translated from Spanish: Magellan artists rebuild route of genocidal Julius Popper, one of those responsible for Selknam ethnocide

A Selknam man’s corpse lies on the pampas. His body is arranged like a cross. Open arms and eyes set on the sky. In one of his hands he holds a bow and, in the other, wields some arrows. Standing next to him, a white man named Julius Popper appears with his hands on a 22-gauge Remington rifle, with his gaze nailed to that semi-naked, lifeless body. This is one of the images that surprise as they tour the pages of the so-called Popper Album, photographic record of the Romanian engineer Julius Popper, one of the most named genocides in Patagonia, responsible for a part of the massacre of the Selknam People in Tierra del Fuego. 
This album was released in 1887 and has six copies, one of which is preserved by the Magellan Regional Museum. Today, October 12, 2020, that years of aberrant memoir returns with a cluster of black-and-white stories, to be reinterpreted by a group of artists and researchers, who are committed to tensioning colonial discourse and re-resigning the history of the territory, from a critical and contemporary look, written by the inhabitants of the south of the world themselves.

“The ethnocide Selknam imposed by colonization and its policies of systematic extermination against this nomadic people – to establish a model of gold and sheep exploitation in ancestral lands – has been investigated from various fields. However, this discussion in the contemporary social context, which seeks to vindicate the memory of the disappeared by the advancement of progress, often finds voices that deny horror,” says visual artist Sandra Ulloa, who together with Nataniel Alvarez, founded the FinalEsperanza Collective and Liquenlab, Magellanic groups that promote contemporary creation around the medial arts, from Punta Arenas (Chile); and are the ones who are also today promoting this project called “(Re)production and sonification of figurations”.
“We have managed this project as a last-minute collective, captivated by this photograph that refers to the body of that man Selknam collapsed in the pampas. We first applied to a fund of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage to activate the collection of the Museum of Magellan, specifically Popper’s album, with the support of its director, Paola Grendi. Then, we integrated the archaeologist Alfredo Prieto and, with him and with the assistance of Pedro Paredes and photographer Thierry Dupradou, we went to the locations that the photographs indicate and made the circuit behind the places described by Popper”, contextualizes the visual artist Nataniel Alvarez, who explains that as a product of the security measures applied by the pandemic, the project is paralyzed , but “we are already going in the middle of the road: Popper traveled from Bahía Chilota, crossing to Tierra del Fuego Island and reached the Páramo, on the Argentine side. And the latter is the part we still have to investigate.” In this process he also joined the curator Rodolfo Andaur, “with whom we are currently working from the aesthetics and the anti-colonialist gaze”, concludes Alvarez. 
I work on the ground. Credit: Thierry Dupradou.
This is how this bet has meant for artists an in-depth research exercise into a bloody event that seems frozen in history, but which has also meant embarking on their own journey behind Popper’s footprint, reactivating the map of the area for the geolocation of key event sites, which could contribute to the process of relinking elements , not only from photography, but also from the territory, to propose other possible readings beyond that capture in time that fired stories about victors and vanquished on a painting, according to the artists, “apparently edited and starring those who try to romanticize the death of another human being”. 
“Gold explorers used 22-gauge Remington rifles, the impact of a projectile of these, would not leave the victim with those objects in their hands; the zero presence of blood or projectile holes in the body are also suspicious,” Ulloa says, adding that “apparent ‘continuity errors’ in the order of the shots and objects that appear there come out. Everything seems to indicate a montage to justify an extractivist model, when the search for gold in large quantities set the tone,” Ulloa finishes. 
The allies of the last-minute collective
“(Re)production and sonification of figurations”, is part of a process that began to take place in 2008 with a series of visual and sound interventions and explorations, through the medial arts, which today come to life a “memory route”, and which will later become an exhibition that will see the light in 2021. 
For the archaeologist Alfredo Prieto, who has worked for a long time in the north of Tierra del Fuego and has thoroughly investigated expedition routes, such as that of Chilean officer Serrano Montaner, the experience of working with the ultimate hope collective has been “a happy turnout, although the greatest effort was being carried away by them”, explaining that it was a chance encounter that led them to join in this research “I was reviewing Popper’s album with photographer Thierry Dupradou, and our common interest with Sandra and Nataniel generated this joint search,” he says.
“We have to find the points where Popper was and photographed with his people. And there are photographs that show different perspectives. Some are easier to follow because there is a landscape in the distance, a lagoon or a river, and there are others more difficult to find the exact places, but let’s try it,” confesses the archaeologist.
Credit: Thierry Dupradou.
In addition, Prieto adds other components to the investigation, says popper could be “the scapegoat” of the Selknam genocide: “Popper is a guy who was photographed holding a murdered Selknam at his feet, and we know there were many more killers – and much more bloodier – then perhaps this is the occasion – through Popper – to reveal the other facts that wiped out the selknam population of the north of Tierra del Fuego.”
Meanwhile, Rodolfo Andaur, curator of contemporary art and Master in Art History at Adolfo Ibáñez University, convened to this project by the collective LastEsperanza, proposes that “the interesting thing about Popper is that he continues to claim the work of the conqueror. Popper is a simile of Christopher Columbus and Peter of Valdivia, and of a lot of other men who traveled from Europe to America to seek riches and to that end justified ethnocides.” Andaur goes further and adds that “the Chilean state does not want to read that popper figure, because it would have to start reviewing a lot of problems that the Conquest has raised, since it was installed in Chilean territory”.
Andaur has worked before with the collective LastEsperanza and Liquenlab Magallanes, that is why he reflects: “I believe that art is always a political tool that opens up processes of collective reflection. A project like this contributes greatly to the critical thinking of the Magellan Region and to find – in the value of art – a response to ethnocide, to impunity. When regions are vindicated, it is important that this issue enters collective discourse, because not much time has passed and we must find a way for that not to be repeated again.” 
Intervention log: Credit: Thierry Dupradou
 

Original source in Spanish

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