ABSTRACT
In countries with violent pasts, lingering trauma is connected to spaces or sites where human violations occurred, to scarred bodies and minds, and to intergenerational disquiet and resentment, boiling beneath functional surfaces. Chile’s recent history has left manifold traumas among its people, many of which remain open wounds, unresolved or addressed because of the post-dictatorship democracy’s emphasis on reconciliation and forgiveness, rather than justice or retribution. The materialities looked at can be simple apparatuses to record the voices of ghosts, for instance Ghostboxes, downloadable even on cell phones, or machines to measure electromagnetic frequencies and temperature anomalies relating to ghosts in a particular site of historical interest, or infrared or motion-sensor three-dimensional cameras. The connection to a reality other than itself is non-existent, because they have no rules or regularities, only inconsistencies from the point of view of a normative theory of time.
