Description
Los Hongos is a film following the experiences of two Colombian street artists in the city of Cali. In their quest to paint the streets, the teenagers experiment with creative ways of expressing themselves politically that, the paper argues, reveal a tension between explicit activism and more subtle forms of engagement. Key to their political subjectivity are the violences of everyday life, from the impact of the armed conflict on family histories, to religious exploitation, economic instability and repressive encounters with police, all of which the two protagonists appear to take in their stride. The paper situates the film within Colombian youth cultural politics and argues for a serious engagement with alternative modes of political expression that are neither resistant activism nor apathetic conformism, from music to social media to hanging out on the street. Overall, the paper argues that young people’s experiences of violence and inequality have led to ambiguous political imaginaries rooted in the failures of the state and the liminality of citizenship. While this is true of many contemporary societies, in Colombia this is especially relevant given young people’s involvement in recent social uprisings and their expectations of the country’s first left-wing government, who they helped to elect.
Keywords: youth, popular culture, violence, citizenship, everyday politics
