Year:

2022

Children returned symbolically to the place that sheltered many of the early memories of their lives in their
walls and corridors, the school. Empty and hollow due to a pandemic, it came alive for one night. The
drawings ran through the school as if they were the children themselves, they met each other and played
together until dawn, when the sunlight vanished its presence. It was intentionally recorded until dawn because
as the sunlight washes away the projections bring back reality, and remind us that, ironically, returning to
“normal” was not possible yet.
This was the graduation project I did for my bachelor’s in Visual Arts, and here converged educational
experiences, technology, and my long-lasting curiosity about the images that are produced during childhood.
The project started in January 2020, as I was the arts and film teacher at a public school in Bogota, hoping to
foster creation through collective meetings. However, due to the global contingency the world was facing the
project took a 180º turn and had to be rethought from scratch. I was interested in re-signifying the value of
pictures present in infancy and their capacity to shape renewed realities from little things.
As we progressed through the months, I was able to return to being their teacher virtually and the importance
of bringing valuable teachings to them was paramount to me. We studied the principles of photography,
cinema, projection, camera obscura, the magic lantern, the thaumatrope and zoetrope, animated films, and
cartoons. Furthermore, we explored collective learning through plays and fiction. In a way, I wanted to teach
them that despite the circumstance of being behind a screen in the middle of a pandemic, the origin and the
basis of creation were within their reach. A digital camera was not needed to take pictures nor a movie camera
to produce images like the ones we see at the movies, nor digital equipment. I intended to empower them
through art by holding onto the analogous in a digital era.
The project took on a much deeper meaning due to the socioeconomic and political shortcomings of the system
being exposed. Inevitably it reminded us of the immense tensions that exist between the vulnerable populations
of the country and the abandonment of the state, and especially how education in these cases is fragmented to
the point of being relegated to the side. Many of my students did not have access to virtuality because they did
not have “smart” cell phones or data plans, much less computers. The technological barrier was simply another
manifestation of the enormous inequality that exists between these families compared to the rest of the
population of Bogotá. It was a challenge to come up with the classes from a distance, especially since the kids
were as young as 6-8.
The final project was awarded an arts professionalization grant by the Secretary of Culture, Recreation, and
Sports in Bogota. Shortly after, I did my first interview to a journalist from the Bogota Mayor’s office and
finally a few months after, it won the Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner's AWARD, given by the New
Chitose Airport International Animation Festival 2021 in Hokkaido JAPAN on December 2021.