Thinking Inside the Box: 1973 is a project that came to the University of Leeds in October 2022.
The motto of our work has been to "think inside the box" - to reawaken hopes, struggles, and solidarities of the past through a performative engagement with the archive. To mark 50 years of the Chilean military coup, our exploration of the archive has been guided by the year of 1973, but is not only focused on Chile: in the context of the Global Cold War, 1973 marked a critical political moment for many other Latin American countries.
This exhibition was first launched at the University of Leeds on 18th April, 2023
Click on the images below to read more.
Did you know?
In 1976, a mural was painted in solidarity with the people of Chile at the University of Leeds’ student union. Find out more here.
INSPIRED BY THE WORKS OF ANTONIO KADIMA, THINKING INSIDE THE BOX: 1973 HAS CREATED ITS OWN ARCHIVE OF COLLABORATIVE POLITICAL ARTWORKS.
In April 2023, we’re running a series of workshops across Leeds to engage with a range of publics in collectively ‘thinking inside the box’. Guided by the theme of Hope, Struggle and Solidarity, we are drawing inspiration from the political artworks and printed material we have been exploring through the archives over the past months. By sharing these materials with our audiences, our goal is to reawaken the practice of visually representing hopes and struggles for a better future.
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE OUR COMMUNITY’S ARTWORKS
For inspiration, we gave our audiences the following prompts - why don’t you try your own?
¡Censored Voices!
Dictatorship in Chile meant highly restricted access to media and censored news. Additionally, many of those producing protest art did not have access to materials or equipment. In many places around the world, people still face these issues. When we consider access to social media nowadays, our understanding of limited resources is quite different to 1970s Chile, it can be hard to imagine!
How would you tell your story without social media? Think about creating something with limited resources.
¿Art or Necessity?
For many, protest art does not come from a wish to be creative but instead from an urgency to fight against opressors. In Chile in the 1970s, many pieces of protest art emerged after friends or family had gone missing. This sense of immediate threat was at the heart of protest art.
What feels most urgent to you? Think about the message that you most want to share with others.
¡Simplicity!
Many of those creating protest art had no artistic training and were creating messages for people who may not have been able to read or write. Posters needed to share meaning through images and often artists were inspired by the world around them, using imagery of birds, mountains and the sun. It would not have been possible to use words such as 'revolution' or 'resistance' in posters given the strict rules of the dictatorship so artists had to be careful when communicating their ideas.
How would you depict your message without words? Think about using imagery from the world around you.
a Visit to the Liverpool Music Archive
A reflection on our visit to The Popular Music Archive at the University of Liverpool by Mayu Taniguchi.
festival programme
festival programme
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Our main, month-long exhibition at University of Leeds. Launch date, 18th April.
This exhibition explored the theme of “Hope, Struggle and Solidarity.” The Cold War period in Latin America was violent, heartbreaking, and bleak; it was a period of many struggles… against dictatorship, against authoritarianism, against political imprisonment and torture, and against poverty and inequality. But these were also struggles of hope for a better future. The artworks, songs, and stories we presented as part of this exhibition do not just deal with protesting human rights violations. They are uplifting and full of passion for life, they shine a light through the darkness and encourage optimism when the struggle against oppression seems hopeless, they generate solidarity based on shared hopes that democracy and freedom are soon to come.
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DATE - 5th April to 5th May 2023
LOCATION - Left Bank, Leeds
An exhibition of political pamphlets reflecting Hope, Struggle and Solidarity in Chile in the 1970s. A parallel to the exhibition hosted at the University of Leeds.
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DATE - Thursday 13th April 2023
LOCATION - Snug space, Hyde Park Book Club
An informal political poster-making workshop that invited participants to drop in and make a poster about what felt urgent to them. Art materials and revolutionary tunes provided.
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DATE - Thursday 20th April 2023
LOCATION - University of Leeds
In this guest lecture, Prof. Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta offered an assessment of the year of 1973 in the context of Latin America by exploring the commonalities and particularities among different southern cone military dictatorships. Taking 1973 as a landmark, the guest lecture analysed the objectives and interests that led certain social groups to support the dictatorships and their tools of repression, as well as the impact these authoritarian regimes had on regional and global history. Now that fifty years have passed, can we consider that democracy in the region is durable? Have the structural and contextual elements that gave rise to the authoritarian wave of the 1960s-70s now been overcome?
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DATE - Friday 21st April 2023
LOCATION - University of Leeds
As part of the Thinking Inside the Box: 1973, Anna Grimaldi discussed her recently published book, Brazil and the Transnational Human Rights Movement, 1964-1985. This event explored how solidarity for Brazil contributed to the global human rights movement of the 1970s. Inspired by the theme of hope and solidarity, Anna presented a range of protests, petitions, posters, and other cultural, artistic, and media-based campaigns to understand how the language of human rights shaped and was shaped by solidarity for Brazil. She argued that by prompting the international community to join the fight against dictatorship, solidarity for Brazil reframed the debate on human rights itself, stretching the concept beyond mainstream interpretations to centre on a series of hopes: hopes for social, economic and cultural rights; equality; education and healthcare; the rights of marginalised groups; land redistribution; resource sovereignty, working conditions; and autonomous development. Anna showed how these hopes and struggles were disseminated through networks of exiles, catholic activists, journalists and academics between Brazil and Western Europe, who drew from the Latin American experience to challenge mainstream narratives of human rights from below.
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DATE - September 2023
LOCATION - Embassy of Chile, London
The Embassy of Chile in the United Kingdom, King's College London and the University of Leeds launched the exhibition Thinking inside the box: Chile, 1973.
The opening included an exhibition of political posters from the project Hope, Struggle and Solidarity and a performance by King’s Brazil Ensemble.
See images of the event below.
