AFCOM Afiches de la feria de Cali como objetos de memoria “Análisis de 15 carteles entre 1960 Y 2010”

Abstract

The title of this project; "Posters of the Cali Fair as Memory Objects" (Martinez, 2012, page 1) (AFCOM), becomes a contextual analysis about the most important events that were lived in 15 different versions of the Cali Fair, versions that undoubtedly marked a before and after for all the Cali people who enjoyed and lived closely the most popular festival in the south west of Colombia. The following qualitative - descriptive research that collects small contributions of identity (Torres, 2014, page 1) from Cali, its culture, its social, economic and political context, is the result of a study of 15 posters published for the Fair of Cali between 1960 and 2010, in order to show the different imaginary visually raised in each piece. The versions of the Cali festival chosen for this analysis, range from version III, VIII and XII as decade of the 60's, the versions XIX, XXII, XXV as decade of the 70's, the XXV and XXVIII versions that correspond to the 80th years, versions XXXIII and XLIII that correspond to the decade of the 90th and finally, versions XLV, XLVII, XLVIII, L, LI and LIII that correspond to the decade of the 2000s, become important pieces, which are analyzed from some cards with 12 specific points to get their story in context. In this way, it is possible to establish from the 15 analyzes some symbolic representations about the imaginaries of the city of Cali. Imaginary that we were immersed in our very life as citizens of the common and that will undoubtedly always be remembered by all. It is essential to point out, with the analysis of these samples it is also possible to show how the Cali Fair has been illustrated in almost 61 years of history, highlighting how the official image has been a tool for promoting and reflecting the Cali identity. For this reason, social imaginaries are approached from a theoretical and explicit point of view. Therefore, the authors with whom I support the following work are; Jorge Frascara, Norberto Chavez, Marshall McLuhan and Néstor García Canclini, clarifying that with the concepts that each one contributes to me from their critical perspective, it is possible to demonstrate this analysis. In turn, imaginary is understood in this research that we assume what we do not know, or what is not, or what is not yet. In other words, the imaginary refers to a field of images differentiated from the empirically observable. Therefore, they correspond to symbolic elaborations of what we observe or of what frightens us or we wish it existed. (Canclini, 2007) It is important to clarify that the central idea of ​​the imaginaries lies mainly in the manufacture of a visible image, and the abstraction of a symbol (meaning-signifier) ​​of the urban social actors that are in a given space. Néstor García Canclini (2005) says that: "Many budgets that guide the action and the omissions of citizens derive from how we perceive the uses of urban space, the problems of consumption, transit and communication, and also how we imagine the explanations to these questions "(page 47). In this way, we see how this important author provides us with elements from the anthropological point of view for this analysis. On the other hand, thinking about the analysis from the point of view of ordinary people, the author Jorge Frascara, in his book (Design for People), gives us a number of elements to understand this concept more. Frescara proposes us design as a discipline dedicated to the production of visual communications aimed at affecting the knowledge, attitudes and behavior of people, stressing in itself that the role of visual communications does not end in its production and distribution, but in its effect on people, which is why such graphic and important pieces for Cali are not sometimes understood as a significant continuum. Therefore, "the imaginary comes to complement, to give a supplement, to occupy the fractures or gaps of what we can know" (Lindón, Alicia, (2007)). In this concept, it is important to find in the analysis of the posters the different practices and the different imaginaries; like the icons, symbols and signs; the symbolic value, the handling of the color, the motivations, the prints, the motives. That is to say, a development fed by an in-depth analysis where it is evidenced among other things; the representation of the party, the representation of the woman, the female silhouette, the salsa dancers, the dress, the pose and other characteristics. It is then intended, in this order of ideas, to identify how these elements help to conceive the sociocultural context of the Cali culture, what has happened in all that time according to the different contexts, what were its most common practices and the importance it has. for the population an event like this. At the same time, have clear important concepts in the development of the same to achieve the expected relationships. All of them provide analysis options that made this work feasible, starting clearly that despite what has been said, the imaginary in this work conceives the urban as something complex that is being constituted daily by the physical actions that affect the city, but that In turn, they have consequences in the social: the physical in a city produces effects on the symbolic, its writings and representations. (Silva, 2006). In synthesis, in the analysis developed in each of the elements, we proceed to situate them in the lived context, to understand them as a continuum to understand their relationship with the caleños imaginaries and to assume them from the idea of ​​identity. In addition, with this we can see how the cultural and historical context influences social relationships, managing to create collective identities that are accepted naturally and over time, showing that society is of great importance for any type of communication, such and as evidenced by the analysis made to the poster of the Cali Fair between 1958 and 2010 and of which, we carried out the research since 1960. Certainly, and as a fact that draws attention when analyzing the 15 graphic samples, we note that the most representative icons of the city, such as Cristo Rey, the Tres Cruces, the Hermitage and the Gato del Rio, have been reiterative motives in each piece, as well as the dancers, the smiling faces, the female figure and the typical salsa costumes of the dancer from Cali. In this way, it can be inferred that when the bullfights, the queens, the booths and the cavalcades were part of the fair programming, their representations were always present; Today, it is music and dance that gain presence. After this first phase, which resulted in the analysis of 15 graphic samples with visual elements of the Cali iconicity, we proceed to create a pedagogical mechanism, which can be used to recover the memory and cultural identity of Cali. Achieving this way, that any interested public or reader, little by little they become agents of conservation of our culture. This exercise consisted of carrying out the systematization of this analysis that was materialized in a booklet. It is, collected everything that serves to recover the Cali identity, the imaginary evidence, the history of graphic design throughout this period analyzed, the cultural, social and economic history that impacted each version of the fair. In this product that took as its title the name of the project: AFCOM, and that after six decades of our Cali Fair, a festival that has been celebrated since 1958 with innumerable events, it was pertinent to make this product with an analysis and a particular order of contents found in the press archives of the local media, from that time to date. Likewise, it was nourished with written content by the communicator and performer of the AFCOM project, developing a visual piece of easy comprehension and analysis. However, it is recognized that each analysis and structure evidenced can have clearly subjective components: Why did not it extend more in a certain context? Why was not each version treated in depth? Etc. For this reason, we express in advance the corresponding excuses, to all those demanding readers, not without first ensuring that our sincere desire was to bring together the most important and outstanding events of that time, taking as reference the imaginaries evidenced in each analyzed poster, to understand them as objects of memory, without forgetting ever, of what has been and today is, that great party that we all know as the "Fair of Cali".