Sensitive Research. Between senses, meanings and existence

Abstract

Dancing is to do philosophy" , a disturbing expression that Mónica Alarcón (2016) wrenched from life. With this phrase, the value of action as a vehicle for the meaning of existence itself is exalted. In the words of Monica: "You cannot find meaning in existence without giving something, without feeling something" (personal communication, 07 December 2016). There are also other expressions that highlight the sense of action as a primordial value in the exercise of creation: "You put energy into food. If one is in a bad mood, then one ends up eating all the bad things one felt". These words were collected by the artist Rómulo Sánchez from each of the actors invited to the filming of Banquete Socialista (2018) 1 , as they set out to prepare the staging of what it would be like to feed oneself in Venezuelan society during our times. Either the words, the moving images, the concepts, or the physical objects are vehicles of sensibility. Ultimately, they are all ways of understanding that life has something in common: feeling in order to research, researching in order to create and creating in order to feel. A circle that models research based on feelings in order to create and understand our own existence. Research is an action through which the subject manages to develop aptitudes that allow him/her to approach and link to an environment in order to understand him/herself. To investigate implies astonishment and restlessness, as capacities to coexist with the other and to survive in space and time. For example: the conviviality in Dante (1307) is one of the main ways of accessing the structured society of the 14 th century, which achieved a sense of nourishment as an essential action for collective survival; or the case of Das Observatorium 2 and the unwise logic of time based on the prevailing restlessness of the subject, who observes and speaks just for the fact of feeling that he is alive.

Full text

Sensitive Research. Between senses, meanings and existence.
Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
Dancing is to do philosophy
”
,
a disturbing
expression that Mónica Alarcón (2016) wrenched from life
. With this phrase,
the value of action as a vehicle for the meaning of existence itself is
exalted. In the words of Monica: "You cannot find meaning in existence
without giving something, without feeling something" (personal
communication, 07 December 2016). There are also other expressions that
highlight the sense of action as a primordial value in the exercise of
creation: "You put energy into food. If one is in a bad mood, then one
ends up eating all the bad things one felt". These words were collected by
the artist Rómulo Sánchez from each of the actors invited to the filming
of Banquete Socialista (2018)1, as they set out to prepare the staging of
what it would be like to feed oneself in Venezuelan society during our
times.
Either the words, the moving images, the concepts, or the physical objects are
vehicles of sensibility. Ultimately, they are all ways of understanding that life has
something in common: feeling in order to research, researching in order to create
and creating in order to feel. A circle that models research based on feelings in
order to create and understand our own existence.
Research is an action through which the subject manages to develop aptitudes
that allow him/her to approach and link to an environment in order to
understand him/herself. To investigate implies astonishment and restlessness,
as capacities to coexist with the other and to survive in space and time. For
example: the conviviality in Dante (1307) is one of the main ways of accessing
the structured society of the 14
th
century, which achieved a sense of
nourishment as an essential action for collective survival; or the case of Das
Observatorium
2
and the unwise logic of time based on the prevailing
restlessness of the subject, who observes and speaks just for the fact of
feeling that he is alive.
1 Video art proposal in the training process of Sánchez as an audiovisual producer at the Universidad de las Américas
(Ecuador). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57-YL2dbgNA
2 German translation of Julio Cortázar's Prosa del observatorio (1972), in which the prologue refers to the action of knowing
how to inquire into something that one does not know what it is but which is talking about itself.
“

