DISTANCIA
séries
Carolina Saquel
and
Camila Marambio
The DISTANCIA series was selected in 2019
in the Espace Séries d'Artistes of the festival Séries Mania in Lille, as part of a partnership between Séries Mania, Saison Video and Le Fresnoy
Consisting of 7 episodes, the first season of Distancia is a poethical non-linear story that captures the entanglement of activists, trees, ghosts, artists, scientists and the wind, all drawn in by the construction of a road that traverses the main isle of the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, Chile. By sharing this ecodrama online we intend to make viral our creative fieldwork methods proposing them as model for collective storytelling anywhere.
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 1: Location, 2018, 3 min 19
Under pressure, cells are destroyed. “They can recover, though not ad integrum,” is what the doctor is heard saying. A map is drawn detailing the limits of a territory under dispute. The protagonist, a road under construction, whose story dip in and out of historic, territorial,and human antagonisms seems to ask: Who is this for? Is it reversible? CS et CM
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 2: History, 2018, 6 min 20
Display cases. A Museum. In response to a question about photography, a voice elicits histories of ethnic tourism, exposing the silenced masacres. Who crosses the Strait of Magellan? Who circumnavigated Tierra del Fuego? Who goes? Who stays? “That’s when life started, real life,” says the woman, describing her arrival to the archipelago. Her story of political activism and their fight for human rights is exposed to wind, and so emerge the responsibilities of inhabiting, transiting and being on Selk’nam country.
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 3: Memory, 2018, 4 min 24
What’s the difference between History and memory? In a landscape completely transformed by the colonial enterprise of sheep ranching, a historian presents the documentation that attests to the bone chilling stories of how a peoples who were made to disappeared; their culture is seen as living on. CS et CM
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 4: Spectrum, 2018, 5 min 55
“The first house in Patagonia was erected on this bay, without any protection from the wind,” says the historian. This human ambitions to defy the landscape, as performed by sheep ranchers, engenders conflict between the original inhabitants. The displacement southward begins. There, a woman introduces the idea of how the bodies of those who live in Tierra del Fuego are sculpted by the wind and by the labor required of the land. Where do we see what is not be seen? CS et CM
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 5: Strategy, 2018, 5 min 55
The State’s constant infringement on The Commons is revealed by the woman’s experience; demonstrating how the penchant for commercial activity overruns the rights of the land itself. What does this country want? The doctor’s storytelling stirs dreams of another way to conceive of Tierra del Fuego. CS et CM
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 6: Ñirres, 2018, 5 mn 20
Arriving at another place and another time, after a fantastical drift, entangling forest, dancing bodies, and glacial ascents, a rite of passage is invoked. Suspended somewhere between sleeping and waking, from the dark night emerges a shared celebration. CS et CM
Carolina Saquel et Camila Marambio, Distancia, épisode 7 : Future, 2018, 3 min 11
Arriving at another place and another time, after a fantastical drift, entangling forest, dancing bodies, and glacial ascents, a rite of passage is invoked. Suspended somewhere between sleeping and waking, from the dark night emerges a shared celebration. CS et CM