Interview: Sandro Mairata @smairata
Owner of a very personal audiovisual language, Fernando Gutierrez ‘Huanchaco’ (Trujillo, 1978) shook up the plastic arts between 2007 and 2009 when he broke into his mixture of comics and painting in large formats where he represented himself in the form of an alter-ego called Súper-chaco, a superhero in red tights and light blue cape that traveled through Lima eating chifa, taking Inca Kola and sailing the Costa Verde in a fisherman’s boat with Miguel Grau.
Today, ‘Huanchaco’, as everyone knows him, returns with “The lost chucha of the Incas”, in theory a documentary that has more of a playful essay than an informative record. It was ready in 2019 and now that the film began a tour of alternative circuits throughout the country, a local critic has already said that it is “one of the most fascinating Peruvian movies of this century”, and after seeing it I myself was surprised for its quasi-psychedelic visual amalgamation and its singular human touch.
“La chucha perdida de los Incas” is an intimate record of the world of two deceased characters who remained in tension with the Peruvian mainstream during their lives: Mario Poggi, the psychologist who killed the dismemberer Ángel Díaz Balbín to later become a character tragicomic of the national show business, and Antonio Córdova, founder of the Alfa y Omega spiritual association.
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—Watching the film, it falls into the classification of “unclassifiable”. It has a documentary, an artistic installation, it has a tribute to Poggi and Córdova. For you, what is it?
—I mean, it’s interesting because it’s a difficult film; when we have shown it in the cinema of the Catholic, one is inside a box and the sound gets you. But in itself it is a complex ‘peel’. He also talks about audiovisuals, about cinema as a language, right? As when we talk about poetry or narrative, the audiovisual is a language. For me, it is my work log for a year and a half, from when I record my projects.
—When you see the images of Mario Poggi, you immediately think “this was recorded a long time ago”, because Poggi died in 2016 (Córdova in 2018).
—It is recorded in the second half of 2015, and Alpha and Omega is recorded at the beginning of 2016. The period was basically a year and a half. I saw that Poggi has a flag of his own country (his own house), I see that Alpha and Omega have his own flag; there is a discourse that is constantly being talked about the image of the father and the emptiness of the father. There are echoes that are generated, I am understanding what are certain searches that I have.
— Did you record this material with the intention of exhibiting it beforehand?
—No, originally when I approached Mario it was for an archeology project. And when I’m there with him, there are some connectors that send me to Alpha and Omega. And I’m recording them. At some point, when I feel that they are really intertwined and that they can coexist, it is that it is presented as a film, because of course, there are a series of coincidences. Mario dies, then Antonio dies two days before the resignation of PPK, who is like the president who represents the Father of the Nation. So, there is a series of constant imaginaries between these two characters. At some point you say “this material has connectors, you have to take it out as it is”.
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— How was the process of the final cut?
—The entire project was edited by Juan Daniel Molero, who to begin with is a super layered person, and who has this ability to think in visual terms, with a clarity that has been a learning experience for me. I, for example, would have resorted to more traditional documentary elements; I would have labeled below saying “Mario Poggi” right?, and Juan Daniel tells me “no; Let’s get all that information out and let the ride be clean.” That’s why the documentary is difficult, because there’s never an effort to explain to you who it is that’s speaking, but instead they all start appearing as almost familiar characters.
—I was lucky enough to see your installation “Atalaya” at the MAC in 2021 and there I remember seeing the name “La chucha perdida de los Incas” in the photos and engravings that were there. In the end, without much spoiling, what are we talking about?
—At one point, the axis to start working with Mario Poggi was that one day he mentioned to me that he had discovered “the lost chucha of the Incas”. He discovers her in the year 91.
It’s a geographical area.
-Yeah.
—It is a geographical area that has the shape of a female genitalia.
Yes, it is a cave. You arrive at a point in the jungle (in Ucayali), and it is like a cavern where you descend and inside there is a kind of stone vagina. Poggi said that he had discovered it –in quotes–, in ’91. And it seems interesting to me because when he names it as “the lost chucha of the Incas”, what he is doing is sentencing that place with that name. I grew up in the north and, for example, when you talk about the Huaca del Sol y de la Luna… in reality there is no worship of the sun or the moon in those places. Simply, the names that are given to those places end up marking the way in which we look at that place or that space for the rest of our lives. And from the name, we imagine that past and it is a past that we later use to build our identity.
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—Because it is a natural formation. The Incas did not start carving a genital for someone to find it…
—There is still ceramic residue, which indicates that it has been used at some point. But it is not something that has been built that way and it has more to do with local cultures, cultures of the jungle, and not necessarily with the Incas.
—Maybe it’s a name that sounds, that sticks. You even have a hat with the name on it.
—What is complex is that it is documentary, but at one point it seems as if the characters had been dragged into my head, as if they were fictional. If a German saw it, he would suddenly think that it’s all acting.
—What makes me conflict is that you exhibit the characters, but you never question them. Especially when the one from Alpha and Omega takes out these flipcharts that say things that don’t make much sense. You do not turn to a specialist from the scientific community.
—There is a beautiful question in Alpha and Omega, and it is that they are texts that were written during the dictatorship in Chile. And of course, since it is a right-wing dictatorship, they have to come to Peru. The documentary works like readings of underground water codes that I have left like that; The beauty is that it is the first text where the Father, who is God, speaks to Latin America as children. In other words, he recognizes us as sons. It is the first time that we are incorporated into religion. What the Conquest generates is: You are not children of the Sun, but children of the Trinity, and boom! Christianity is imposed on you. Alpha and Omega generates this hybrid question between Christianity, the return to the Sun and the ufological question.
—The documentary becomes an immersion in their psyche.
—Yes, but at the same time it is my psyche, in the end. Because in the end, who is taking you is me. In the end it is my head that is generating all those connections.
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