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
All these forms of human experience are
configured from the idea of research aimed at
finding meaning in something or someone.
Even so, a question arises in this reflection:
“To research in order to create, or to create
in order to research?” Creation in itself is
configured as a scenario for questioning the
place of Oneself as Another. In his attempt to
(de)construct ontologically and epistemically
the traditional forms of doing research, Paul
Ricoeur (2005) in his attempt to (de)construct
ontologically and epistemically the traditional
forms of doing research takes the risk of
proposing subjectivity as a rupture of
historical rationality and giving way to the
sensitivity of the story, of the voice, of action
itself as innate forms of the one´s own
experience. Identity becomes a permanent
exercise where creation makes use of the
Phenomenology of the Self3 to say how a
reality is felt instead of giving an answer to
which and/or what reality is. This hypothesis
implies conceiving those inquires, in the form
of questions, that ontologically and
semiotically define our existence, and with
which we approach the act of creation.
For this reason, we invite you to read this
proposal in three moments. In the first instance,
the obligatory revision between the aesthetics
and semiotics approach is proposed, with which
it is possible to perceive that creation, as a
researching exercise
4
, allows you to understand
how our sensitive configuration is part of our
being. Secondly, a referential framework is
presented for audiovisual production based on
existential metaphors. For this second moment,
we will reflect on the audiovisual modalization
of metaphors in terms of ontological questions;
especially those that are manifested visually and
sonorously, and with which we proceed to
document and communicate from the senses. In
the third and final instance, some initial
methodological ideas are outlined for the
method denominated, sensitive research, as a
possibility of accessing the feelings through
audiovisual production, with a method ranging
from a historical documentary to intimate
personal experiences.
3 Formal approach to contemporary phenomenology with which being
is (de)constructed from its narrative, symbolic and dialogical dimension
with Oneself as Another. (Ricoeur, 1995)
4 As confirmed by Rosalind Krauss (2006) en Foster, H.; Bois, Y-A. y
Buchloch, B. (2006).
An aesthetic and
semiotic review of
the practice of
creation and of
sensitive research
Sensitive research5 is established as an
interstice between contemporary aesthetics6
and a phenomenology of the senses7. Nicolas
Bourriaud (2013) defines this interstice as a
way of thinking that artistic practices and
audiovisual aesthetics require a basis of
dialogue, in which the question of the feeling
of humanity is allowed. Until the end of the
20th century, specifically with the appearance
of the video-clip, video-mapping, video art of
the 1970s, and even the vaporwave of the
year 2000 we glimpse a narrative with feeling
functioning more as a creative practice than
an inspiring one in itself. It is worth
remembering cases such as Fresh Acconci
(1995) where the famous Mike Kelley and Paul
McCarthy appeared as models and actors in a
performance by Vitoo Acconci, questioning
their status quo in south-eastern California,
and the case of Rirkrit Tiravanija8 who
proposes the movement of humans -lost of
people- as a way of feeling space, of living it,
beyond an objectual or installation exercise.
5 Concept that revolves around the figure as a human practice that
manages to reveal the emotions, feelings and historical facts with
which human beings constantly interact in their social and cultural
environment. This concept is taken from Silva Cañaveral (2018; 2019)
and the reflections of Dewey's experience-based art (1934).
6 Aesthetics is understood as a practice that makes the work a symbolic
space that attends to human interactions and their social context.
Relational aesthetics in Bourriaud (2013), Jimenez (2005) and Bishop
(2012).
7 See Howes (2014) El creciente campo de los Estudios Sensoriales.
CUERPOS, EMOCIONES Y SOCIEDAD, 15 (6) 10-26.
8 Untitled (2012) http://www.kurimanzutto.com/exhibitions/ufo-naut-
jk-julius-koller

