Mónica-Ramón Ríos
Mónica Ramón Ríos is a writer, scholar, and editor, working in the intersection of film, literature, archives, feminism, utopias, and spectral bodies.
Her current book manuscript The Spectral Archive is an inquiry into the forms of history making and the possibilities of fiction and visual technologies to contest reality by making visible utopic landscapes traced in films directed by Chilean women in the 1910s,1920s,1990s, and 2000s––films that were destroyed, are unfindable or inaccessible. By incorporating epistemologies from feminist theory and literary fiction, decolonial methodologies, and various forms of film technology brewed under the aesthetic misnomer of “experimental”, the book uncovers a web of counterhistories embodied in the fiction produced by women. The spectral archive is a metaphor constructed in dialogue with Gabriela Mistral’s Poem of Chile, which becomes a methodology of inquiry into a long, albeit forgotten, history of resistance and solidarity between minoritarian subjects. By centering on the metaphor of the spectral––understood as those presences that are merely sensed through traces and errors of archival and visual technologies––, the book considers the films of Gabriela Bussenius, Rosario Rodríguez, and Valeria Sarmiento. These film directors experimented with different formats to visualize counterhistories, such as pseudonyms, crossdressing, femme fatales, prostitutes, and melodrama. In other words, they experimented with aesthetic strategies not yet colonized by male-nationalist-white filmmakers to give a body to an-other ethics of artistic creation and collective organization.
Ríos will publish her book of short stories, Cars on Fire, by Open Letter Books in 2020. Additionally, she is the author of the novels Alias el Rucio (2015), Alias el Rocío (2014), and Segundos (2010). She is also the author of the essays Literaturas y Feminismo (2018), Cine de Mujeres en Postdictadura (2010), and La Escritura del Presente: El Guion Cinematográfico como Género Literario (2010), which was a awarded with a recognition of the Best Essay in the Humanities in her home country in 2008.
She has held fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, and the Comisión Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología for her Master and Doctoral Studies.
She is also one of the creators and editors of Sangría Editora, which you can check out here: www.sangriaeditora.com.
Supervisors: Susan Martin-Márquez, Marcy Schwartz, Karen E. Bishop, and Mary Louise Pratt
Phone: +1-917-946-8344
Her current book manuscript The Spectral Archive is an inquiry into the forms of history making and the possibilities of fiction and visual technologies to contest reality by making visible utopic landscapes traced in films directed by Chilean women in the 1910s,1920s,1990s, and 2000s––films that were destroyed, are unfindable or inaccessible. By incorporating epistemologies from feminist theory and literary fiction, decolonial methodologies, and various forms of film technology brewed under the aesthetic misnomer of “experimental”, the book uncovers a web of counterhistories embodied in the fiction produced by women. The spectral archive is a metaphor constructed in dialogue with Gabriela Mistral’s Poem of Chile, which becomes a methodology of inquiry into a long, albeit forgotten, history of resistance and solidarity between minoritarian subjects. By centering on the metaphor of the spectral––understood as those presences that are merely sensed through traces and errors of archival and visual technologies––, the book considers the films of Gabriela Bussenius, Rosario Rodríguez, and Valeria Sarmiento. These film directors experimented with different formats to visualize counterhistories, such as pseudonyms, crossdressing, femme fatales, prostitutes, and melodrama. In other words, they experimented with aesthetic strategies not yet colonized by male-nationalist-white filmmakers to give a body to an-other ethics of artistic creation and collective organization.
Ríos will publish her book of short stories, Cars on Fire, by Open Letter Books in 2020. Additionally, she is the author of the novels Alias el Rucio (2015), Alias el Rocío (2014), and Segundos (2010). She is also the author of the essays Literaturas y Feminismo (2018), Cine de Mujeres en Postdictadura (2010), and La Escritura del Presente: El Guion Cinematográfico como Género Literario (2010), which was a awarded with a recognition of the Best Essay in the Humanities in her home country in 2008.
