Exhibiting the archive: Between the policy of what is stored and the permanent diffusion

Undoubtedly, the historical data in the northern regions of Chile has been built through the information stored in files. Therefore, the collection of the information is and has been necessary for what the expansion territorial policies wanted to spread at the end of the XIX century in this country.
This way, it has been demonstrated in the northern region of Tarapacá that the files have created a main source of reconstruction, basically from the social identity during the post-war period. However, although the inquisitive changes to which its population was subjugated, it was certainly created in the people’s memory a “file of situation.”
Iquique, the capital of the region, from time to time surprises us with files, which themselves show the substantive value that the “recording of information” has to expand and transform diffusion support platforms, for instance, of the visual arts.
Unfortunately, in Iquique visual arts always have been a frustrating project, and even more when it is difficult to find institutionalized networks that collaborate with this matter.
Nowadays, this would be the reason why there is no investment in the operability and diffusion of these files. There are neither spaces for exhibitions nor debates on visual arts, which makes it even more difficult for the creation of powerful support networks.
Although, it is not in accordance with the demographic, economical and cultural development of the zone, Iquique – generally - has neither the intent of preserving its files nor the intent of spreading them.
However, among such ill-being for the research, the creation of the CREAR file stands out.
CREAR, or Center for the Studies of the North Reality, has made efforts to support and rebuild -- mainly through sustainable development projects in the region -- a file history and an overview that collaborate with the contemporary art and its respective documentation.
Among the researchers’ networks, publications, and great amount of information, they have become a perfect amalgam to deposit in that place data and fundamental aspects of the emergent scene of visual arts in the north of the country.
The CREAR file, since the year 2007, has permitted to sponsor and spread more than a dozen of curatorships and exhibition productions. Moreover, it has served as a center of studies for many visual artists and independent curators of our frontiers near Perú, Bolivia and Argentina. This way, the file has become a cross-frontier study center, guaranteeing a solid network with projection. Finally, the most recognizable aspects of a file, in this place, would be the storage policy and the permanent diffusion that facilitate dialogue instances within this city, which has become a place of immigrants and the most cosmopolitan cities in the country.