About 100 years ago, the German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss traveled to Colombia to research an ancient culture in the northwest of the country: the unknown and extinct 'Pueblo Escultor'. There he found valuable pieces, pictograms on stones and large monoliths. Preuss, who worked on the Ethnological Museum in Berlin at that time, took 35 statues without the permission of the goverment. The monoliths arrived in Berlin around 1922. Some of them were exhibited for a while, then survived the Second World War and finally fell into oblivion in some cellar of the Ethnological Museum.
(for better experience hear with headphones)
TO HEAT THE STONE aims to promote a symbolic historical reparation of these pieces by creating a virtual meeting between the statues in the basement of the ethnological museum and their counterparts in the Macizo Colombiano. The video also aims to question the colonial past of Germany and how pre-Columbian art is misunderstood as an artifact of study and collection. The Monoliths embody a spiritual purpose in their community. The ones in Berlin must be heated and awakened with sounds and songs because where they are now, remain cold and asleep. To this day, the current residents of the Macizo Colombiano have been asking for years for the return of their ancestors.
Concept and Direction: Alejandra Alarcón
Field recording and direction assistant: Max Stroux
Sound design: Alejandra Alarcón, Max Stroux, Oscar Arancibia