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
It seems that in these cases of creation, the
sense of action took precedence over the
scenario of objects. An era has begun where
feelings as an indicator to signify reality,
becomes the work itself. The permanent
reflection on how we human beings feel and
what are the changes in our way of signifying and
understanding our realities were the reasons why
artists began to trace a path of sensitive and
perceptible explorations in order to carry out the
act of creation.
It is worthwhile to read speeches such as those
of Ana Cristina Vélez (2008) -who in the midst of
her reflections about the meaning of artistic
manifestations
9
- states that there is a first
epistemological break between art and science.
This break allows us to rethink the bases of
creation through research given that it is not
possible to research and create if firstly these
actions are not conceived as part of the
vademecum of feelings with which the subject
configures a reality.
This is why the explanations offered by science,
from its contemporary method, serve to begin to
spin a conciliatory discourse, which brings art
closer to the awareness of life, of existence, of
the meaning of being, of living, and therefore of
creating in a factual reality. In the words of
Vélez (2008), the wilderness has its own method,
its own survival mechanism called evolution. This
same mechanism in different forms or ways is
systematized in what we know today as culture.
Nature, like culture, manifests itself in an
organic, processual, suggestive and active way;
hence ontologically, we ask ourselves who we
are, where we are, what we smell like, how we
see ourselves, or what are the colors,
movements, textures, densities, weights or
dimensions that refer us to that intimate and
collective being with which we explore the
world. This is how creation is assumed as a
possibility of existence with which we signify and
therefore live in some substance(s), space(s) and
time(s).
9 Classified in the first instance as human manifestations that help to
understand the making of art In praesentia.
In this order of ideas, feeling as a primary action in
the configuration of the sensitive in the practice of
creation ends up being based on an accumulation
of questions that (de)construct us ontologically,
and in this way allow us to return to science, its
sensitive dimension and to art its dimension of
methodical restlessness. El libro negro de los
colores [The black book of colors] (2008) by
Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria10 proposes in a
hypothetical way, the smell of colors, the ailment
and texture of these, the density of a place, and
the expansion of time with the aim of approaching
a semiotic model that manages to account for the
meanings that each of these ontological questions
have for the subject. Each question starts from
perception and manages to expose the
synesthetic11 and multimodal12 character of
creation itself through its accomplishment.
In order to understand the exploration of this
audiovisual production proposal, in terms of
creation, it is necessary to specify the
gnoseological appreciation of the sensory
dimension. It is worth quoting some studies and
contributions from the Argentinean Society of
Ophthalmology (2018), which asks about the
sensory dimension and its adjectival quality: the
sensitive in terms of visuality (Howes, 2010). The
question is formulated as: "how are color, form and
movement produced in the retina in children aged
3 to 15 years?" To this, the answer is that the
configuration of these dimensional sensory images
is determined by the participation of brain relay
and interpretation centers: image filling,
interrelation of dots, lines and three-
dimensionality.
10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZvAzeedByA
11
The biological bases of behavior in words of Vélez (2008) allow us
to understand to what extent the configuration of a behavior
depends on its survival mechanisms, where the senses, and their
connections with the organs of the living body, play a
preponderant role in understanding how the simultaneity of
behavior and the simultaneity of the body are related to each
other.
In praesentia ends up triggering behaviors that make action,
existence and creation possible.
12 The conceptualization of semiotic modalization proposed by Pardo
(2012) allows us to recognize that meaning, as a primary product of
the perceptible act of the human being, is systematized and codified
to take the form of existence. This is known as a mode with which
reality is signified. Nowadays, modes such as visual, audiovisual,
olfactory, performative, installation, or even, in the last two decades,
the simultaneity of these modes, called multimodality, is being
discussed scientifically.

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
Sensitive Research. Between senses, meanings and existence.
In addition, it is recognized that the inner layer
of the eye (retina) is composed of different
photoreceptor cells (rods and cones). Rods are
sensitive to light, and cones to the absence of
light. Hence, the term sensitive translates as cell
affinity, a stimulating event that produces
activation and allows cells to express themselves
in a certain way or another. Sensitivity, in
addition to being the response of the sensory
stimulus, is the capacity of expression of
something (object) in an organic environment:
the capacity to activate an image in people.
Therefore, it is something that is seen, exists,
and is remembered in itself.
The same hypothesis is referenced by
contemporary art, when understanding that
"art is enunciated as an intimate event, a
creation, which the gaze comes to enliven,
verifying it" (Bourriaud, 1999, p. 105). Then,
to conclude this first epistemic review, the
sensitive is exposed as a methodological path
with a research practice that can be
configured, which begins by questioning the
perception of all life experiences: One can
semiotically and communicatively modify their
reality. From this hypothesis, the question
becomes apparent: How are the experiences
(life) modalized through the audiovisual and
multimodal productions being sensitive
creations?
Audiovisual production
from the ontological
metaphors: the
modalization of
existence
Audiovisual production has functioned as an ideal
field to the propagation of actions that start from
the access what it is to be human. Audiovisual
languages contribute to the configuration of the
first level of signification: perception.
Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting
have become peremptory actions for those who
have a creative process in progress. With this, it
is understood that feelings are characterized as a
primary action with the subject it creates
audiovisually.
In artworks of Pierre Huyge
13
, Liam Gillick
14
,
Dominique González-Foerster
15
and Shirin Neshat, it
is possible to find how an immediate, everyday
environment for people is configured between two
dichotomies: "fiction-non-fiction" (Borriaud, 2013)
and "story-fact" (Ricoeur, 1995) of the moving
image. Indeed, the spectator and the filmmaker are
being placed in a permanent reflection within their
limits of understanding and interpretation of what
is understood as part of themselves and outside of
themselves, overcoming the paradigm of the real
and the unreal.
In Synesthesia Multimedia Laboratory at the
University of Antioquia, audiovisual creation is
assumed as a way of generating knowledge
from its own discipline (UdeA). Then, why not
generate audiovisual knowledge from what
one feels? One cannot create audiovisual
knowledge if one does not feel first. Foster,
Bois and Buchloch (2006), on the other hand,
offers the idea of feeling from an epistemic
review of contemporary aesthetics. Without
hesitation, they state that aesthetics is "a
captious discourse with philosophy or a certain
philosophy deviates to its advantage the
meaning of artworks and judgments of taste".
13
Infinite Experience (2010), specifically in the case of "Player"
where part of the work The Host and the Cloud, 2009-2010 is
presented. The replication of the action as a way of giving
meaning to what the other (spectator) does in the middle of an
environment
. https://malba.org.ar/experiencia-infinita-pierre-
huyghe/
14 New Order and Liam Gillick (2017) in Manchester International
Festival [Trailer]
https://www.youtube.com/wat-
ch?v=SWzRVv_V9hE
15
"Art is more intense as an experience than an image" A
clarification made by the artist reflecting on how the feeling
precedes the object itself..
OPERA (QM.15) (2016).
https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=yYSZ8gYwtok.

