Museum of Dignity: between Controversy and Memory. A look at the Artistic-Political Actions in the Chilean October of 2019

Abstract

The social revolt of October 18, in Chile, became a process that shook the country from its deepest foundations. This moment of social explosion was accompanied by an equal explosion of the production of images, performances and artistic actions throughout the country, highlighting the deep symbolic dimension of the protests. In this context, the “Museum of Dignity” action, created by a group of the same name, calls attention. It intervenes in the images produced by the protests, arranged on the walls of the city of Santiago. The interventions produced by the Museum of Dignity group, which insert street actions into golden frames, raise a series of important questions about art, institutions of culture, heritage and preservation. This article tries to analyze the different effects of the Museum of Dignity action in the public sphere, based on the method of Critical Analysis of the Discourse (Fairclough, 2001). The emphasis will be placed on the aspect of critical discursive practice that interferes in the public sphere (both artistically and socially) producing dissent (Mouffe, 2014; Rancière, 2009) and shuffling the regimes of art (Rancière, 2005) in their presence.