Abstract

SANJINES C., Javier. The current Andean aesthetics (from El Alto) and the conflict among figuration and representation. J. Com. Soc. [online]. 2019, vol.9, n.9, pp. 13-42. ISSN 2412-5733.

How to read the novel "neo-Andean" architecture without reproducing the familiar explanation that El Alto would be building an "emerging architecture" that abandons the criollo/mestizo past and the attachment to modernity? Contrary to these and other "endogenous" explanations of the current Andean aesthetics, linked to the updated representation of pre-Columbian ancestors, this essay focuses on the analysis of the European figuration that would not have abandoned this architecture and that would remain hidden within its structuring. For this purpose, the study postulates the presence of unknown figures of the past which continue to inhabit these buildings and which, shaped by money, were, in their historical moment, the most important agents of modernity. Beyond partially disagreeing with what has already been written about alteño aesthetics, the essay seeks to incorporate the figurative into the analysis of the imaginary that builds the city's space.

Keywords : Figuration; representation; "ascent of money"; Andean modernity; aesthetics.