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
We are no longer talking about the fact that
creation must be merely a representative
action, but that it can be seen as the very
meaning of action, as the visual, audiovisual
matter that reflects upon the existence in any
of the dimensions16 with human beings
inhabiting their environment17.
At present, reality continues to respond to the
factual act, science explains it, and art questions
it. The proposal for the sensitivity in research-
creation is recognized by fulfilling the path: an
act that goes from perceptible to sensibility
(meaning) with which it becomes experience and
fact.
16 Aisthesis, poiesis, dogma, doxa, episteme in Heidegger (2009).
17 This is also mentioned around an aesthetic meaning of Susan Buck
Morss, 2005 in Arcos, 2006, p. 173.
Juan Manuel Echavarría is aware of this in Bocas
de ceniza (2003-2004). His research work for the
audiovisual creation consisted in the mediation
between the victims' songs and the spectator.
With forceful and discontinued praises
18
he
denounced the pressure of a hegemonic
discourse that does not allow the victims to be
heard in an armed conflict.
Indeed, the ontological questions of this
artwork were answered: At what speed does
war move? What is the plane/place of the
victims of the armed conflict in Colombia?
What is the melody with which the violent act
is denounced?
18 The alabaos are funeral songs. These serve to bid farewell to the soul
of a deceased adult in the Colombian Pacific, specifically in the
department of Chocó. They are living manifestations of memory,
where they are sung feeling the war and violence.
19 Artwork website: https://jmechavarria.com/es/work/bocas-de-ceniza/
I
Fig. 1. Bocas de ceniza [Detalle] (2000-2004) b y Juan Manuel Echavarría website(Bogotá)
19
.

