Media Design from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, she actively works to fuse radical forms of open cultures with educational and social structures, especially in relatively conservative and weakly networked regions and communities in South America.
