INTRODUCTOR

By Madeline Millan

Manuel Araneda Castex has been invited to design a mural for the Department of Modern Languages & Cultures. The mural is a collage with photographs taken by Araneda-Castex in the territory of Selk Nam and Yagan, in the extreme south of Chile. Inspired by our colleague Chen Zhang who curated with professor Bing Hu a Library exhibition with art produced by students, we feel motivated to emulate this project and continue collaborations of this kind between our department and the Library, among others.

At present, Manuel Araneda-Castex is in dialogue with the chairperson of the FIT Graduate Exhibition & Experience Design, Christina Lyons and with Brenda Cowan, as well as professors and staff with experience in cultural events at FIT (Pilar Blanco and Susan Breton). The discussion explores the collaboration with faculty and students in the different stages of this exhibition. It is of the most interest to reveal the layers of knowledge under the concept of “territory”, and sustainability of cultures that have disappeared or have been historically silenced. The interpretation of language and silence can be understood as a possibility to interpret our modern urban society in dialogue with native civilizations that no longer exist, such

as the above mentioned in Chile.

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The main objective is the encounter between distant cultures and the production of content.