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
It is perceived that human thought is traversed by
the body and the senses, adopting its own
aesthetics and conceiving reality (being in) as a
modalized manifestation in different ways.
Echavarría let the participants of the creation sound
the stories in which the government revictimizes
them in their condition of victims, the melody
marks the times in which each shot and take lasts,
in order to give a material and audiovisual answer to
the question: At what speed does war move? On the
other hand, the foreground is used to respond to the
question that questions the intimacy of the story
itself: what the shot/place of the victims of the
armed conflict in Colombia is, since many of the
participants affirmed that they are in the mouth
(foreground) of the whole world. The melody -the
composition and lyrics of the stories- was elaborated
by the victims themselves in their space of
introspection around the act of violence. With this,
the artist brings us closer to think that the melody -
which the violent act is denounced- is so harmonic
as well as seducing the spectator to introspect the
pain of the one who sings it.
The subject does not produce something for one
purpose or another; the subject creates insofar
as the body is mobilized towards a permanent
search for existence in an environment. Meaning
ends up being the very existence of the object,
as implied by some contemporary semioticians
such as Iuri Lotman (1998), Roland Barthes
(1991) and Omar Calabresse (1993). Here we
take up again the approach of cultural semiotics
called "the Universe of meanings" This postulate,
in addition to functioning as a theoretical
construction for semiotics in contemporary
times, also gives clues to a methodological
design with which to understand how it is
created through feeling. The universe of
meaning is configured by symbolic events that
materialize in different narratives: visual,
sonorous, olfactory, gustatory, corporeal,
performative, and especially for the purpose of
this proposal, audiovisual.
Each universe starts from the ontological
configuration of being: it is at this point of the
study of contemporary science where signification
happens with the interpellation for being and
creating.
Significance is seen as a path between perceiving
and being, since it is intuited that one cannot
exist without the other.
Lotman (1998) makes this genealogy of meaning
explicit insofar as he explains human action as an
event based on the capacity to express what is
seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted in
order to configure being here and now
20
.
Each event responds to the dichotomous
configuration of the sign -and of the human
being itself-, which is sensorial/perceptible and
symbolic/sensitive. These events are called
ontological metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1986;
Ricoeur, 1995), with which the subject manages
to configurate his existence from the lived event
- expressed and stimulating - that encapsulates
his life experiences. They are thus recognized
given the requirement to understand how the
meaning of an action is conceived through the
very existence of the subject. The ontological
dimension of these questions subscribe to the
thought of Classical Greece, especially that of
Plato and Aristotle, who assume the nature of
being as action per se
.
This same deliberation is taken up again
centuries later by the language researchers,
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. They show
their concern for the understanding of being in
the key of "how to live reality" in the midst of
everyday life, finding that each reality is
composed of a translation of meanings with
which human existence is marked.
In everyday life, the use of ontological
metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1986, p. 69)
allows mental processes and abstract events
to become an identity, action, personification,
thing, substance or object; this in order to
quantify them, categorize them and give them
existence. Examples such as full of sadness,
caressing with the eyes, weaving memory,
feeling peace can be thought within a
conceptual structure thanks to metaphors,
because metaphors make it possible to
transfer abstract meaning to a concrete one
by means of experience and culture. Let us
look at an example of this universe of meaning
based on ontological metaphors:
20 Substance, place and time, as categories named by Lotman
(1998) for the conceptualization of the process of
signification (semiosis), originating the universe of meaning
as an action inherent to the subject itself.

Fig. 2. Universe of meanings of the participants in the Creation in
Memory Research Workshop. (Cali, December 2019)
In the case of the video installation Pared
Pintura e Hilo (Painting and Thread Wall, 2019),
the metaphor is audiovisualized through the
movement from macro shots to detail shots,
between rotational movements (panning) and
translation (travelings), which leave the viewer
in a subjective state. With each change of shot,
the viewer approaches the answer to the
ontological question with which the project was
born: is it possible to sew together that which
was torn away by violence? Each layer of paint
on the street is collected and woven. At the end
of the video performance, each shot is cut, like a
quilt, to make an audiovisual fabric of the
existence of the participants: a blanket that
ends up reflecting on what was violently torn
away due to the hegemonic forces on the skins of
a city.
Fig. 3. Pared Pintura e Hilo [Detail] (2019) by Banco de la República de Colombia (Cali) 21.
(...) the shedding of skin is a symptom, an index of dispossession, of human
displacement. I pick up, day by day, all the layers of paint that fall off the walls where I
walk. I do this after having been dispossessed of my house in the east of Cali by illegal
armed groups. I set out to pick up each layer of paint as the memory of the place I will not
return to. I have set out to sew them together as I ask myself, is it possible to sew
together that which was torn away by violence?
(A. Torres Hernández, personal
communication, December 7
th
,
2019)
21
https://www.banrepcultural.org/noticias/manifiesto-vivo-metaforas-de-paz

