This poetic text refers to the art actions that Juan Castillo produced in 1981. The Chilean artist’s project, titled Te devuelvo tu imagen (I Return Your Image), was photographed by Lotty Rosenfeld. The text describes Rosenfeld’s filming and photographing as memory aids and as a way to record images of the various stages of the project: the silk-screening of the memorial stones along the Pan American highway between Santiago and Taltal (in Antofagasta); the writing of “Eriazos-Desiertos-Eriales-Panamericana norte-Chile” (Undeveloped Land-Deserts-Uncultivated Land-Pan American North-Chile) on a wall on that national highway and the subsequent large screenprint reproduction of a photo taken while those words were being painted; a television set in his living room showing the photographing of the event; and the distribution of fifty screenprints that were placed on walls on the Américo Vespucio loop road around Santiago. 

“El collage social” (Social Collage) by Juan Castillo appeared in Ruptura; documento de arte (Rupture: Art Document, 1982), a tabloid run of two hundred copies published by CADA that included programmatic texts written by the group, its members, and by other artists. The publication itself functioned as a theoretical support and a means of extending the group’s actions, thus becoming a disruptive publishing effort in its own right that demonstrated the integration of literature and the visual arts that was the hallmark of the group’s agenda.  

CADA (Colectivo Acciones Arte, Art Actions Collective), which was active from 1979 to 1985, was an interdisciplinary group that included the visual artists Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo, the writer Diamela Eltit, the poet Raúl Zurita, and the sociologist Fernando Balcells. They staged their performances and art actions in public spaces to condemn the conditions imposed by the authoritarian military dictatorship (1973–90). Their demands for greater opportunities for action and creativity always included an underlying criticism of the de facto institutions. Castillo was a member of the group of artists who were dubbed the Escena de Avanzada by the art critic Nelly Richard.