The painting you shall experience is a homage to the song of the miners local to Lota, the Chilean heart of coal, which for decades promoted the sustainable lifestyle of a woman’s desire to enrich her homeland with the growth of the entire country, as energy was supplied willingly by the mine in its harmonious interaction with humanity, the ocean, the local fauna, flora, and aesthetic concern.
LOTA will become one of thousands of painted canvasses that shall be sewn together into a quilt that will, for a peace-promoting event, cover the pyramids at Giza in love for the arts and life. This will also coincide with lining up of planets, impressing this cosmic event with good vibrations in the culmination of this twelve-year-long project set up by Joanne and Fouad Tawfilis. I have yet to learn the date of this festival, but following the quilting, the murals will go on tour through museums in the world, so if you can’t make it to Giza, you may still be able to see the artwork at your local museum eventually in 2010-2015
Isidora Goyenechea Gallo (1836 – 1897) was born in Copiapó, Chile in 1836, daughter of Ramón Ignacio Goyenechea and Luz Gallo. In the flower of her youth she personally assumed the administration of the vast industrial organisation of the mines in Lota. Furthermore, she had the tact of knowing how to choose the technicians and administrators that co-operated in the function of the businesses.
From 1873 until 1881, the year of the return of her son Carlos from Europe, Mrs. Isidora took charge of the administration of Lota to modernise this industry she installed the first hydroelectric plant in Southamerica. The plant was made in the Thomas A. Edison’s Company, who, in a personal letter to Mrs. Isidora, praised the project and celebrated its realisation.
She died in Paris in 1897, her mortal remains were transfered to Chile with a great homage by the miners. When she died she dispose part of her fortune to the construction of a church in Lota and a church and a hospital in “Buen Retiro”. The hospital should have been made of a large room for women, a bedroom for children and an small school. She also dispose the construction of two schools and a home for incapacitated miners.
the mine was named after Isidora’s first child. He was devilish!
view from the park she designed with Mr. Bartles (English landscape artist) above the mine, outside her palace.
The 1897 430 kW Chivilingo Plant was the first hydroelectric plant in Chile and the second in South America. A 10 km line fed the Lota coal mines and the railway extracting minerals 12 km from shore under the sea. It represented a new key technology and a new source of electrical energy in the region as a tool for economic development. Chivilingo demonstrated the advantages of industrial use of electricity and hastened its widespread adoption in Chile.
Studies on the feasibility of building a hydro plant in the site were initiated in 1893. The increasing need for power that was cheaper and easily adapted to mine underground use drove the Lota coal mine company to develop a study of alternatives for this purpose. Engineer William E. Raby traveled to the United States and Europe to assess the use of electricity generation and transmission. The availability of the Chivilingo hydro resources arose as a better alternative to a steam plant. Electricity for driving motors for coal mine exploitation under the sea had many advantages over other sources of power (coal included). Alternating current to feed three phase motors was seen as the most economic, easily managed, and less prone to accidents, solution for work power inside the mines.
An international tender was made, with proposals requested to the main US and Germany consultant firms, for both the hydraulic and electric installations. Total freedom was given in relation to power transmission system to be used. A Pelton turbine was specified as a requirement. The civil works and the aqueduct were to be built by the Lota company.
Work to build the Chivilingo power station started in 1896 and it was inaugurated in 1897. It was the first hydroelectric power plant in Chile and the second in South America.
Thomas A. Edison supposedly designed the plant. The North American company Consolidated Co. built it and the electrical equipment was provided by Schuckert & Co., from Nürnberg, Germany.
The “El Sur” newspaper brought the news to all of Chile and helped to inform other countries in the region.The plant was in operation for 78 years (from 1897 to 1975), in its later years interconnected to the main Chilean Central Interconnected System.
Chivilingo was declared a historical monument by the government of Chile on 25 October 1990, and published in the Official Gazette (Diario Fiscal) Number 33837 on 6 December 1990.
(http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/history_center/chivilingo.html)
ok so im really pissed off because i had a picture of the f-ing turkey with its feathers spread, beautiful! and my father threw it away >(
yet the memory of breathing flower air while hiding and playing around the trees and statues is pleasant.
RELATION TO MUSIC:
so the miners sing, to keep each other awake.
the rats chirp and squeal to alert the miners of a possible tragedy by lack of oxygen, poisoning, explosions, etc.
the birds in the park embroidered by flowers sing to awaken the spirits of the miners, whom walk by it and often through it every morning on their way to work.
the wind whistles into the mine, through natural paths, keeping the breath of each miner fresh.
beauty in the eyes of every beholder, of a job that was underpaid, and never immediately rewarding. yet they lived and worked in tune with nature, their light energy hydroelectric, their foodscraps fed to the mice that kept life in order, and the coal which was the source of Chile’s power in each home and train that transported the goods to each region.
