A beautiful object out of the horror



In the process of making “A thousand broken pieces”, I started a series of numbers, related to statistics of the impact of on-going armed conflict in Colombia and the impact of current mining activities in the country. While living abroad for the last decade, I´ve been collecting those statistics that appear in the media.

In the process of creating the numbers I found myself facing the contradiction of trying to make a beautiful object out of the horror.

At this point, I remembered a book I read some time ago while living in Argentina: La seducción de la barbarie (The seduction of brutality) by Rodolfo Kush.
This book was published in 1953 and is part of the polemical life´s work of the philosopher. His work relates to the conception of Latin American thinking and identity “from within”.

The mass media normally highlight statistics showing how countries are better off every year due to neoliberal policies. Should we care more about the figures of economic growth?