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Exercises of memory: Raúl Minsburg

Thoughts on the horror, thirty years after the coup

Raúl Minsburg. A few days later (1998)
Work performed thanks to a National Scholarship of Musical Creation granted by the Art National Fund

This work is intended to express the feelings produced by violence. We have all experienced violence of different kinds, and here, in the so called “Third World”, we have always been exposed to all kinds of violence: military, economic, political and a long etcetera. That violence has been present in our country in particular, for we have suffered one of the cruelest dictatorships in Latin America during the 70s, which left 30,000 disappeared people. My aim was to reflect part of this situation through my work. I did not want to produce an aggressive work with an obvious reference to violent situations. That would have been “showing” violence. I wanted to express something similar to the feeling of violence itself, or even the recall of violence. For this, I have created different levels of tension, which are increased by the resolution of each one, leading to an ending that, of course, is open and unresolvedn°13, abril-junio, 1999, año 3, volumen IV, pp. 139-176.)

Words, texts, music, sound, images…they are all resources we use in an attempt to evoke, retain and share, in some way, those memories that our recent history has so crudely marked in many of us, slightly insinuated in others and that just a few try to forget.

We are absolutely conscious that any emotion generated by means of an artistic realization will be far from what people actually suffered those days. It is far from making someone feel the terror, the real terror that seized thousands and thousands of fellow countrymen since March 24th, 1976. The terror and desperation felt by relatives, friends; and also the terror, the pain, the unimaginable pain of those who are no longer with us. Because if in our everyday life we find it hard to “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes”, the less chances we have of doing that in extreme situations. Fortunately, we have our memory and we can, in a limited, modest, but not less serious, manner, communicate it and try to turn it into an aesthetic fact. With a clear conscience that those recollections have to be exteriorized to strengthen the statement: “Never Again”.

I would like to dedicate my participation to my brothers Victor and Rodolfo, whose dreams and joy were ripped off from our home on March 21st, 1977. They are always present.

Raúl Minsburg