Conversation with Miguel Lawner on Drawings of Camps. With María Berríos & Jakob Jakobsen
Listen to the architect Miguel Lawner telling about his experiences during his detention in various camps in Chile in the 1970s. Lawner was a central figure in Salvador Allende's socialist project in Chile from 1970 to 1973. He was responsible for the planning and expansion of social housing for the Chilean people. When the military took power in a bloody coup in September 1973, Lawner was detained along with thousands of others who had been working for a Socialist Chile. He was moved between various prison camps and ended up in Isla Dawson, an island in southern Chile. During his internment, Lawner began to draw, which was very dangerous and could have had dire consequences if he had been discovered. Lawner drew to document the conditions in the camps and many of the drawings were smuggled out in various ways. Lawner's main project was to document the newly constructed camp at Isla Dawson. This specific kind of drawings, more technical architectural drawings of the camp itself, were simply too dangerous to be caught with, so he began to survey the camp and memorise the dimensions in order to make a drawing when and if he was released. Following international pressure, Lawner was released and exiled in 1975 and happened to end up in Denmark as a political refugee. There he began to realise the memorised drawings, which were displayed at an exhibition in Albertslund Kulturhus outside Copenhagen. Lawner's drawings, and those early exhibitions of them, served as a demonstration of the existence of concentration camps in Chile and at the time created public outcry in Denmark and beyond. María Berríos and Jakob Jakobsen met Miguel Lawner in Santiago in January 2019.