She has held fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, and the Comisión Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología for her Master and Doctoral Studies.
She is also one of the creators and editors of Sangría Editora, which you can check out here: www.sangriaeditora.com.
Supervisors: Susan Martin-Márquez, Marcy Schwartz, Karen E. Bishop, and Mary Louise Pratt
Phone: +1-917-946-8344
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Books by Mónica-Ramón Ríos
Articles by Mónica-Ramón Ríos
The other utopianism in early Chilean cinema: La agonía de Arauco o el olvido de los muertos
Este artículo propone dos intervenciones para la historiografía del cine temprano. Analiza el trabajo de la primera cineasta chilena, Gabriela Bussenius, cuya película La agonía de Arauco o el olvido de los muertos sentó las bases para la industria cinematográfica local. En 1917, la tecnología fílmica era todavía experimental y aún no colonizada por las élites nacionalistas, blancas y eurocen-tristas. Propongo que La agonía de Arauco creó un espacio de prácticas estéticas que reconfiguraron los vectores sociales, económicos y de género naturalizados en el resto de la sociedad. Ese otro utopismo produjo otra estética para la creación artística, que incluía la solidaridad afectiva y política entre los grupos minorita-rizados. La agonía de Arauco proporcionó una materialidad a las contrahistorias. Analizo esta película como un evento en diálogo con el Poema de Chile de Gabriela Mistral, y que en sí constituye un "archivo espectral", una colección de historias que indican a los silencios de la historia institucional, a la que se accede a través de las discontinuidades del régimen del archivo.
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the work of the first Chilean filmmaker, Gabriela Bussenius, whose film The Agony of Arauco or the Oblivion of the Dead laid the foundations for the local film industry. In 1917, film technology was still experimental and not yet colonized by nationalist, white and Eurocentric elites. I propose that La agonía de Arauco created a space for aesthetic practices that reconfigured the social, economic and gender vectors naturalized in the rest of society. This other utopianism produced another aesthetic for artistic creation, which included affective and political solidarity among minority groups. La agonía de Arauco provided a materiality to the counter-stories. I analyze this film as an event in dialogue with the Poema de Chile by Gabriela Mistral, and which in itself constitutes a "spectral
Thesis Chapters by Mónica-Ramón Ríos
The other utopianism in early Chilean cinema: La agonía de Arauco o el olvido de los muertos
Este artículo propone dos intervenciones para la historiografía del cine temprano. Analiza el trabajo de la primera cineasta chilena, Gabriela Bussenius, cuya película La agonía de Arauco o el olvido de los muertos sentó las bases para la industria cinematográfica local. En 1917, la tecnología fílmica era todavía experimental y aún no colonizada por las élites nacionalistas, blancas y eurocen-tristas. Propongo que La agonía de Arauco creó un espacio de prácticas estéticas que reconfiguraron los vectores sociales, económicos y de género naturalizados en el resto de la sociedad. Ese otro utopismo produjo otra estética para la creación artística, que incluía la solidaridad afectiva y política entre los grupos minorita-rizados. La agonía de Arauco proporcionó una materialidad a las contrahistorias. Analizo esta película como un evento en diálogo con el Poema de Chile de Gabriela Mistral, y que en sí constituye un "archivo espectral", una colección de historias que indican a los silencios de la historia institucional, a la que se accede a través de las discontinuidades del régimen del archivo.
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the work of the first Chilean filmmaker, Gabriela Bussenius, whose film The Agony of Arauco or the Oblivion of the Dead laid the foundations for the local film industry. In 1917, film technology was still experimental and not yet colonized by nationalist, white and Eurocentric elites. I propose that La agonía de Arauco created a space for aesthetic practices that reconfigured the social, economic and gender vectors naturalized in the rest of society. This other utopianism produced another aesthetic for artistic creation, which included affective and political solidarity among minority groups. La agonía de Arauco provided a materiality to the counter-stories. I analyze this film as an event in dialogue with the Poema de Chile by Gabriela Mistral, and which in itself constitutes a "spectral