Paper short abstract:

Moving from the project 'MapsUrbe: The invisible City, Mapuche mapping of Santiago, Chile', the proposed paper addresses the process of collective elaboration of alternative and anti-colonial epistemologies with young Mapuche artists and intellectuals in the urban context of Santiago, Chile.

Paper long abstract:

Moving from the project 'MapsUrbe: The invisible City, Mapuche mapping of Santiago, Chile' (2017-2019), the proposed paper addresses the process of collective elaboration of alternative and anti-colonial epistemologies with young Mapuche artists and intellectuals in the urban context of Santiago, Chile.

At the intersection of Santiago's urban space materiality and the immaterial practices, interpretations and lived experiences of the Mapuche diaspora, the projects explored subversive aesthetics and collective imaginations as ways of producing meanings and knowledge. The construction of alternative epistemologies went through the exercise of thinking through the city and its landscapes, re-imagining both the past and the future and crafting alternative spatialities and temporalities. Disrupting the linear unfolding of History, subterranean memories, imaginations and ways of being in the world emerged within the capital city, playing with unexpected connections and routings. Seeking co-constructed epistemological elaborations and form of representation, the MapsUrbe project developed at the intersection of experimental ethnography (Irving 2007), site-specific theatre and performance (Pearson 2010), and critical cartography (Bryan and Wood 2010), engaging in the decolonisation of knowledge and representation.

Moving from the final artistic exhibition and performance (December 2018 - January 2019), the proposed paper elaborates on the articulation of meanings conveyed by the artistic and political gesture of 'performing the Mapuche city'. Driving on the imaginative dimension of politics and on the theoretical and epistemological significance of collective creative work, it undertakes the challenge of a redefinition of the political and poetical horizons of knowledge production and reproduction.