General
Marisa Cornejo-Kasterine
GENERAL is an artist's book by Marisa Cornejo-Kasterine linked to her exhibition project «El Milagro chileno» (the chilean miracle). It serves as a a warning about the difficult reality of contemporary Chilean life (lack of basic human rights and social degradation), and demonstrates the daily struggle needed for survival in a free market economy, forced on the society since the mid seventies. GENERAL is a collection of documents from dismissal letters, medical and educational bills, denied requests, to marked passports and judicial charges, etc. all bearing witness to the cost of the Chilean Miracle, a policy that is still in place today. Apart from the documents the book also includes a series of portraits of those who were interviewed for this project and texts with personal stories, all of which come together to construct a local memory archive. GENERAL is also a reflection on being uprooted, focusing on such topics as: exoneration, prison, compulsory migration and exile; it is also an exercise in creating collective memory based mainly on life testimonies separate from any single institution. Ana María Saavedra and Luis Alarcón