Sign to Signficance: Neon as National Heritage in Santiago de Chile

• In Event: Maps, Signs, and Motion Pictures: a visual discovery, [re]creation, and [re]claiming of Latin American cultural artifacts

Abstract

From its origins in 1910 as a means of artificial illumination, neon lighting quickly evolved, in design and purpose: commercial signs became signifier and signified as the combination of gas, glass tubing, and electrodes became an integral part of the space in which it glows and a marker of the collective identity of a people. This paper explores the relation of the individual to society through an examination of popular perceptions of the longtime presence of illuminated gas signs in the cityscape of Santiago de Chile over the span of almost a century.

Signs, text driven or sculptural representations of a concept or product, were embodiments of a city’s embrace of and entrance into modernity, with all its benefits and harms, considering the Situationists’ idea of the city as spectacle, and in the last century, spectacular neon and/or argon signs were synomymous with progress.

Santiago’s signage merges streets with interiors and becomes not only part of national architechture, but, engaging the viewers’ affect, part of the nation’s aesthetic and emotional make-up. The first neon signs appeared in Chile around 1926, but since ceded their posts to the more economical fluorescent and LED products. Original signs were left to decay, often left where they were perched.

In 2010, then-president Piñera declared two of the city’s iconic signs national monuments, recognizing that graphic design, despite its initial commercial purposes, has its place as heritage, indeed as part of the collective imaginary of Chilean identity. Evoking Benjamin’s arcades, these neon signs allow Chileans to reclaim the memory embedded into everyday objects.

Author

• Valerie A Hecht, College of Southern Nevada