Two Sets of Chileans Playing Near A Tree … K-I-C-K-I-N-G
Chilean artist Sebastian Errazuriz has been making the rounds this week as numerous sites have discovered a project he worked on three summers ago called “The Tree.” In many circles the piece has long been revered, but for a lot of people, it’s new to them.
Two weeks before the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Errazuriz planted a 45-year-old, 33-foot high magnolia tree in the center of Santiago, Chile’s National Stadium. The destination of the tree was purposeful on two levels. The most obvious level being that he planted the tree in the center of the stadium’s soccer field. The second purposeful location was the stadium itself, which was chosen as a reactionary response to the imprisonment and torture of political dissidents that the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet enforced there.
“When we dug the hole, we were afraid we’d find bones,” Errazuriz recalled about the project.
After a long struggle to gather permits and raise the necessary funds to finish the project, the unused stadium was opened to the public as a cathartic park for the masses. At the end of a week long period, the stadium, which is currently used for concerts and sporting events, was opened to 15,000 spectators who watched as Chile’s best soccer teams attempted to play a game of soccer.
“It was an attempt to reunite everyone,” Errazuriz said. “It’s a place where heroes usually stand. Now everyone was welcome.”
Okay, but also it had to have been a place to let the wild rumpus begin, right? All that’s missing was a white wolf costume. I find it too coincidental that this artistic demonstration popped up three years later without having something to do with the upcoming movie adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” (by which it seems clear Errazuriz was inspired).
You be the judge.
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