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
Fig. 4. Turbulent [Detail] (1998) by Shirin Neshat (1957-).
Sensitive research:
a methodological
framework for
audiovisual creation
This methodological proposal is based on the
peremptory task of the program "La Paz se toma
la Palabra" [Peace takes the words] of the
Cultural Division of the Banco de la República de
Colombia for the production of audiovisual
material of memory in Colombia.
The methodological proposal is developed in
three phases
:
22 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ1iWGCiKA8
First phase: the ontological question
The question, the restlessness, the interrogation
becomes necessary in this exercise. Each one of
them refers to a meaning and adherence to a
particular universe(s). The question, besides being
constructed in a metaphor, (de)constructs, is
placed in reflection for itself and the condition of
the one who formulates it. Stimulating events are
questioned, accessed through the sensory capacity
of the living organism, and are reworked to find
changes of meaning that, in turn, elaborate the
feeling of the one who seeks to create and exist.
For example:
In Turbulent (1998), by Shirin Neshat, the
installation on two video channels -based on a
grayscale 9 mm film, transferred to video and with
an infinite reproduction of both projections- is
configured as the metaphor of harmonic pain.
Shirin Neshat (2018), in an interview granted to
Glenstone Gallery in Potomac (USA), confirms that
the visceral sensations of the high-flown chants of
a Muslim woman and a Jewish man (they are taken
in a close-up loop in black and white) demonstrate
the fragility of the pain and passion that has
marked for years the way of doing politics in the
Middle East. The difference felt between the voice
tones of each of the artists invited to this project
(Sussan Deyhim and Sharam Nazeri) is the action
that unsettles the viewer.

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
Sensitive Research. Between senses, meanings and existence.
The audiovisual creation process consisted of a
synaesthetic exercise in which the absence of
color and the high-pitched tones are presented
as a binary contrast. This contrast evidences
basic meanings superimposed on each other
such as the harmony of the voice tones and the
absence of color in the recorded shots. Can
harmony exist without color? In the case of this
project, yes, for as the producer asks: "aren't
politics a colorless lie that repeats itself to the
ear in a melodious way? (Neshat, 1998).
Creation was preceded by a restlessness, a
question, which ontologically seeks to
configurate the existence of a phenomenon: the
making of politics. Therefore, in this context, it
is not strange to think that politics repeats itself
melodiously with such insistence that it ends up
losing its original meaning: its color.
Second phase: the modalization of the
audiovisual metaphor based on the question
At this point, as stated by Ricoeur (1995), the
metaphor is the narrative line with which the
initial text is configured.
In our case, the metaphor, which reflects on
the subject's way of feeling and existing, ends
up showing each of the steps of the story to
be created. Each part of the metaphor,
contributed by the ontological question of the
subject, is modalized in planes, colors,
shapes, voices, bodies, actions, camera
movements, and scenarios with which a first
script of the creative act is delimited.
Modalization works as a process of translation
from the sensorial/perceptible to the
symbolic/sensitive, taking into account that
each technical resource must be constructed
according to the smells, aromas, textures,
and chromas present in the case that
evidences the ontological question. If the
question is configured from the smell, then a
semiotic translation of the synaesthetic
phenomenon must be established between the
smell and the type and movement of the
plane or frame of with which the shot is
taken. In this way, the translation of what is
perceived from one sense to another is
configured in order to generate a knowledge
or narration about the phenomenon on which
the question is based.
Fig. 5. Modalization of audiovisual metaphor by Uruena Lopez (2019).

Let's see an example where the creative subject
feels their synaesthetic reality through the
audiovisual story.
Lothar Schultz, 67, former inmate of STASI23
expresses through an audiovisual report how the
colors had become a torment for him. While he
spent his days in the cell, DDR soldiers had made
sure that no ray of light penetrated the prison
complex. This was a measure that was part of
the extortion strategy of the hegemonic political
party in East Germany in the late 1980s. Schultz,
like many of his fellow prisoners, scraped the
walls every day with a spoon until holes were
made that allowed the light and the smells of
the city to enter. The script for the reportage
consisted in solving the following ontological
question: “What is the color and smell of
freedom?” The reportage, filmed by Uruena
Lopez, shows 16 shots how Schultz opens the
hole in a wall to find the color and smell
(freedom). As each shot unfolds, the character
tries to answer with his stories what were the
colors and smells he captured for that moment
in his life:
Fig. 6. Memorial Berlín Hohenschönhausen pictures [Detail] (2019)24
(…) I couldn't read the colorful
advertisements on the other side of the
wall. It was too sensitive, for me, to see so
much color. I could only see the change
from day to night inside the cell. I was
able to measure the time when the clouds
allowed the sun to move at different
angles of the hole. I knew it had rained
because of the dusting of rain that came
through that hole. It was a change in my
life. From the color I remember the misery
I lived through. Maybe that's why my house
is as gray as a hospital. I feel more
comfortable there. (Schultz, 2019).
23 Prison run by the Ministry of State Security in the German
Democratic Republic GDR until 1989. Now the Berlin
Hohenschönhausen Memorial, a museum and memorial
established by the German government in the early 2000s.
24 Credits. Visual material exhibited at the Berlin
Hohenschönhausen Memorial. Berlin, 2019 (Germany).

