Apacheta - Womanifesto

APACHETA 1994 video-essay 21 min.
By Graciela Ovejero

APACHETA is a video diptych originally conceived as a video-installation looped to play simultaneously as double channel through a mound of monitors representing an ‘apacheta’. The work investigates remnants of regional pre-incaic myth and believes, as a way to meditate about the connections between “cultural resistance” and “cultural specificity”, vis-à-vis globalization and syncretic fluctuation of identity constructions. The piece is also a personal attempt to “come to terms” with aspects of a fragmented sense of history/self and syndromes of exile. The focus is on the myth ofPACHAMAMA=mother of earth and earth itself, as it still exists in the believes of inhabitants of the Calchaquí valleys in northwest Argentina, my region of origin. One of the practices with which Pachamama is honored and invoked for different purposes is by the construction of stone mounds named Apachetas. This deity shares most of the characteristics of ancient agrarian goddesses, she reigns over the beginning and end, fertility and barrenness, alertness and the unconscious [dream, faint, losses, enchantment]. Some researchers consider the myth of Pachamama as original from the NW. Argentinean region, which was part of the Inca empire since 50 years before the first arrival of Europeans into the territory, who came from Lima through the Inca’s trail. Although Pachamama is an incaic word and was incorporated into the Inca’s pantheon as customary of their pluralistic imperial politics, the concept of Pachamama as central and primary deity was not theirs but spread through de continent along the Andean system up to Amazonian territory.

Two streams of imagery are differentiated yet departing from the same thematic core and subjective interest: THE JOURNEY & ASPECTS AND MANIFESTATIONS. THE JOURNEY attempts to trace the actual pilgrimage from the city to the mountain villages and indigenous ruins, the flux of relationship between these locations as flipping gravity points, qualitatively different. Conceptually and metaphorically, my journey is even ampler, having established residency in the U.S. and having been away for a period of 5 years prior to the making of this work.

ASPECTS AND MANIFESTATIONS, played in parallel conjunction, consists of a series of somewhat emblematic tableaus or short segments of dramatizations and rituals, exploring precisely aspects and manifestations of the spirit of Pachamama, based on existing literature that registers oral testimonies from elders, anthropologists and known copleras (a particular form of folk troubadours, usually women, that improvise sang verses at celebrations or gatherings). The videos imagery is intertitled, as a way of framing and pacing the semantic discourse. The tattoos and geometrical game of hands, are re-creations based on designs from the different Calchaquí cultures as founded in pottery, engraved stones, bronze discs etc., which almost never repeat themselves.

All footage is original, it includes: 16mm. B/W film & color VHS shot in the city of Tucumán and the Calchaquí Valleys, in the summer of ‘94. Documentary footage pertains to the 1993 festivity of Pachamama, annually celebrated in the village of Amaicha del Valle, an indigenous community notorious for their longevity, where every february an elder woman is proclaimed as the Pachamama of the year.

Credits:
Written, narrated, directed and edited by: Graciela Ovejero
Performance: Magdalena Postigo, Graciela Ovejero
Camera work and photography: Angela Sappia, G. Ovejero
Documental footage, Pachamama festivity 1993 in Amaicha, Tucuman: Jorge Delgado
Special thanks to: Jim Smith and the Media Center at U.C.S.D.
Musical excerpts: Malambo for Cello by Osvaldo Ovejero.
Anonimous traditional Copleras / women singers from Amaicha y El Mollar.
Sound recording and digital manipulation: Cheryl Devereaux