A film maker (Sergio Cabrera), a musiciam (Jacobo Velez from La Mojarra Electrica) a writer (Carolina Sanin) and a journalist (Holman Morris) reflect on the reality of Colombia in relation to their work. Hosted by Juan Carlos Jaramillo and Oscar Guardiola.
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To start with fiction and end up with reality. Or is it the other way around? What if fiction –in art, literature, cinema- actually structures reality? That is the question posed to our panelists. What would this mean in a country where four million people have been forcibly displaced, where mass graves and landmines traverse an unbelievable geography, where organised crime and corruption have fused with the state-security apparatus and politics, and where death has become as normal as our daily bread? In an unexpected twist, some might say, magical realism has jumped off the pages of novels and telenovelas to become actual reality in this country called Colombia, ‘where reality overpowers fiction’. Or does it? Can imagination arrest the amazing speed of the events occurring in this nation? Is art even viable in such a situation? Is reality itself, the project of a nation called Colombia, viable in this situation?
Hollman Morris
Hollman Morris is a independent Colombian journalist. Producer of the weekly program Contravia, he has been correspondent for the Colombian TV channel RCN, editor of the Peace and Human Rights Section of the Colombian daily El Espectador and founder of the Colombian university journal El Universitario. Winner of the 2006 Canadian International Press Freedom Award, the 2007 Fundacion para le Nuevo Periodismo Latinoamericano Award, and the prestigious Human Rights Watch Defender 2007 Award. As producer of Contravia, he has given visibility to the most marginalized groups of Colombian society, namely the peasants, the Afro-Colombians and the indigenous people.
Juan Carlos Jaramillo
Juan Carlos Jaramillo read Law and Music in his native Colombia. After graduating in 1986 he worked as a lawyer in the fields of music copyright and intellectual property. By then he had started writing on music in leading newspapers in Bogota. In 1989 he joined the national broadcasting corporation, Radio Nacional de Colombia, where he gathered experience in programming, recording live concerts and folk music festivals. In the early 90’s he combined post graduate studies in Musicology at King’s College, London with freelance work at the BBC Latin American Service. In 1993 he became a staff member where he has worked in Current Affairs and Features and eventually World Service Music since 1999. He has produced, among other things, series on Latin American music, both folk and Classical as well as produced and presented a series both in English and Spanish on Latin American folk music instruments. Juan Carlos plays the piano and sings, but he especially enjoys playing Colombia’s folk music on the accordion.
Español
Nuestra intención es partir del arte para terminar en la realidad ¿o viceversa? En este sentido se nos ocurre una pregunta más trajinada que el catre de una furcia: ¿puede el arte, en este caso la literatura o el cine, atrapar la realidad? Y por supuesto no nos referimos a una realidad metafísica o psicológica oculta, nos referimos al palpable goteo incesante de la cotidianidad, que sin asoma de vergüenza puede pasar del tedio de la oficina a la monstruosidad de la muerte salvaje, peor aún ¿y si esa realidad se sale de todos los parámetros?, si por ejemplo nos encontramos en un país donde se baten los records de la infamia; un país, por ejemplo, donde cerca de 4 millones de habitantes han sido desplazados por la violencia; un país, por ejemplo, plagado de fosas comunes y de minas anti personas; un país, por ejemplo, donde la mafia y la corrupción se han filtrado hasta las más altas esferas de la sociedad y el gobierno; un país, por ejemplo, donde la muerte es tan cotidiana como el pan nuestro de cada día; un país, por ejemplo y en definitiva, llamado Colombia, aquel en el cual “la realidad supera la ficción”. ¿Puede el arte, atrapar el desenfreno de una nación semejante? ¿Es viable un arte a partir de esa realidad? ¿O acaso ni siquiera tal realidad, es decir Colombia, es viable como nación o proyecto de nación?