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
Third phase: the (re)configuration of
the subject's feelings based on a
reflection of the audiovisual discourse
of the creation exercise.
From this hypothesis comes the possibility of
understanding that creation ends up giving back
to the subject a permanent intimate reflection
on his way of signifying reality, of engrossing
himself in the question of what has changed in
his life, in his story, in his existence. Let's see an
example of this:
Los abuelos de la historia [The grandparents
of the history] (2019), a video installation25
with a duration of 13 min. shows, through a
close-up in black and white sequences, the
faces of those Colombians who experienced
massive displacement in the 1980s, due to the
emergence of the guerrillas and the
appearance of drug trafficking as a means of
economic and financial survival of these
outlawed groups. Each of the faces tries to
answer the question: what does displacement
smell like in Colombia? Each shot that
showcases the face focuses in on some parts
of the body: the mouth, the nose, the hands
on the face, the eyes, while telling how
unbearable the smell was for those times. This
is one of the fragments that appears in the
audiovisual project:
(…) the smell of the wet grass
reminded me of the prairie where I lived, but
the mixture with the explosive rifles did not
stop making me nauseous; not because the
smell was not pleasant (it is strong but
bearable), but because much later I
discovered that the nausea was a product of
fear as a memory of the mixture of those two
smells. Since then, the prairie does not smell
the same and nausea is impossible to avoid
when I am there. (M. Jaramillo, personal
communication, March 15th, 2019)
25 Installation realized in the framework of the Workshop titled "How
to re-signify from art, violence in the post -conflict? of the Banco de
la República. Exhibited at the Casa de la Cultura "Las Estancias".
Medellín - Colombia (2019).
One of the stories present in this audiovisual
project is discovered through the voice of a man
named Manuel Antonio Jaramillo. This exercise
opens the possibility of discerning around the
following idea: the gestural language and the
smell had become the reality of that man; a
reality that marks his existence, his life.
Likewise, it helps the viewer of the audiovisual
creation to be ontologically oriented to a
question with which he would be able to
understand himself in the midst of the sensitive
experience: “what does violence smell like in
Manuel Antonio's prairie?”, getting closer to what
Manuel felt -and has felt- every time he returns
to his house through the moving image and the
aromas that lingered there. Along the same
lines, as Laura Maillo (2019) states, "we will not
say that gesture is a sign, but rather that
gesturality becomes significant because
consciousness cannot be separated from what
happens between the body and the world".
Creation is not a sign, it is a form of signification
that speaks of how one’s consciousness and one’s
being cannot be separated from their physical,
symbolic and social existence.
Finally, it is necessary to specify that the
research practice -curious and restless- becomes
an ideal and preferred scenario where the
questioning allows us to determine to what
extent this (de)constructs ontologically the
inhabiting and feelings of the subject. Lotman
(2000) in his publication "Universe of the mind"
has contact with the idea of how the mind is a
sensitive and stimulating configuration of human
experience, a conceptual position which is not
very far from ophthalmologists’ indication when
they confirm that the organic event that
produces the sensation of light -and therefore of
space- is a stimulating relationship between the
body and the mind. This is how the ability to feel
allows not only to encode the reception of
organic phenomena, but also all the stimulation
that, symbolically, can cause in the subject a
link with their experiences of life and creation.

Prof. Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, Ph.D.
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