Dialogue trips Tocopilla, Chile – Fialogreisen of the Gumelab project
The interdisciplinary research project Gumelab (Transmission of history through entertainment media. Laboratory for memory research and digital methods) is a BMBF-funded research project run by Dr. Mónika Contreras Saiz and Prof. Dr. Stefan Rinke at Freie Universität Berlin.
Gumelab “examines the transnational construction, transmission, and reception of Latin American history and memory through soap operas and series. We analyse what effects these entertainment media have on viewers’ political attitudes and historical awareness”**.
The project recently published a video documenting an activity that the researchers organised in Chile. It was called “remembering and touring: images of the dictatorship present and absent in Tocopilla”. Gumelab’s team toured the city of Tocopilla with students from the Liceo Polivalente Domingo Latrille and, while they did so, talked about the memory of the dictatorship in Tocopilla and how this is represented in television series. They also talked with the students about mining extractivism, the environment, and what social protest has been like yesterday and today in Tocopilla. These issues are present directly and indirectly in the few series that have portrayed the history of northern Chile, such as the Chilean series “Ecos del desierto”.
Watch the full video below, or here:
**Source: https://www.gumelab.net/es/index.html