This round table will consider the relationship between art and production. It will take the case of Chile as a starting point, thinking about the ways in which this relationship has undergone considerable changes since the end of the 19th century. It aims to offer an overview of the way in which the arts have dealt with the issue of extractive coal mining since the work of Baldomero Lillo in literature, graphic novels and the visual arts, and particularly in the work of Alejandra Prieto and her objects/figures of coal and other minerals. The central issues are discussed in relation to concepts such as sovereignty, spectrality and objecthood.

Elixabete Ansa Goicoechea is a professor at the Institute of Aesthetics of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. She obtained a doctorate in Philosophy with a major in Hispanic Literature and Cultural Studies from Indiana University in 2012, and she researches and teaches in Theory and History of Art, establishing links between the arts, cinema and literature. She is the author of Mayo del 68 vasco: Oteiza y la cultura política de los sesenta (2019) and co-editor of Efectos de imagen: ¿qué fue y qué es el cine militante? (2014) and Crítica de la acumulación (2010). In 2022, she co-edited a special issue with Ana María Franco for the magazine H-ART: Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte, “La actualidad de los constructivismos del sur”, and she has published extensively in specialized journals. She is currently director of the Institute of Aesthetics and the researcher responsible for the Chilean national research project “Factory crisis: art and the anthropocene since 1989” (FONDECYT regular project No. 1230292). 

Pol Capdevila is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where he teaches Art Theory, Contemporary Art and Image Theory. He has a degree in Philosophy and a doctorate in Aesthetics and Theory of Arts from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is currently researching the problem of time in contemporary art and visual culture, on which he has published numerous articles and book chapters and the book Espectros del tiempo. Estética e historicidad en el arte contemporáneo (Gedisa, 2023). He teaches in the Master’s Degree in Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Thought (MECLAP) at the UPF and in the University Master’s Degree in Research in Art and Design (MURAD) at the EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona. He complements his academic career with his work as an art critic for contemporary art magazines and as a committed communicator of philosophy and aesthetics.

Andrea Soto Calderón has a doctorate in Philosophy and is a professor of Aesthetics and Art Theories at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has carried out research in Valparaíso, Barcelona, Lisbon and Paris. In addition to teaching, she is carrying out an artistic research project in relation to the functioning of images, at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona. Her research focuses on the transformations of the aesthetic experience in contemporary culture, the study of images and the media, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. She has written various academic articles, book chapters and texts for artists' catalogues. Her publications include the books Le travail des images. Conversations avec Andrea Soto Calderón, with Jacques Rancière (Les presses du réel, 2019), La performatividad de las imágenes (Metales Pesados, 2020), Imaginación material (Metales Pesados, 2022) and Imágenes que resisten. La genealogía como método crítico (La Virreina, 2023). 

An activity developed by the research project “Réplicas de la investigación artística a la crisis histórica” (PID 2022-140020NB-100) and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge.