Blood River
By Brit Bunkley
Synopsis: The Rio Tinto river in Huelva Province runs red like blood due to iron oxides from an ancient 5000-year-old copper mine upstream, still mined today. Uphill, the village of El Membrillos Bajo was razed to the ground by Franco's forces in 1937 apocryphally due to anarchist literature being found in a home in the village. Addendum: The Rio Tinto Group, the world's second largest metals and mining corporation took their name from the Rio Tinto mine near the source of the river. Anarchism, which found a home in Spain in the late 1800’s, was well developed by the time of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when anarcho-syndicalists took over many cites and town after Franco’s initial coup. This movement had little in common with today’s nihilist anarchism. In Catalonia and Aragon, they managed to maintain control for nearly two years, while their structures were being slowly dismantled by Spanish Stalinist after the May Days of 1937. The Spanish Anarcho-syndicalist union, the CNT, was instrumental in pushing through the first 40-hour work week legislation in 1919. Anarcho-syndicalism was a secular anti-Marxist left libertarianism that strove towards freedom, democratic federations instead of central government, direct democracy at the work place, feminism, and of course, equality. George Orwell, who went to Spain to fight with their militias wrote in Homage to Catalonia that to a large extent they achieved their goals. The divisions of 1936-39 Spain are still with us. Militant nationalism, prejudice and anti-intellectualism persist. The quote by Franco’s general, José Millán Astray "Death to intelligence! Long live death!" is still chanted today verbatim by the contemporary Francoistas in Spain. And it is paraphrased among the growing far right worldwide. On the other hand, anarchist theorist Diego Abad de Santillán wrote in the 1970’s that advanced social democracies such as Sweden and New Zealand achieved many anarcho-syndicalists goals. The loops courtesy of Soundsnap “El Tren Blindado” courtesy of The Ex. (The loops are royalty free. I received written permission from The EX.)
About the Artist
Brit Bunkley
Bunkley, a NZ/USA citizen, has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, CAPS Grant, NY Foundation for the Arts grant and the Rome Prize Fellowship in the USA. He emigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1995. Bunkley has exhibited and screened his sculpture and video artwork extensively internationally. In 2012 Bunkley was an award winner at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art for the «Now&After» Festival. He was awarded second prize for the Sustainability Short Film Competition at The Weatherspoon Art Museum in Gainsborough NC, USA in 2019. International screenings include the White Box gallery in NYC and the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin several times at multiple venues including the Centre Pompidou and at the Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, Spain and The Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. He took part in the Athens Digital Arts Festival and File Sao Paolo 2017, 2018 and 2019 and Kasseler Dokfest also in 2019. Bunkley screened his video, Ghost Shelter/6 at The Federation Square Big Screen, Channels Festival 2017, Melbourne and at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany in 2018, Docfest Kassel 2019 and WOW Jubilee 2020 VII Berlin, Institut für Alles Mögliche / Stützpunkt Teufelsberg, Berlin and The Torrance Art Museum, California. Recent exhibitions include the “Stories of Rust”, Tauranga Art Gallery, Tauranga, NZ, “Green Around” at Taipei, Taiwan and solo exhibitions the Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui, New Zealand in 2018 and the Institut für Alles Mögliche/Stützpunkt Teufelsberg, Berlin 2019. He has completed over a dozen temporary and permanent public art projects including the Minnesota History Center, “Hear My Train” in Wanganui, New Zealand completed April 2012, and an MTA NY public art work, in addition to a number of recent collaborations with the artist Andrea Gardner in New Zealand.