Creative research is a methodological challenge since it proceeds by engaging with non-material sources. For her part, Parra did not collect objects or artifacts, she collected ways of speaking, singing and thinking that were not only unwritten, but challenging to compose. The possibility of preserving oral sources by learning chords, songs and tones is an act of involvement that multiplies research because personal experience is embodied and valued. In turn, the experiences of listening and absorbing framed Parra’s own artistic practice, as the creators of music grew into a source of research and interpretation for her own experience:
Land-based practices nourish creative research and digging up folklore progresses in forests, along silty shores, within herbal remedies, smoke ceremonies and the springy soil underfoot. Each time, following the customs, cures and boundaries between plant and hu- man life reveals the full weight of history. Standing in a plantatio on the shores of Maule River, I thought of the landscape that Parra called upon, and found instead vast horizons of unpeopled, unstoried land. Silent land, or a land with no voice. I stood in wonder at a world capable of explicitly destroying Indigenous nationhood becaus there was no immediate economic gain. It condensed history, not as a time of the past, or a phase of settler colonialism, but as an abuse so present that the ground is still signed by clear cuts, compacted by machinery and saturated by pesticides. Closer to the estuary, the land is equally silent, muted instead by infill, foundations and seawalls. I imagined that the tsunami brought instant and incredible sound, rising and falling with distressing pitch.
My God, Nicanor,
I have so much work,
Going up and down
Digging up folklore.
You’ve no idea how much pain,
Misery and suffering
These verses I find cause me.6Miranda, “Violeta Parra, Creative Researcher,” 85.
Land-based practices nourish creative research and digging up folklore progresses in forests, along silty shores, within herbal remedies, smoke ceremonies and the springy soil underfoot. Each time, following the customs, cures and boundaries between plant and hu- man life reveals the full weight of history. Standing in a plantatio on the shores of Maule River, I thought of the landscape that Parra called upon, and found instead vast horizons of unpeopled, unstoried land. Silent land, or a land with no voice. I stood in wonder at a world capable of explicitly destroying Indigenous nationhood becaus there was no immediate economic gain. It condensed history, not as a time of the past, or a phase of settler colonialism, but as an abuse so present that the ground is still signed by clear cuts, compacted by machinery and saturated by pesticides. Closer to the estuary, the land is equally silent, muted instead by infill, foundations and seawalls. I imagined that the tsunami brought instant and incredible sound, rising and falling with distressing pitch.