In 2011, the author was a national representative at the 54th Venice Biennial. There he installed Gran Sur, a montage that included works captured in Chaitén; images and materials compiled from their actions in localities such as Curepto, Cobquecura, Lota and Dichato, when they were just affected by the earthquake; as well as the record of a work in Antarctica, where he contrasted the silent vastness of the place with a phrase that shone warm and luminous, under the neon effect: "Men are sought for risky travel, little salary, extreme cold, long months of darkness total, constant danger, doubtful return to safety, honor and recognition in case of success ". It was the announcement published a century ago in a British newspaper by the Irish Ernest Shackleton and that invited an exploration to this continent. Prats pointed again to the power of our geography.

Quillagua was invited as part of the "residence" concept, which meant staying in the place, carrying out a work in process and activating various links with the context. The phrase that convinced him, he says, was "the driest place in the world". After coming out of Antarctica, a place of great density of water, he found the geographical extreme situation interesting. He had previously been in Antofagasta (he worked in the La Portada sector for the Visual Arts Triennial 2009), but he did not know this Aymara town.

He says that a series of conditions made it even more interesting, related to the archaeological heritage, the indigenous culture, the geological phenomenon, the presence of the meteorite valley, the experience of the wind, weather, and the dramatic situation of its inhabitants. the last years: "For this, the first thing was to carry out exercises with the inhabitants of the place, using the water contaminated by the miners as a manifesto, as a claim or protest. There were different sessions related to the water reflection, where about 30 people participated. The idea was to summon people from the town to demonstrate through certain registers. We put contaminated water on a fountain. People reflected and we captured that image by video or photo, as a kind of negative, from top to bottom. From the depth of the water we try to capture representative faces of the people, "he explains. Quillagua Action was a field work that lasted six days and then worked with bones of the museum and others found, stamping the bone pigment on various surfaces: "We went through the structure of a cemetery several times and found manipulated bones. The place was already looted. The idea was to work with that image; make the state evident, make this condition visible and of those mummies exhibited in the museum. By the sun's effect, the bones were very soft. We then worked with the brush on paper with smoke, pulling the grit from the bone, a white pigment that left his figure on the support ".

Finally, Prats stood with an action inside a crater, where he returned to work with water and smoke, registering skulls of found mummies, over water or smoked surfaces. "The idea was to point to the dimension of the world in this specific space, the dimension of the crater in front of the dimension of the skull of a child and an adult person."

In general, the artist referred to the experience of landscape and footprint, to the concept of dryness and resistance, seeking to manifest "how a town is disappearing because of mining and how this oasis in the Atacama desert is affected. Quillagua disappears, of a thousand inhabitants, they reached a hundred due to the pollution of the Loa River. "

Pamela Canales and Francisco Vergara are young artists, of the Training Capsules, who collaborated in this residence. How was the experience?

"The meeting was very interesting. I explained the work methodology, how to get to a place, for what, how to approach it and develop a project that ends up on site. It was very motivating, also thinking that there are no places for artist training in Antofagasta. I see that in the city a kind of scene. Something is happening from the collective (Sells) and Dagmara Wyskiel. It is a super activating entity. That is why the possibility of training is key. "

How was the process of work in residence?

"The residence is a job where greater knowledge of place is generated, with real closeness. This generates activities in relation to using everything with meaning, to solve on site what the territory offers. Here was confronting a territory with a huge historical burden, alive. You have to have speed, reflection, to use that with meaning. The criterion on what to do is given by the place itself. From the field of art, the interest is to manifest and explain a problem, discovering in Quillagua that people are very submissive to a reality that can not be changed. That was revealed in a subtle way in the final piece. When working with the place, it is not about generating a kind of noise, but quite the opposite. To conclude with specific works, to confront oneself and also to limit the ability to conduct one's work. In general, it was a very good experience. Interesting for my work and especially for the possibilities of lifting the place. "

How did these on-site operations lead to an exhibition assembly at Biblioteca Viva?

"Being a very small room, I conceived it as an exercise to show a limited definition, gathering a series of drawings, the map of Quillagua confronted to Antarctica and the action on Elephant Island to extrapolate it climatologically; and a kind of mold that was taken from a mummy that was in the cemetery. "

What did you think of Quillagua as a place of work in residence for artists?

"The idea of ​​using Quillagua is interesting not only as a platform for artists, but as a kind of epicenter where creators, intellectuals and theoreticians can go. It is the possibility of entering spaces that are in Chile and that are absolutely strange, complex, because of the dimensions they have, because of the environment and because of those limits. I think that these places allow reflections that can help make certain art and culture operations more binding, consistent, and that everything is not so centralized in Santiago. I believe that in this specific case, Antofagasta has the capacity to activate a place of residence with a landscape that gives great possibility to imagine ".

Carolina Lara
Journalist and art critic