Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnography from fieldwork conducted in El Alto, this paper aims to discuss the notions of attentionality and intentionality, as suggested by Ingold (2015) How are intentionality/attentionality relevant? How is the (indigenous) memory (re)imagined, and how is imagination remembered?

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographical and pictorial insights from fieldwork conducted in El Alto, the fast-growing and most populated city on the Andean Altiplano region, this paper aims to discuss the notions of attentionality and intentionality, as suggested and differentiated by Tim Ingold (2015) in his book "The life of lines". By tracking the flows of material and the lines of movement (Ingold; 2012) that result in the design, construction and inhabitation of the Cholets, an eye-picking, controversial and innovative architectural style that (re)interprets Aymara identity in an urban context, I will try to deliver a description of the interwoven nature of intentional and attentional ways of making (urban-indigenous) architecture.

Heterogeneous actors (construction workers, providers, designers and q'amiri clients, among others) intervene in distinct and decisive manners with flows of heterogeneous resources and materials (from capital and muscular force, to industrial products, semi-artisanal crafts and creativity) for the material and symbolic realization of these buildings. This realization occurs as a partially ritualized process of bringing-them-to-life, by means of drawing, building, shaping, merging, painting, etc., as practices of educated or learned attentionality in the messy construction sites.

From this background, several questions about the status of these buildings emerge: is the difference intentionality/attentionality relevant for their cultural specificities? How are the indigenous, urban/modern or ch'ixi (Rivera Cusicanqui) worlds knotted together? Are traditional Aymara thakhis (Arnold) or mnemonic pathways still playing a role in construction? And more generally, how is the (indigenous) memory (re)imagined, and how is imagination remembered?