This article is based on a lecture given by Chilean artist and architect Alfredo Jaar at the 20th Architecture and Urbanism Biennale in Valparaiso, Chile, on October 26, 2017.
It's June of 1980. Alfredo Jaar, a recent dropout of the University of Chile's architecture program, walks through the center of Santiago carrying two large signs. He grabs a spot in the shade next to a kiosk and intercepts passers-by to ask them his questions. In the midst of a military dictatorship, Jaar wants the people to vote, but not for the constitutional plebiscite or in the democratic elections. He doesn't even have paper or pencil for them to vote with. There's no line to mark on. His campaign centers on a mint--white and round--like a casino raffle ball.
Jaar's questions are loaded ones. "Are you happy?" (¿Es usted feliz?) he asks. "How many people in Chile do you think are happy?" "How many people in the world?"
These interviews were the first step in the series Studies on Happiness, an artistic experiment in Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet; however, to get the full picture, one must go back to the beginning, on September 11, 1973. On this day, the armed forces launched an assault on the government of Salvador Allende, bombarding the presidential offices of La Moneda with Hawker Hunters while Allende committed suicide.
The image of La Moneda burning in broad daylight in downtown Santiago never left Alfredo Jaar, at the time an 18-year-old student in his first year of Architecture at the University of Chile. This same image would be at the center of his exposition at the 20th Architecture and Urbanism Biennale in Valparaiso, Chile on October 26, 2017.
"It's a very sad picture. This is where our lives changed forever. Democratic order met its end," explained Jaar to the the audience, the room so silent that the only audible sound was the hum of the projector. "For artists and architects, sadness is an uninhabitable space," said Jaar. "It's here that we try to change the order of the reality given to us."
How is memory changed?
The military coup was a turning point in Chilean history and one that ignited a burning question within the mind of a young Alfredo Jaar--"Is it possible to alter the order of reality?" His initial attempt at answering this question became his first work of art: "11.09.73.12.10.", a reference to the date and time that the first bomb hit La Moneda. Working with Letraset, a technical letter board that was the go-to instrument of graphic designers until the 1980s, he replaced the seven dates following September 11 with 11. This did little to satisfy the question that prompted the project, and what started as a week-long project extended into a month and then, a year. "I imposed one date on the calendar," recalled Jaar. "This was the context that I found myself in and how I reacted to the reality that was forcing itself onto me. "
A year later, he created his "first monument" when he discovered that painter Pablo Picasso, poet Pablo Neruda, and cellist Pablo Casals all died in 1973. He wrote the name "Pablo" four times on a sheet of paper, as if creating a totem. "How many Pablos could've died during the period following the coup?," asked Jaar as he explained the idea behind the work, aptly titled "Pablo."
The need to change reality would transform the Chilean artist into a magician. After abandoning his architectural studies at the University of Chile in 1979, Jaar retraced his artistic roots with his Studies on Happiness, a seven part series created over the course of 3 years.
"Obviously this was done using a neo-liberal context. This was a way of understanding happiness. This was my poetic way of questioning the model that was being pushed at that moment," explained Jaar. 1980 wasn't only the year of the creation of Pinochet's constitution but also the sweeping neoliberal economic reforms by the Chicago Boys that became hallmarks of the military government.
That same year, Alfredo Jaar went from data analysis to conducting polls. The second phase, called "Portraits of Happiness and Unhappiness," displayed in the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts, featured interviews and close ups of people and their facial expressions. The phase after consisted of public presentations by happy and unhappy people in the Las Condes Cultural Center, where the people featured acted as works of art until someone asked a question, which led to dialogue. "They all spoke using codes and poetry," explained Jaar.
The following phase, and probably the most well known, was an exhibition of placards and billboards with a white background and black letters asking "Are you happy?" They weren't trying to sell or promote anything. They weren't offering anything to the average passers-by who were trying to get by the best they could under the dictatorship's watchful eye. The artist explained:
I had to take my question to the streets since the art world, as you know, is very insular and excusive. I wanted to capture a wider audience. I was trying to give people who couldn't express themselves a platform to do so. It's an artist's job to create models of how we see the world. This was the model that I wanted people to see at that moment.
Art Doesn't Stop
After completing Studies on Happiness, Jaar realized that "art doesn't stop and one has to keep going," even though he wasn't entirely sure how to do so. In 1981, the Magnum agency published a photograph of a soldier in the Nicaraguan Civil War playing clarinet, an image that inspired Jaar to create Opus 1981 / Andante desesperato performance using a Betamax, where an artist plays the clarinet until "full exhaustion." "This was my way of expressing, of screaming, of crying and speaking without words," Jaar explained.
Decades later, Opus 1981 would inspire the Students' Movement of 2011, re-establishing protest as a form of expression at a time when repression, marches, and a lack of dialogue clashed amidst demands for structural reforms. Instead of entering the fray between protesters and police forces, hundreds of people gathered in front of La Moneda with instruments to create deafening noise--all without saying a word. Police and civilians alike looked on with confusion. According to Jaar, the "capacity of culture to ignite change is enormous. Culture creates small cracks in the system and sometimes these cracks are expanded by civilian participation."
After winning the Pacific Foundation Grant and before moving to New York, Jaar presented "Chile, before leaving," displaying Chile cut in half by thousands of flags as if "committing suicide." This was the artist's way of reflecting on the profound divisions that marked Chilean society during the 1980s.
It is exactly that lack of dialogue that convinced me to go back to the root of the issue: "Are you happy?" I think that my generation has failed. We accomplished nothing so it's up to the next generation to make the changes that we wanted to.
Before finishing his discussion, Jaar presented a mural of Valparaiso with a phrase by Salvador Allende, painted in red letters: "To be young and not a revolutionary is a contradiction of nature itself." The presentation ended with an applause that lasted several minutes. Jaar opened his arms as if to embrace the audience and finally stands up.
