Lynn MacRitchie: Artists for Democracy

Our second podcast with Art critic, Artist and Writer, Lynn MacRitchie, explores her involvement in the Arts Festival for Democracy in Chile, a week-long festival at the Royal College of Art in 1974, which took place at the Royal College of Art in London in 1974.Art critic and writer Lynn MacRitchie also has a long-established practice as an artist, beginning in the 1970s. As a student in 1973 she organised the Three-Day Event and the Participation Art Event at Edinburgh College of Art. Moving to London in 1974, she joined Artists for Democracy and her videos of the Arts Festival for Democracy in Chile at the Royal College of Art record an event now considered of historic importance. She wrote for Performance Magazine, New Dance and other radical journals and then joined the Financial Times as a business journalist while also covering contemporary art for the FT arts page from 1991 to 2006. She returned to art production in the late 1990s. She has made work in video, performance and installation and her most recent works are short films. Lynn was one of the early members of Artists for Democracy – the group responsible for organising the festival, alongside many artists and activists including, Cecilia Vicuna, David Medalla, John Dugger and Art Critic, Guy Brett. The movement lent support to, and opened up conversation on liberation movements globally. The Festival was founded in response to the military coup in Chile in 1973, in which the democratically elected Salvador Allende was overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet, leading to an authoritarian military dictatorship in Chile from 1973-1990. In the podcast, Lynn tells the story of how she came to document the Festival, and what it meant to witness and participate in the event, and to have created what has become a significant archival record.You can view videos of the Arts Festival for Democracy in Chile on Lynn's website, www.lynnmacritchie.com.